Fantastic Hope

February 17, 2020
“You’re holding hope in your hands,” Hamilton writes in the foreword to this sweet escapist speculative anthology, which exclusively features tales with happy endings. This upbeat ethos is perhaps best demonstrated in Larry Correia’s “Mr. Positive, the Eternal Optimist,” a joyride of a story that manages to put a cheerful spin on a violent mugging. Kevin J. Anderson’s fan-favorite zombie PI Dan Shamble returns in “Heart of Clay,” a delightfully fanciful detective story that sees the peaceful coexistence of zombies, ghosts, and golems. “Not in This Lifetime” by Sharon Shinn follows a reincarnating pair of female friends, a breath of fresh air in this otherwise disappointingly male-centric book. Weaker tales include John G. Hartness’s “Reprise”—featuring his recurring character Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter—and Robert E. Hampson’s “In the Dust,” both of which entertain but are too formulaic. The hard-earned happy ending of Kacey Ezell’s thoughtful “No Greater Love” actually comes as something of a relief given the easy joy that precedes and follows it. Though the one-note optimism is best in small doses, this heartwarming anthology offers a temporary reprieve from reality. Agent: Merrilee Heifetz, Writers House.

Sixteen short stories from well-known and not-so-well-known writers cover a wide array of fantasy and science fiction. Narrators Kimberly Alexis and Holter Graham have an opportunity to draw from their arsenal of accents as they travel the universe in this anthology. They both are called upon to narrate stories for authors for whom they have narrated before, as well as for some different authors. In the last story of the collection, Alexis falls back on familiar turf with Hamilton's familiar vampire hunter, Anita Blake. Similarly, Graham is called upon for another story about a werewolf by Patricia Briggs, "Asil and the Not-Date." Both narrators are versatile and nimble as they shift from aliens to quirky humans, from werewolves to vampires. J.E.M. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine