The Book of Magic (Spiritwalker #Bloom)

This book is a rare anthology in which all the stories were solid and I liked all of them. All the stories I believe are new which was cool because I like to read anthologies and will often find that I have read at least one of the tales before.

I loved the last story with the most. Very Fine Editions indeed.

The Book of Swords wins if the sister volume is in competition with this one but not by much.

The Djinn story with the Travelers whetted my appetite for more in that setting and GRRM’s Dying Earth story was a blast from the Vance if there ever was one. The Staff in the Stone story was compelling and reminded me a bit of Earthsea as was the story with the Cold Mages which started slow but built a world that seemed to be an alternative history with Celt and Mali magical bloodlines and shared grief. The Icelandic tale had a definite epic vibe and reminded me of an old rpg book in the Ars Magica setting. The old astronomer magus tale of helpful and kind wizardry evoked a feeling of nostalgia toward urban fantasy stories prior to when Charles de Lint and Gaiman came onto the scene like something Jody Lynn Nye, Katherine Kurtz, or Diane Duane might have written in the 70s or 80s like a warm comfy blanket and slippers with your tea. The gunslinger addicted to faith I’d read a couple of stories before so it was neat to return to his world that isn’t his world.

Highly recommend.

… Magic predates Art. In fact, Art may have been invented as a tool to express Magic, to give Magic a practical means of executionto make it work. So that if you go back far enough, artist and sorcerer are indistinguishable, one and the samea claim that can still be made with a good deal of validity to this very day.
Gardner Dozois

Having a great love for Gardner Dozois’ science fiction anthologies and loving the cover, I decided to give this collection a whirl. Disappointingly, it rather missed the mark for me. Mind, it’s not a horrible book. Most of the stories in it are good; however, only two genuinely stood out as excellent tales.

I have no idea if this simply wasn’t his best work or if something else altogether was the problem. He was, after all, coming rapidly to the end of his life as he worked on this, not living long enough to even see it published. A person who feels unwell doesn’t perform their best.

The two stories that did stand out to me were as follows:

The Fall and Rise of the House of the Wizard Malkuril by Scott Lynch
5 stars
Clever and funny, yet with some depth. An altogether charming story.

The Friends of Masquelayne the Incomparable by Matthew Hughes
5 stars
A vindictively satisfying story for those of us who revel in the petty.

I am an occasional reader of magic / fantasy. So you can evaluate this review from that perspective. This is a collection of short stories by anthers of which I am not familiar – with the exception of George Martin who contributes one story. I read all the stories except 2 which never hooked me. The others range from really good and unique to… interesting. Collectively, they bring to life very different magic and fantasy worlds and unique characters in unexpected situations and relationships. The “good guy / woman” does not always win. Overall, I am glad I read this collection. I have waiting on the bookshelf the “Book of Swords” collection.

I read a lot of anthology books, & I’m used to there being a few stories in any given collection that I wouldn’t care for. In this collection though I didn’t end up skipping any of them, and found several new authors to check out their other works.
I have to add the last item in this volume, “The Fall and Rise of the House of Malkuril”was worth the price of the book by itself!

Sometimes I like anthologies of short stories to give me fresh ideas. This one was OK. Then again, I haven’t been very impressed with any SF these days. SF used to be fun, now it’s just a drag, new ideas are silly … slowly finding myself abandoning this genre.

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