Prom Nights from Hell

Fantasy anthology -- no editor listed

This book fell into my hands by a fluke: a fellow volunteer at a local thrift shop was worried about putting it on the shelves because of the word 'Hell' in the
title. So I took it home to check it out. Strictly research, I swear.

On the other hand, it was easy enough for someone who already reads fantasy to guess there would be nothing too gross or horrible in this book -- one of the five contributing authors is Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight series. The other authors are Meg Cabot, Kim Harrison, Michele Jaffe and Laurene Myracle.

DEFINITELY LIKED:

Madison Avery and the Dim Reaper,

by Kim Harrison.

Right off the start … gotta love the title.
In this story, Madison is hovering somewhere between life and death (though the living can still see her -- at least, her father certainly can) after a mysterious hunk named Seth Adamson deliberately crashes the car they are both in. Seth, who has targeted her specifically, then steals her body from the morgue and disappears with it. Meanwhile she has stolen a pendant off him. She has some allies in this new limbo and she has one year to sort things out. Or else. (Nobody specifies "or else" what, which makes it even more unnerving.)

Kiss and Tell, by Michele Jaffe.
Jaffe's heroine, Miranda, has some odd superpowers that nobody can explain and which she tries to minimize. She also plays jammer on a local roller derby team and has a parttime job as a chauffeur with a mom-and-pop limousine company. In the story she finds herself chauffeuring what appears to be a wonky 14-year-old with a fixation on early Madonna dress style. Not surprisingly this is no ordinary 14-year-old. In fact, she's not even human -- and there are other nonhumans after her. The trick is for Miranda to figure out whom she can trust while trying to get Sibby to her proper destination.

I liked them both for the same reason: when I reached the end of each, my reaction was "HEY! WHERE'S THE REST OF THE STORY??" Both have very ambiguous endings and were interesting and well-written enough that I really, really hope Harrison and Jaffe have completed versions out there somewhere, dammit, because I want to know more about Miranda and I definitely want to know what happens to Madison after that year is up!

... OK ...:
The Corsage, by Laurene Myracle, is immediately recognizable to anybody who has read The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs. To the author's credit, she says as much in a very brief intro to the story. It has its own creepy "Be careful what you wish for" factor, as well as some rather gruesome humour.

Meg Cabot's The Executioner's Daughter is about a girl named Mary who just happens to be tracking Dracula's son. She wants to kill him to bring the elder Dracula out in the open so she can kill him -- because Dracula Sr. turned her mother into one of the undead and this is the only way to turn her back. Despite the premise, it's ... just OK.

Stephenie Meyer's Hell on Earth follows Sheba (full name Chex Sheba aut Baal-Malphus), who is a demoness. She's slinking through the prom crowd, causing small problems intended to help set the mental tone for larger ones. With the aid of a rather nasty piece of humanity -- ironically named Celeste -- she is spreading misery, jealousy, anger and lust in waves that are building towards -- she hopes -- an explosive crest (under her mental prodding, one wimpy little nerd has brought a gun to the dance). There are some interesting points and the writing's not bad but when you learn, early on, that the primary male character is named Gabe Christensen, well, there's not much subtlety there -- especially when you find out his middle name is Michael.

Cabot's and Meyers's stories end on the obligatory happy-ever-after note -- though Meyers's ending isn't quite as as solidly fixed as Cabot's. There's room for a little bit of doubt -- but to be honest, not enough to provide any real ambiguity.

Rotten Relations

ANTHOLOGY EDITED BY DENISE LITTLE

Everybody knows Santa Clause, right? The jolly fat guy in the red suit who brings presents to all good little children.
But did you ever wonder what it would be like to be Santa's child?
Especially in the 20th century?
"Every year it's the same. Out all night on Christmas Eve, he flies back in the middle of Christmas Day with a massive sugar hangover, and falls into bed without a Merry Christmas to anyone."
So grumbles Santa's not-quite-thirteen-year-old son, self-nicknamed 'Sharp,' in Home for the Holidays. It's one of 15 stories in the anthology Rotten Relations, edited by Denise Little.
" ... It's worse since Dad took over the Three Kings' outfit. Months of negotiations in Mexico, conference calls from Spain at all hours, and now he insists on going out personally on Epiphany, too. Rides a burro behind the three camels. Comes home with saddle sores."
"Sharp" sounds like every other kid slouching through the early teen years since adolescence was invented -- your parents have gone from people you look up to, to the leading citizens of Dorkville. But it's done with such humour that you can't help but sympathize, even as you grin.
Among the other stories:
* the real lowdown on why Grendel killed Beowulf (father abandones pregnant girlfriend, never bothers to check up on his son, you gotta think that's gonna
come back and bite you ... in this case, literally ...),
* an intriguing retelling of Cinderella (which girl did the prince really get?),
* a follow-up to Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story Young Goodman Brown -- by no less than a distant relative of Hawthorne's,
* Mirror, Mirror cleverly combines the Snow White story with a recognizable retelling of the story of Henry VIII -- though his last wife bore little resemblance to the story's narrator;
* the story of the young Arthur, from his arrival in Sir Ector's household until his coronation feast, told from the point of view of Sir Ector's son Kay -- and this Arthur has an edge that we don't usually see in the legends.

My favourites in this anthology were Mirror, Mirror and Cuckoo's Egg (the Arthurian tale), mainly because I've got a strong interest in both Tudor history and Arthurian legend to begin with.

But most of the stories are engaging, clever and well-written.

Of them, I found Rapunzel -- The True Story to be the most confusing. The last line reads, "The scene held for a moment before collapsing into something else, as all the scenes of life are wont to do, especially if a witch is stage-managing them." I could wish that the witch in question had stage-managed things in a more orderly fashion; I found it hard to keep track of exactly what was happening as the story progressed.

Still, given the wide array of familiar characters in unfamiliar settings, times and storylines, it's an anthology that's well worth checking out.

The Sorcerer's Academy

ANTHOLOGY EDITED BY DENISE LITTLE

This is a book about a school for students with magical powers.
No, no, not that school for students with magical powers ....
This school is set in Sedona, Arizona.

The Sorcerer's Academy is an anthology of 15 stories. It leads off with the arrival at "Sorcerer U" of three students in particular: Janice Rosa Redding, from New York; Barry Silverhorse, born on a Dine reservation in Arizona, but raised by an aunt in Los Angeles after being orphaned at 6, and Matt Johnson, of Dallas, Texas (where Sedona is known as the "Land of the Wild Woowoos," because of its apparently hefty collection of "New Agers, Crystal Worshippers and Tree Huggers."

The original three students are supplemented by others in the various stories and the authors have used the opportunity to bring in an international staff and multicultural curriculum (Slavic Sorcery, Oriental Sorcery, Totem Animals of North America). There is a student who is not what she seems and a parrot who is not what it seems.
Oh, and although electronics are highly sensitive to magic and must have protective wards, renewable weekly, there is also a course called Cyber-Magic. Where do I sign up?
The students come across as very realistic: they are by turns anxious and stubborn, frightened but determined to do what needs to be done ... they occasionally blow up sections of the school and have school dances at which one student berates another for dating a vampire ... okay, so maybe those last bits aren't all that realistic ....

I could have done with a little less realism in the case of one of student. Silva (we never learn her last name), who has a massive crush on a popular singer, constantly uses "so" as an emphasizer: "He just soooooooo deserves it." "It'd have been soooooooo worth it." "I soooooooo totally understand him."

I wanted to hit her with a silence hex until she learned some new adjectives and adverbs (or any at all, since "so" is neither). That aside, however, the story is still engaging ... she has dreams about meeting her idol but why do they cause her to scream half the dorm awake -- especially when she can't recall anything even remotely unpleasant about the dreams?

And the first story ends on a note of mystery: a shadowy room, peopled -- if that is the right word -- with beings who are particularly interested in the trio in the first story. Who are they? Do they wish the students well or are they malevolent? Their interest could be read both ways.

Add to that the fact the head of the school is named David Reynard ... and Reynard the Fox was medieval Europe's trickster figure ...

I have to add that I was mildly annoyed by the introduction, a segment of which came across as both smug and jingoistic. It is, however, a small gripe, and did not at all affect my enjoyment of the stories.