Customer Reviews

The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction: 13 Prize Winning Tales

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a fabulous collection of imaginative work, and each story is completely different from the others. (And I'm not just saying that because I have a story in there!) Who knew there was so much talent out there just waiting for someone to FINALLY publish a pagan anthology! I hope everyone will buy this one, so they'll publish many, many more! run, don't walk, to get this book. Or type faster:)

I love this book- an excellent collection of short stories written by a wide variety of authors who show wonderful imagination and insight. In a way, it's kind of like Grimm's Fairy tales mixed with Aesop's fables, a great story book. Let's hope they hold the contest again, and put out a second volume!

The short story can be a challenge to write. In only the equivalent of a single chapter, one must introduce characters and situations and move along to develop the plot - and bring it to conclusion.

This anthology is the result of a competition for pagans to submit their short stories, and we are given the top 13 stories submitted. If this is a sample of the pagan writers, then I envy the judges who got to read all of the submissions, and at the same time, I do not envy them for having to pick only 13!

One does not have to be a pagan to enjoy these stories. One only has to be a reader.

I have been looking for years for a book of Pagan Fiction, specifically a short fiction book. This book covers everything from a Pagan cop to Pagan love. Normally pagan fiction is bunched up into sci-fi or fantasy. This one had mystery, romance, crime solving and more. I would greatly recommend this book for any pagan that would like a brake from that generally genres and see what else is out there!

This is a collection of 13 stories, judged and collated by the editors of a magazine and a well-known pagan publishing house. I was hopeful of reading a great selection of creative pieces from pagan authors; I was disappointed.

Out of the 13 stories, only two appealed to me, one of which was the winner - of what I am not sure, but it says it's the winner in the introduction. "A Valkyrie Among Jews" by April about a woman raised in Judaism who has converted but still works in a Jewish retirement home and her reaction to being surrounded by her former faith and its accoutrements. I preferred "Black Doe" by Vylar Kaftan who was challenged by a friend to create a story encompassing "survivor's guilt about food poisoning and someone getting a haircut" (page 209). Despite the strange impetus, the work is superb and well written, with effortless characterisation and a story that carries you along with it right through to the end. Most of the stories dragged for me, and I was constantly eager to finish one in the hope the next would be better; not so with "Black Doe" as it ended far too quickly for me.

Please note there is an erotic (for want of a better word) piece in amongst the stories. It would have been nice to see a story about ordinary people living in the ordinary world as every story in the anthology was tainted with either the supernatural, manifest deity, occult or involved elements of fantasy and/or science fiction. Pagans are ordinary people, too, but that doesn't mean we don't have our own stories.

This anthology didn't seem to live up to the promise (it held for me) of bringing new and exciting pagan authors to my attention. I can't recommend it to others, but I can recommend the two authors I mentioned above.

I was defenitly disappointed with this book. A lot of the stories in it, to me, only suggested pagan themes. A few seemed like they were in there simply for shock factor. What does lesbian erotica have to do with paganism? The stories just didn't seem well chosen. Even the story by one of my favorite authors, Deborah Blake, left me wondering "Where's the Pagan?" A sci-fi story about a world where paganism is finally accepted and the cop is a psychic that convinces the ghost of a killer he's going to hell if SHE wants him to, just isn't pagan to me. It's amusing, but I felt all these stories lacked the main theme of the book. Black Doe by Vylar Kaftan was really the only story I felt related to the theme. It had ancient gods, magick, and beliefs long since forgotten. The tribes people were in every sense Pagan, but it didn't flat out say that in the story. And no one had to strap on a strap-on or masturbate to get the point across. (Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with erotica, I just don't think it was properly used with the theme of the book. A woman masturbating to the memory of her dead husband while at Goddess Fest and surrounded by a bunch of horny women... How does that fit in with Paganism!?)
Maybe I'm old fashioned, or like fantasy too much, but this was defenitly not what I was expecting.

There is a piece by Melodie Bolt called "Selk Road" which goes on in some places and makes a generalizing assumption that all Germans are rapists.All her stories are neurotic venting however..The inclusion of a story in this anthology which encourages nationalistic hatred is a step backwards for (it is tiresome as well in some places...)the Pagan community.Stereotypes of nationalities appalls me and this story shows how low the author as well as the publisher regard an entire nationality so much as to suggest they are treated as inferior to themselves as well the story is slow.The publisher CHOSE to include this story which ruins the rest of the anthology and so there's no point in rating any other story.I'd rate it zero if I could.ALL of Ms. Bolt's stories betray a hatred for (such as her adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood in Sage WWoman..)someone.She's disturbed.