Customer Reviews

Relative Magic

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

 

 

It is always a pleasure to get a new Huff, and this collection has got some great stories. Fans of the Blood series (and who isn't?) will be glad to know there is a new Henry Fitzroy story and a new Vicky Nelson story in this collection. If you like the Quarter series there's a Bannon and Vree story. There's an hilarious story about a very, very wicked Queen dictating her outrageous life story to a scribe. One story 'Oh Glorious Sight' I didn't much care for, it seemed to me to lay on the pathos a bit thick. My favourite story is 'Nights of the Round Table' in which a down-to-earth cleaning lady at Camelot dispenses advice to a succesion of dopey knights. One slight dissapointment was to discover that three of the stories I had already in a previously published volume ' Stealing Magic' but this is a minor quibble. Anything at all by Tanya Huff is always welcome.

I'm a big fan of Tanya Huff's work (we Rye High grads have to stick together... or something), so of course I bought this the second it came out. I was a little cheesed then, to discover that so many of the stories had appeared elsewhere. I wanted NEW stuff. Granted, the majority of the stories were new, but a significant amount were not. The Terazin stories, except one, all appeared in Stealing Magic, and I'd read Death Rites already as well (it was in Assassin Fantastic, and stars Vree and Bannon from the Quarters books). Okay, so I guess that's not that many to have been repeats, but I was really hoping for more Magdalene or Kelly Chase stories.
Anyway, the stories which are new are well written and interesting (although the Count Dracula one was a bit ho-hum - Henry Fitzroy is a much more interesting main character). Still, it's worth the price of admission. :)

I just received this collection of Huff short stories for Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed it. (From the date you can see it didn't take me long to plow though it!) All but one of the stories were new to me, so I'm sure that flavored my perception. If you haven't read any Tanya Huff before, this can be a good place to start, especially to experience the breadth of genres she covers. Her writing style is often light and witty, but not lacking in depth.

I didn't think there was a bad story in the bunch, though as someone else mentioned, the Dracula tale was probably the weakest. Still, having to think a bit before mentioning a possible dud indicates the strength of this collection. I highly recommend it to all Huff fans and potential Huff fans who haven't already read most of these stories in other anthologies.

I don't have the book with me, and it's taken me a while to get through the whole book. Some of the entries I've already read in the anthology Blood Ties. I enjoyed the entries dealing with an elemental force being given a human body. The wizard enclave was amusing. I didn't care for the several stories centered around the thief Terizan. For me the thief element in fantasy is a little overdone.

Overall it's an uneven anthology. With some stories not quite finding their narrative voice, while others sing with possibilitites.