Genius Loci, Tales of the Spirit of Place, edited by Jaym Gates. Fantasy anthology. Paperback, 476 pages. (I read it in ePub due to Kickstarter subscription).

As anthologies go, this one was dense. Most of the stories in here were spicy dark chocolate truffles for my imagination; I could only consume a few at a time or the intensity of flavor made it hard to actually enjoy them.

The forwards for each story provided an education about a place, type of spirit, or time. The stories did not lean on the forwards as much as I expected, but stood on their own without contexts. The introductions just made the stories richer.

I admit that I'm an American girl, and that I'm looking for happy - or at least balanced - endings. This book had more unhappy or haunting endings than it did balanced or happy ones. Most of the endings were slashingly conclusive, but not in a way that I would relish reading again later. So why did I rate the book so highly? These stories are works of art. A lot of time and thought was put into crafting the small, surprisingly sharp images. I am impressed, and I hope other readers will be, too.

I picked it up through reward level. I found out about the Kickstarter through Seanan McGuire's blog. Hey, a McGuire story has a 50/50 chance of being positive. (It so very much was not, this time.) So I'm recommending this anthology to the Mira Grant fans instead.

Books read in 2016