Hotter than Hell, edited by Kim Harrison

Like any anthology, Hotter than Hell has it’s ups and downs. I immediately loved the title, because back in my college days that was going to be the name of my all-girl Kiss cover band if I’d ever gotten off my ass, learned to play guitar, and started an all-girl Kiss cover band.

Here’s a few impressions of each story:

• “Music Hath Charms” by Tanya Huff
  One of the best in the collection, it’s about an struggling agent in the music industry. She’s determined to sign twin musicians whose talent is too remarkable to be natural. It definitely lives up to the spicy theme, but there’s also a real plot and a likable heroine who saves the day.
• “Minotaur in Stone” by Marjorie M. Liu
  I haven’t read anything by Liu before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. A forgotten woman living in a modern-day maze comes in contact with the minotaur of legend, still trapped in a magical labyrinth. It’s written in an enchanting style and I was really drawn to the characters. But three sex scenes in just over 30 pages felt a bit excessive.
• “Demon Lover” by Cheyenne McCray
  An incubus is assigned to take a paranormal writer’s soul, it’s more of a romance than an urban fantasy story, so it doesn’t really fit my taste. And for some reason I really dislike it when an author’s main character is a writer, that choice only works for me on rare occasions. It’s just too meta. It jerks me right out of the story, especially when the narrator points out how events are similar to research about their subject or thinks about how events in the story seem almost fictional.
• “Equinox” by L.A. Banks
  Banks is a pretty good writer, and it’s a great idea to have an ancient goddess show up in today’s world and hunt people that she thinks are hurting the land. But the story seemed to imply that Artemis, the legendary badass herself, just needed some good lovin’ and she would settle down.
• “Ride a Dark Horse” by Susan Krinard
  I don’t care if they’re fictional characters or if the heroine is really passive and is confused about what she wants. No still means no, not “grope a little more and see if she changes her mind.” Feeling up a near-stranger while she’s sleeping is assault, even if you have some kind of unacknowledged magical love connection. Sorry, but this story seriously yicked me out.
• “To Die For” by Keri Arthur
  A werewolf and a wolf shifter are drawn to each other while working a missing persons case. The story doesn’t explain how Arthur’s werewolves and wolf shifters are different, but it’s made clear that they are and this causes some friction. The story has both action and drama. I think I liked it a little more than her novels, possibly because the shorter format doesn’t leave time for much bed-hopping even if the characters would have been interested in that.
• “Curse of the Dragon’s Tears” by Heidi Betts
  One for the romance fans, it’s about an arrogant young man who was cursed into becoming some kind of immortal lizard guy because he yelled at a hungry gypsy group for poaching on his family’s land. Seems like a bit of a disproportionate response, no? Apparently “that time grandma turned a guy into a monster for being a jerk” became a popular family story, so one of the gypsy’s descendants goes to look for the man after having steamy dreams about him. Betts felt the need to point out that her hero had scales all over, which sounds extremely uncomfortable – if not downright painful.
• “Brother’s Keeper” by Lilith Saintcrow
  The main character is a witch who gets her power from sex. This isn’t a self-contained story, it seems more like it’s setting up other events because a mystery is introduced but not solved. I doubt I’d buy a novel with this character as its heroine, because I don’t like it when plot or character traits mandate sex. I really enjoyed Saintcrow’s writing though, so maybe Working for the Devil will be more my style.
• “(Like a) Virgin of the Spring” by Susan Sizemore and Denise Little
  A fun, light story about a psychic time-traveler stuck in ancient Britain.
• “Life is the Teacher” by Carrie Vaughn
  A newly-made vampire longs for her past but puts it behind her. An enjoyable, character-driven story.
• “Moonlight Becomes You” by Linda Winstead Jones
  A lonely apartment-dweller gets to know her neighbor, who she believes may be a vampire. This is probably my favorite of the mostly-romance stories because of the humor and sense of mystery, and because the conclusion was believable without being obvious. The main character bases her suspicions on knowledge of popular fiction’s version of the supernatural, and it seemed as if she believed mostly because she wanted it to be true.
• “Dirty Magic” by Kim Harrison
  Set in Harrison’s version of Cincinnati, this story is about a banshee, a woman who feeds off the emotions of others. At first I thought the ending was a bit of a confusing, jarring mess, despite the really interesting turn of events. It seemed better after reading it again. I’m still not sure if I was too distracted on my first read or if the end of the story only seems well enough supported when you know what’s going to happen. I’m not really sure if that matters, though. If a story ends up with a big enough “wait, what?!” moment that you immediately want to read the whole thing again, then it’s certainly effective.

My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, edited by P.N. Elrod

This is easily my favorite urban fantasy anthology. Often these types of books frustrate me because they tend to have only one or two really good stories. At best, many anthologies have too much filler, and at worst some authors really don’t seem to give a crap (like when Laurell K. Hamilton used a short story that was actually an excerpt from her next book).

Despite my low expectations for urban fantasy story collections, I had high hopes for My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding. I liked that it had a theme, especially one as interesting as wedding stories. It looked like a good mix of authors I’ve already enjoyed and folks who were new to me, which is always a bonus. Here’s a list of the stories and a few impressions:

• “Spellbound” by L.A. Banks
  In “Spellbound,” the feuding Hatfield and McCoy families use voodoo rather than brute force to fight their battles. The basic idea is very Romeo and Juliet. But thankfully when Odelia Hatfield and Jefferson McCoy decide to marry, they have more support than Shakespeare’s lovers.
• “Something Borrowed” by Jim Butcher
  Dresden Files fans will be happy to see a Harry story set at Billy and Georgia’s wedding. In one of the earlier books in the series, Dresden and the werewolf couple made a powerful enemy who decides it’s time for revenge. But the story should be enjoyable even for readers who haven’t been following the series.
• “Dead Man’s Chest” by Rachel Caine
  This is a supernatural pirate tale, unconnected to Caine’s Weather Wardens series. It was fun enough, but highly predictable and I found Caine’s protagonist pretty annoying. I’m probably being a bit too harsh because pirates have been so overdone in the past couple of years.
• “All Shook Up” by P.N. Elrod
  An Elvis impersonator with an uncanny resemblance to the real thing makes an impression on the caterer of a celebrity wedding. I thought this was the most original story of the lot, and a lot of fun. I liked Elrod’s approach to the wedding theme, by having the hired help as the main characters.
• “The Wedding of Wylda Serene” by Esther M. Friesner
  I love the prose style of this one. It’s about a wedding that’s planned at a country club with an unusual problem. The setup is fantastic, but I have mixed feelings about the resolution because it got a little cheesy.
• “Charmed by the Moon” by Lori Handeland
  An earlier story included a werewolf wedding, but in this setting the werewolves are more monstrous. This story includes characters from Handeland’s Nightcreatures series, but they’re taking a break from hunting shapeshifters to question their motives for getting married. This is one of the most romance-oriented stories in the collection, which means it wasn’t exactly my thing.
• “Tacky” by Charlaine Harris
  This story is set in the same world as the author’s Southern Vampire stories, but doesn’t use the same characters. It’s about an unusual wedding, the thought of this marriage doesn’t really thrill either the bride’s vampire nest or the groom’s werewolf pack. It’s a must-read for any Harris fan, her characters are entertaining as they navigate the awkward social situation. There’s enough action to keep things moving, and the wedding ceremony itself is, uh, to die for. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
• “A Hard Day’s Night-Searcher” by Sherrilyn Kenyon
  This is the other really romance-heavy entry, though there was more excitement than in Handeland’s story. It felt like Kenyon cheated on the theme. There was a wedding scene, but it was hardly central to the plot. The main characters could have just as easily crashed a birthday party or a book club meeting. Not that the supernatural creatures involved struck me as the book club type, but you get the point. The main character jumped from lust to serious life-altering commitment in a disturbingly short amount of time, which always bugs me.
• “…Or Forever Hold Your Peace” by Susan Krinard
  The anthology closes with this supernatural mystery. The alternate history victorian setting was a treat, I was sad to learn that Krinard has only one other short story that uses it. The story starts out with a dramatic interrupted wedding followed by the disappearance of the bride. The main characters are a young man and woman who each have inherited supernatural talents that they put to use helping the groom figure out what happened. There are enough twists to keep everyone guessing. I liked the style of this story a lot, and hope to read a full length novel about the characters in the future.

This collection has really raised the bar for urban fantasy anthologies, which is nice to see. The upcoming Many Bloody Returns is a birthday themed set of stories that looks like it will feature many of the same authors, and My Big, Fat Supernatural Honeymoon has been announced but there’s no release date yet.