Friday 10 December 2010

Eternal edited by P.C. Cast

Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite, is a YA anthology containing 6 new stories from 6 great authors. Here's a quick run down and short reviews for each of them in order.

1. Bloodshed by Claudia Gray - rating: 7/10
A short story about Patrice, from her Evernight series, in war times. I really liked this, nice chance to get to know Patrice a little better. (You don't need to have read any of the Evernight books to enjoy this short)

2. Say Yes by Lili St. Crow - rating: 7/10
A dark, kind of creepy short about a girl who becomes obsessed with the guy she believes killed her best friend. I liked it.

3. Letters to Romeo by Nancy Holder - rating: 5/10
A weird retelling of Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo is a vampire who's waited hundreds of years to find Juliet again. A decent enough story, but not really to my tastes, didn't enjoy it very much.

4. The Other Side by Heather Brewer - rating: 8/10
Great short story about a girl and her boyfriend who wake up to discover they've been kidnapped and are chained up in a basement. Loved this one! Nice twists to it.

5. Drama Queen's Last Dance by Rachel Caine - rating: 8/10
A short story set in Rachel's Morganville Vampires series, post Ghost Town [book #9] I think, told from Eve's POV. If you follow my reviews you'll know I read Ghost Town recently and was not too happy with the Morganville world. Wouldn't ya know that I then went and loved this short? *shakes head* Very good Morganville short. I do love being in Eve's head, she's much easier to take that way. You probably do need to have read at least some Morganville and know the set up to get everything from this short, but hopefully it would be a reasonable intro to the world for new comers as well.

6. Thief by Jeri Smith-Ready - rating: 9/10
Beautiful short that very nearly had me in tears (rare for something so short about all new characters!). It's about a gypsy girl who's trapped between her dreams and what's expected of her. I loved everything about this really, but I wanted more!! Fantastic short though, loved how vampires fitted in to this one.

Overall this is a pretty good anthology. I loved 3 of the stories and the other 3 were fairly good or better. I didn't really dislike any of them, and they're all worth reading. This is a good anthology and worth buying, I suspect in particular for Morganville fans who will love the short short about Eve and Michael. I love the different mixes of vampire lore and worlds found in the book. For once I've already read all the authors present in this anthology, but if I hadn't, I know I'd certainly be checking out Jeri Smith-Ready and Heather Brewer's backlists at the very least, and likely the rest as well.

Overall Rating: 7/10

1 comment:

Avery said...

I am typically not one for anthologies (unless they come from the fantabulous Kelley Armstrong)... But I might just have to check this book out- a lot of authors I really like have contributed to it... thanks for the great review!