#81 Powers of Detection: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy edited by Dana Stabenow

My Rating: 8 out of 10 stars
Some of the stories in this book were really good, while others I didn’t really like at all.

Cold Spell by Donna Andrews
A cute and interesting story involving wizards, mages, and magic. And the quest to discover a strange murder. Like Donna Andrews other books, I enjoyed this story a lot.

The Nightside, Needless to Say by Simon R. Green
Green has penned an entire series involving the Nightside, and I’m anxious to read it after reading this short story. This story involves a P.I. named Larry Oblivion whose been murdered, but due to a magic wand obtained from the Unseelie Court, is able to stop time, and thus, take a time out before passing on to try to find out who murdered him.

Lovely by John Straley
A strange story about a raven named Gunk looking for a “dead thing” to eat. A strange story, but amusing nonetheless.

The Price by Anne Bishop
A great story by Anne Bishop set in the same stage as her Blood Trilogy, where women represent power and men are meant to serve them. Unfortunately, an angry witch full of hatred has her own ideas…

Fairy Dust by Charlaine Harris
A little bit weaker than the previous stories but a good read nonetheless. Sookie Stackhouse, of Harris’ Southern Vampire fame, uses her telepathic gift to discern the true killer of Claudine’s twin sister, part of a fairy triplet.

The Judgement by Anne Perry
A strange story… I didn’t really get it. It was still interesting, but I’m sure I would’ve gotten a lot more out of it if I understood the deeper meaning which escaped me. I also didn’t care for the bible-thumping piousness of some of the characters who tried to accuse of Witchcraft.

The Sorcerer’s Assassin by Sharon Shinn
Another story that takes place in a school with mages and wizards. Someone is killing off the 6 most powerful, one-by-one, and the remaining are fighting time to discover who’s the guilty party before they’re next.

The Boy Who Chased Seagulls by Michael Armstrong
Stupid story… I didn’t like this one at all. It was about an old man who had a story about… you guessed it, a boy who chased seagulls, and he used this story to scare a little boy. So what?

Palimpsest by Laura Anne Gilman
I hadn’t yet read anything by this author at the time I read this story, though I do have two of her books, Staying Dead and Curse the Dark, on my TBR pile. I had mixed feelings about this story. I felt it had a lot of potential, but it fell flat in some areas and left me wanting more. So now I’m looking forward to seeing what she can do with a full-length book, where the characters and story can be a bit more fleshed out.

The Death of Clickclickwhistle by Mike Doogan
Stupid story… I didn’t like it at all. It was more of a sci-fi story than a mystery, although there supposedly was a murder they were trying to solve. But I thought all the characters were idiots and the story bored me to tears.

Cairene Dawn by Jay Caselberg
Another story that I believe had a deeper meaning than I could grasp. Sure, I got the whole reference to the Egyptian pantheon, Isis, Osiris, his brother Set, and son Horus, but I believe there was something else going on here, eluded to by the last paragraph of the story which is “Do you know what a jackal sounds like in the fog of a Cairo dawn?” I was like… huh??

Justice is a Two-Edged Sword by Dana Stabenow
This story started off kind of slow and I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d like it. But things picked up and got interesting about half way through and I found I enjoyed this story as much as some of my other favorites from this book.

See the BookCrossing journal page for this book for more links and information. See more progress on: In 2005 read 100 books.