Review: Anthology – Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

3 Stars
Anthology - Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

“The wardens investigated the Greek guy but not the curse?”

Bob

Like many anthologies, I found Naked City to be a mixed bag. Of the twenty short stories, I only liked/loved six. As a result, I would have rated this lower, except those six were well worth slogging through the others to read.

I picked this book up because it had Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs as two of the authors. As expected, their stories were great. The curse on the Chicago Cubs was a fun case for Harry Dresden to work through, with an annoying helping of heaving bosoms along the way. While Thomas Hao and Maggie Flanagan’s story was an interesting side story for the Mercy Thompson universe.

I also enjoyed Delia Sherman’s How the Pooka Came to New York City. It was a fish-out-of-water story that grew on me as it progressed. Naomi Novik’s Priced to Sell was an entertaining look into the life of selling real estate to the supernatural community in New York City. Lavie Tidhar’s The Projected Girl and Melissa Marr’s Guns For the Dead rounded out the stories I liked. 

Unfortunately, there were far more stories that I did not like. I would have rated ten of them one or two stars if I was rating them individually. Some were just boring, but others, like Underbridge by Peter S. Beagle, were downright disturbing. 

I hoped for a better result, but like so many anthologies, there was more that I didn’t like than I did.

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