This is a collection of short stories and novelettes published in 1999. The title story is taken from an anthology of stories set in Andre Norton's "Witchworld" and references events in Norton's Year of the Unicorn. I found it a bit predictable and derivative. Four stories centre around a space cat in a future where cats have been engineered to be more intelligent, to be loyal to a handler and given paws more like a racoon's so as to be able to manipulate objects. They are probably nice stories for cat lovers, but I found a few implausible aspects which made it hard to suspend my disbelief such as, if these cats are so valuable that they are leased by the company which creates them, why would they allow kittens to be sold off by the leasees without at least having a financial interest in them? And the premise introduced in the first story, that a newly contacted alien race has been beset for their whole history by a parasitical insectoid species with no natural predator, for me pulled the rug out from under all four stories - the parasites are native to the planet and the intelligent bipeds they beset have not wiped out their natural predator, parasite or disease, so the idea that nothing has evolved to put any curb on their numbers was too incredible. I couldn't believe that there could be a creature which nothing would have used as a food source, especially if the parasites were as plentiful as suggested. It also didn't help that there were a number of changed premises and/or continuity errors between stories, such as a character changing their mind about going back to space when they had been keen to do so, between story 2 and 3 - this was eventually handled by there being a job incentive mentioned in story 4 - and the alien city being spotlessly clean because the bipeds keep it so to try to deprive the parasites of food sources - but then by the end of the sequence it is the parasites themselves who keep the place clean. Small points, but when the stories are read back to back they stand out and 'niggle'.

Having said all that, the stories in the collection do, by and large, improve in the second half. Although there is a huge backstory/info dump in 'Operation Desert Fox', the idea of an intelligent AI-controlled tank and its relationship with its unusual driver, based on their mutual love of the history of WWII German General Rommel, was engaging. 'Satanic, Versus' was a nicely light-hearted romp about a witch who is also a crack shot and her vampire sidekick, attending a Halloweed party as Mrs Peel and Steed from the (British show) "The Avengers". 'Stolen Silver' was a rare Valdemar short story, set in Karse - I think a whole novel could have been developed around that idea and lead character. And the last two stories, 'Grey' and 'Grey's Ghost', set in Victorian London, featured a working class East End girl called Nan, and her friendship with the daughter of African missionaries, the said daughter staying at an unusual school. The background of Indian colonial influences and, in the second story, fraudulent mediums, was engaging and the stories were well written and had some good character development, especially of Nan. So these better stories brought up the level of the collection as a whole and it balances out at a respectable 3 stars. ( )

This is a collection of short fantasy, science-fiction and urban fantasy stories by Mercedes Lackey. The stories are generally entertaining, quick to read and "fluffy". My favourite stories included those with a protective, homicidal Teddybear; a genetically enhanced, telepathic spaceship cat; an AI with a personality; the story titled "roadkill"; and the two stories involving the girls and the parrot. The author does tend to "info-dump" a bit too much. This is especially evident with the 4 'SKitty stories, where the plot of the previous story is explained in the current story. This might be useful if you haven't read the previous stories, or there are years between publications, but in this book the 'SKitty stories all follow each other, and the info-dump gets annoying. Still, each story makes for a fun and relaxing read before bedtime. ( )

Werehunter is an anthology of fourteen science fiction and fantasy short stories by Mercedes Lackey. I’ve read some of her fantasy work before, and I thought this anthology was a pretty good reflection of both the good and the bad aspects of her writing style.

Four of the stories in the book were “SKitty” stories. This was a really fun premise. It’s a science fiction setting, where it’s common for starships to have a genetically engineered cat on board. The cats have front paws like raccoons, and they’re more intelligent. SKitty is unusual in that she's able to communicate telepathically with her human handler, whom she’s quite attached to. The stories were very fluffy, in more ways than one, but it was fun to read about intelligent cats.

Although I really enjoyed the Skitty stories, I became increasingly exasperated by them. My limited experience with Lackey’s books is that she tends to go overboard with the recapping. She gives more info than is needed to understand the newest story, and she tends to dump it out all at once in an unnatural way. This is annoying enough in a full-length book, but I think nearly half of the fourth SKitty story consisted of a recap of the previous three stories.

There were a couple short stories based on Lackey’s Diana Tregarde series, which I wasn’t familiar with. Maybe the books are better but, in the short stories, I thought the characters were too melodramatic. One story didn’t interest me at all, and the other story interested me but I was annoyed by the characters.

The last two stories were about two young girls, one of whom begged for food on the streets of London and the other of whom was the daughter of missionaries to Africa and was living in a school in London. The daughter of the missionaries had an intelligent pet parrot given to her by a shaman in Africa, and that parrot served as her protector. All three of them, the two girls and the parrot, had some special abilities. The stories were interesting and fun to read, but the second story had particularly bad editing. The poor parrot kept changing genders left and right, often within the same sentence. There were also some sentences that made such abundant use of female pronouns in relation to all three characters that you had to use your best judgment to figure out who had done what.

Most of the other short stories were fairly entertaining. There was one called “Roadkill” that was slightly creepy and amusing at the same time. There was a story set in Laumer’s Bolo universe that started off boring but got interesting by the end. Over-all, this anthology was a quick, fluffy, and mostly-entertaining read, but with several annoyances. ( )

This collection is entirely worth it for the SKitty stories, as far as I'm concerned. The rest of them are uneven at best (although the Diane Tregarde story is irreverant and funny) but telepathic cats! In space! ( )

Love the Skitty stories, did this ever get made into a series? (Google just comes back with pokemon references) ( )