I usually anticipate that 20-25% of a short-story collection will not be to my liking. So I was pleased to find only 1 story here that I just skipped over. ( )

Don't know

Just could not get into these stories. I could not really say why. Maybe just too much of the mundane in a book of the fantastic. ( )

Read for Science/Nature Challenge.
This is a collection of stories (mostly) and poems, written for the theme. The quality & interest vary. I found only one unreadable and several quite good. I noted these names: Delia Sherman, Michael Cadnum, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and Emma Bull.

This was somewhat of a disappointment for a fan of this editing team and their previous anthologies. Admittedly, I did not realize that this one was categorized as YA until after I bought the book, so it was immediately at a disadvantage with me.

The first story was definitely starting out on the wrong foot. Although I enjoyed Delia Sherman's adult fantasy, [b:The Porcelain Dove|19998|The Porcelain Dove|Delia Sherman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1167291004s/19998.jpg|21197], this urban fantasy tale never bridged the gap of disbelief for me. I know Central Park quite well, have explored the wilds of it, watched the sun set from the rocks at the south end of the park, roamed the Sheep Meadow, circled the Reservoir, and let me tell you, real nature is kept to a bare minimum and no spirits of nature would ever roam that acreage. I know the difference because I grew up in a place with plenty of wilderness all around me......real wilderness, with real spirits of nature.

The others were pretty good; but I was disappointed when I got to the Patricia McKillip story that I had been looking forward to and realized that I had already read it.

Overall, it was okay. ( )

As with most short story anthologies I’ve read, I liked almost but not quite all the stories. There are a few that didn’t jive with me, that either felt rushed or had messages that didn’t sit well with me or were told in a style that was hard to follow, but overall, I liked this. The stories were certainly inventive, which is mostly what I read it for. I suspect only a couple of the stories will stay with me in any meaningful way, though. That’s par for the course with most anthologies too.

7/10 ( )