Unnatural Creatures: Stories Selected by Neil Gaiman

This collection, curated by my hero of heroes, Neil Gaiman, is extremely diverse and a lovely romp through the decades of fantastic beasts. It contains some of my favorites recollected (Come Lady Death and Sunbird), some authors I love whose works I'd never read (Larry Niven, Diana Wynne Jones), and a bunch of new people about whom I know want to know much more (Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor). My favorites were probably Jones' “The Sage of Theare” and Hopkinson's “The Smile on the Face.” The styles are diverse in content, culture, and style, so the reader never really has a chance to get bored. My only disappointment was that Neil's contribution was “Sunbird,” which is a great story but one I seem to own in so many collections already. Ah well.

The stories are mostly G rated with a couple that get a little darker and towards the YA end of the age spectrum (The Smile on the Face definitely fits in there), but for the most part I think this is enjoyable by lovers of magical creatures of all ages.

You know, sometimes it's just really, really nice to read a collection of short stories where you don't have to commit yourself to reading a book.

And this was a wonderful collection of short stories.

One of the best things about reading this was the fact that I was exposed to many new authors, and I've checked out some of their books. I'd read stories by Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman before, but I hadn't read many of the other author's works.

As with all collections of short stories, there were some that I loved and others that I did not love as much. I loved Sunbird by Neil Gaiman and Ozioma the Wicked by Nnedi Okorafor among others. I wasn't a huge fan of The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu, however.

Overall, I thought it was a fantastic collection of short stories that I'd recommend to anyone who doesn't want to commit to a full-fledged novel at the moment.