Wizard's Row

3.5 stars, stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
In the city of Liavek, everyone has birth luck, but magicians can bind it during their birthday and use it during the year. Those who fail, die. The third in a shared-world fantasy anthology series.

Review
The title suggests a book primarily about one of Liavek's most amusing features: the street of wizards that's sometimes there and sometimes not. And of course, the street does feature in the stories (as does The Magician), but I wouldn't say that's really at the center. And this volume does continue the previous installation's somewhat downward trend. Rather than a dozen stories, here there are just a handful of longer ones – whether because the authors were running out of steam or because they gathered the long pieces that wouldn't fit in earlier volumes. I found the result more tiring and less enthralling than previous books.

With one exception, the writing is still of a good quality, but the stories feel like they run far longer than they needed to. I didn't pick up the book each time with the level of enthusiasm I'd expect for Liavek. I found Alan Moore's entry, “A Hypothetical Lizard”, particularly trying and had to make my way through by brute force.

Overall, the book felt as if the project were running out of steam. Still fun, but no longer quite so exciting. If you've enjoyed Liavek so far, get this one too. If you're new to it, you can read this out of sequence, but you're better of starting with the first book.