Fave Five Anthologies
Jenny Barber
Anthologies are the best gift a fiction fanatic can receive, so if you’re looking for something a bit special to buy this holiday season, check out some of these and treat your friends, treat your family, and most especially, treat yo’self!
Defying Doomsday, edited by Tsana Dolichva & Holly Kench
Defying Doomsday collects together stories about how to survive in the apocalypse if you’re disabled, chronically ill or neuro-divergent. It addresses questions of what to do when the life saving devices have been shut down and your medication has run out, or how you can turn who you are into an advantage in a destroyed world where everything is so much harder to cope with. It’s a simply stunning anthology with a heavy focus on hope, representation, and how people can come together to survive and thrive, and is most definitely a must read.
Chicks in Chainmail, edited by Esther Friesner
This is one of my foundational anthologies and I will gleefully recommend it to anyone who passes within squee-ing distance. It’s the first in a series of very feminist, very funny, comic-fantasy anthologies with similarly punny titles, and is positively overflowing with the love of nerdy things. In this volume, as with the series at large, you’ll find a multitude of stories that wink at how female characters traditionally appear in media-wide SFF, and pushes hard against all the sexist clichés by twisting them around in stories that amuse and amaze.
And for bonus reading fun, check out the Chicks Ahoy box set that includes Chainmail and the next two Chicks in the series!
The Underwater Ballroom Society, edited by Tiffany Trent & Stephanie Burgis
The Underwater Ballroom Society is a fun, and rather wonderful, anthology inspired by the underwater ballroom at Witley Park in Surrey, and has stories that cover fable and fairytale, murder and mystery, the dark and the weird, and the light hearted and fantastic. My particular favourite stories are ‘Twelve Sisters’ by Y.S. Lee, Stephanie Burgis’ ‘Spellswept’, ‘The Queen of Life’ by Ysabeau S. Wilce, Patrick Samphire’s ‘A Spy in the Deep’ and Iona Datt Sharma’s ‘Penhallow Amid Passing Things’ but in all honesty, there’s stories to suit all tastes here so add it to Santa’s list!
She Walks in Shadows, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia & Paula R. Stiles
For those of you who like horror, particularly of the Lovecraftian variety, you’ll want to get your eyeballs around She Walks in Shadows! Shadows takes the Lovecraftian genre and brings you an illustrated volume brimming over with women and their deliciously dark and dangerous tales. There are tales of dread and humour, weirdness and grotesqueries, with cosmic horrors and old gods, dark deals, false faces, and the overwhelming sensation that your reality cannot be trusted. Let these ladies of horror walk you through the shadows!
Glitter and Mayhem, edited by John Klima, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
Glitter and Mayhem makes my urban fantasy loving heart explode with glee as I was forged in the fires of the fantastic intruding on real life; and there is much glee to be had in this anthology. There’s also fun with fairytales, interstellar roller derby, myth and magic, dancing with aliens and clubbing with cryptids, glamour and, yes, glitter and mayhem aplenty. As anthologies go, this is just crammed with unrelenting joy and it’s utterly glorious!