2011 Books 14

 14) Liavek vol 3 - Wizard Row edited by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull. I don't have a copy of volume 2, which is apparently quite hard to find, but I did get volume 3 for Christmas. It was, well, spotty. Another cluster of stories about teenagers having problems investing their luck for the first time, which was getting old as a trope by the end of Volume 1, did not inspire me. One of those stories was cute, one was saved by the presence of the series plot arc, but by and large the idea is really the most obvious one in the setting, and therefore quickly overused. There's an Alan Moore story about a bordello of oddities where the end of the plot is a little predictable but his lyrical writing style counts for a lot, and there's a wonderful John M Ford story about, well, it's hard to describe but it's really good. The series is really saved by the creativity of the plot arc, which isn't about a war between the gods or massive royal house politics and betrayal but instead something as practical as the building of a railroad line to the city. Such a simple idea, but it sets the series off from your usual fantasy much more than the luck/magic rules. I'm not sure about trying to buy more (especially since I have the Gene Wolfe and John M Ford stories in other places). Does someone have copies I can borrow?