A collection of vampire tales includes Charlaine Harris's heroine Sookie Stackhouse in "Dracula's Night," Jim Butcher's wizard hero Harry Dresden in "It's My Birthday Too," and other stories by Tanya Huff, P.N. Elrod, Christopher Golden, and Bill Crider.
Many Bloody Returns is an anthology of short stories that have two common themes - vampires and birthdays. It contains stories by authors of popular vampire series, such as Jim Butcher, Kelley Armstrong, Tanya Huff, and Charlaine Harris. Some of the contributing authors are ones I've never heard of, and I have already added their novels to my 'to-read' list. The biggest treat for me was Christopher Golden's story; it was so neat seeing his name included among such accomplished genre authors.
Any short story collection put together by so many voices always risks being uneven in terms of quality, but MBR really only had one stinker - "Vampire Hours" by Elaine Viets. It was so juvenile and trite that I was embarrassed to be reading it, but it only takes up 25 out of the book's 355 pages.
It's perfect for finding new authors in the vampire genre and enjoying old favorites. I really enjoyed seeing how each author tied birthdays into the stories, since some were pretty creative.
Reading updates
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1 December, 2007:
Finished reading
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1 December, 2007:
Reviewed