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A review by aceinit
Carniepunk by Jackie Kessler, Hillary Jacques, Nicole D. Peeler, Jennifer Estep, Allison Pang, Kelly Gay, Kevin Hearne, Rob Thurman, Rachel Caine, Delilah S. Dawson, Seanan McGuire, Kelly Meding, Jaye Wells, Mark Henry
2.0
This book is such a disappointment on so many levels. Carnivals! The supernatural! A long list of authors that I’ve heard of and wanted to read but never actually read! It’s supposed to be…you know….cool. But after the first two or three stories, the tales bleed into one another and an unavoidable sameness rears its ugly head. Oooh, something is amiss at the funhouse. Ooooh, the carnival is evil and out for your soul. Oooh, scary clowns. Let’s send a badass chick (or, like, this one dude with a sarcastic talking dog) in to deal with these shenanigans, pronto!
With two stories left to read, I can pretty safely say “That’s it. That’s the anthology.”
Sadly, there is so far only one author whose works I want to look up as a result of her entry here. And from the looks of things, those books are less about a traveling band and violin-playing contests against agents of Satan as they are about hot!steamy!paranormal!sex.
Which is one offshoot of urban fantasy I absolutely cannot stand to read, because there’s only so many ways a vampire or werewolf can smolder before it just starts sounding cheesy.
Sadly, nothing else has made me want to look up the authors to see what else they've created, or further explore their works. It is one of the few collections I've read that's had the exact opposite effect: I pulled up my to-read list and deleted an entry here and there.
I was never really blown away by Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, (an inevitable comparison, since it's a recent, best-selling novel set around the idea of a traveling circus), but there was a beautiful, haunting imagery to her work that’s stayed with me since its release, a uniqueness of creation that I found myself missing sorely in this anthology. Her traveling circus was an elegant, visually stunning experience unlike any I had ever read about before, whereas almost everything Carniepunk has to offer is the same old run-down, leering-carny, rides-of-questionable-safety, rigged-game traveling carnival that we’ve already read about before (and will read about again in this anthology...and again...and again...and again).
There are only one or two stories that make themselves the exception to this familiar setting, and about as many that don’t feature the theme of “outsider to the carnival has to investigate some Weird Supernatural Thing and saves the day.” There are so many different ways the carnival setting could have been played with or incorporated. So many different whens. The complete and utter lack of imagination in what is supposed to be the backbone of this anthology was profoundly disappointing.
EDIT: I have finished the novel, and the only truly noteworthy story, and one few entries to veer from the "carnival as seen from a visitor's viewpoint" gimmick was Seanan MacGuire's entry, "Daughter of the Midway, the Mermaid..." *This* was the kind of story I dove into Carniepunk hoping to find. Unfortunately, it is the closing story.
With two stories left to read, I can pretty safely say “That’s it. That’s the anthology.”
Sadly, there is so far only one author whose works I want to look up as a result of her entry here. And from the looks of things, those books are less about a traveling band and violin-playing contests against agents of Satan as they are about hot!steamy!paranormal!sex.
Which is one offshoot of urban fantasy I absolutely cannot stand to read, because there’s only so many ways a vampire or werewolf can smolder before it just starts sounding cheesy.
Sadly, nothing else has made me want to look up the authors to see what else they've created, or further explore their works. It is one of the few collections I've read that's had the exact opposite effect: I pulled up my to-read list and deleted an entry here and there.
I was never really blown away by Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, (an inevitable comparison, since it's a recent, best-selling novel set around the idea of a traveling circus), but there was a beautiful, haunting imagery to her work that’s stayed with me since its release, a uniqueness of creation that I found myself missing sorely in this anthology. Her traveling circus was an elegant, visually stunning experience unlike any I had ever read about before, whereas almost everything Carniepunk has to offer is the same old run-down, leering-carny, rides-of-questionable-safety, rigged-game traveling carnival that we’ve already read about before (and will read about again in this anthology...and again...and again...and again).
There are only one or two stories that make themselves the exception to this familiar setting, and about as many that don’t feature the theme of “outsider to the carnival has to investigate some Weird Supernatural Thing and saves the day.” There are so many different ways the carnival setting could have been played with or incorporated. So many different whens. The complete and utter lack of imagination in what is supposed to be the backbone of this anthology was profoundly disappointing.
EDIT: I have finished the novel, and the only truly noteworthy story, and one few entries to veer from the "carnival as seen from a visitor's viewpoint" gimmick was Seanan MacGuire's entry, "Daughter of the Midway, the Mermaid..." *This* was the kind of story I dove into Carniepunk hoping to find. Unfortunately, it is the closing story.