My life in books

Battle Magic, Martin H Greenberg and Larry Segriff (eds.)

I bought this anthology because it contains Michelle West’s short story “Warlord” set in the same universe as her Sacred Hunt duology and Broken Crown series, and being the story of how a key character in that series ends up in the crucial place in which he is found, I wanted to read it becasue, well, I can be obsessive like that.

There are other cool stories about magic as a method of combat or a weapon in warfare here, too, from Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s unique take on the Sleeping Beauty fairytale, “The Strangeness of the Day,” to John DeChancie’s truly funny “BattleMagic(TM) for Morons,” to Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s retelling of the cursing of the men of Ulster, “the Fatal Wager,” to Charles De Lint’s intriguing variation on the theme of the infernal musical contest, “Ten for the Devil” – with lots of other interesting tales in between.