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    Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales
    Unavailable
    Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales
    Unavailable
    Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales
    Audiobook13 hours

    Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales

    Written by Kelly Link

    Narrated by Amy Rubinate and Nick Podehl

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Predatory kraken that sing with-and for-their kin; band members and betrayed friends who happen to be demonic; harpies as likely to attract as to repel. Welcome to a world where humans live side-by-side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling, to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you'll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these, and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today's top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.

    As in their acclaimed and award-winning anthology Steampunk!, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant have brought together fifteen of the premier voices in speculative fiction to explore the intersection of fear and love-where the monsters within meet, and sometimes blur into, the monsters without-in a haunting, at times hilarious, darkly imaginative volume.

    With stories by:
    M. T. Anderson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Nathan Ballingrud, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Cassandra Clare, Nalo Hopkinson, Dylan Horrocks, Nik Houser, Kathleen Jennings, Alice Sola Kim, Joshua Lewis, Kelly Link, Patrick Ness, and G. Carl Purcell

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 9, 2014
    ISBN9781491502860
    Unavailable
    Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales
    Author

    Kelly Link

    Kelly Link is the author of White Cat, Black Dog; Get in Trouble, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; Magic for Beginners; Stranger Things Happen; and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have been published in The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the co- founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. She is also the co- owner of Book Moon, an independent bookstore in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

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    Reviews for Monstrous Affections

    3.5/5

    63 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I liked some of the stories but not all of them.
    • 4/5
      As with any anthology, it's hard to get an even quality of writing. For this anthology, tone differs widely from story to story, from laugh out loud funny to legitimately creepy. You might not like every story, but there are bound to be one or two that appeal.
    • 4/5
      An interesting collection of short stories. I like how sometimes the monster is not what you typically think a monster would be. As always with short story collections some of the stories are better than others.
    • 4/5
      Mostly Fantastic Stories! I'd say 85% of them had incredibly unique and creative ways of interpreting and integrating their monsters.
    • 1/5
      Well Only notable story was “Moriabe’s Children” by Paolo Bacigalupi. But the rest? forgetting and forgettable.
    • 4/5
      Monsters, mostly pretty monstrous but also, sometimes simultaneously, rescuers from even worse humans. Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands short from Luke’s POV is by far the lightest and brightest, while Patrick Ness’s “everybody has demonic aspects and we are in a band” and Cassandra Clare’s “young girl meets vampire and is of no interest to him” are the next closest. Paolo Bacigalupi (krakens and abusive parents), Holly Black (space monster), Nalo Hopkinson (ghosts), Kelly Link (ghosts), and Alice Sola Kim (something bad), are among the other contributors. The discovery for me was G. Carl Purcell, a grim but inventive dystopia in which the world is poisoned by mercury spirits.
    • 2/5
      I don't know when I'll learn that short story collections by multiple authors just aren't my jam. :-/
    • 4/5
      Kelly Link is a great author - and here she proves she can pick 'em as well as write 'em. There's a YA theme here, but these all-new tales can definitely be enjoyed by all ages (and I'd argue that some aren't particularly 'youth-oriented' at all.) Definitely an above-average collection.

      *****Paolo Bacigalupi—Moriabe’s Children
      A dark and tragic fairytale of an evil stepfather, set on the shores and kraken-infested seas of a northern clime... This is a bit of a departure in style from Bacigalupi's previous work - but I love it just as much if not more, than anything else I've read by him. Powerful, timeless, and relevant.

      *** Cassandra Clare—Old Souls
      This is definitely written as an attempt to partially counterweight the influence of the 'Twilight' saga. I'm 100% in favor of the sentiment. Here we have a girl who is not only sexually active but has had an abortion. The story is not at all judge-y about her - it only comes down against the boyfriend who wasn't there for her and the nasty, gossipy girls at her school. We also have a cute vampire who's over 100 years old - and who is totally uninterested in teenagers. Nope, he's into old folks - who have something in common with him, who share his frame of reference and life experience. Overall, the story does feel a little message-y and teenage-ish... but I'm quite in favor of the messages.

      **** Holly Black—Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)
      A young girl stows away on her uncle's spaceship. But with his latest smuggling commission, he bites off more than he can chew... Space pirates and violent aliens come together in a cute but also exciting tale that's also about growing up, learning to shake off others' preconceptions, and choosing ones own path in life.

      **** M. T. Anderson—Quick Hill
      In an alternate, WWII-era America full of supernatural phenomena, one village has a tradition - the men of one family are 'married to the Hill' in an earth magic ritual believed to protect the community. Don Thwaite, a teen too young to join up with the Armed Forces, is the last heir of this family. But he's reluctant to take up what many see as his duty, as he's been falling in love with a local girl...
      Told in an intentionally simple style which harks back to an era we might think of a simpler time, Anderson presents some very complex issues. Think the dark side of Archie Comics meets The Wicker Man.

      **** Nathan Ballingrud—The Diabolist
      Excellent horror story. When a girl's father, her sole guardian, dies, she ventures down into his laboratory, where he was known to conduct experiments in demonology. There, she encounters the imp which her father trapped while attempting to resurrect his deceased wife.
      The fact that the imp simply behaves according to its nature does not make the way events unfold any less terrifying.

      *** Patrick Ness—This Whole Demoning Thing
      In this world, everyone has a 'demonic' aspect, and people shape-shift between a 'normal' appearance and having horns, tails, claws, etc constantly. However, society seems to be just the same... the story is really a fairly typical high school drama about a girl who deals with a bit of bullying and loves being in a band with her classmates. Designed for a teen (or younger) audience.

      *** Sarah Rees Brennan—Wings in the Morning
      The feel and setting of this one reminded me a bit of Garth Nix's 'Abhorsen' series. A group of young people defend the Border between earth and magical lands, come to terms with their identities, and sort themselves out romantically.

      *** Nalo Hopkinson—Left Foot, Right
      A young woman enters a store to buy a very specific pair of cheap shoes... Clearly, something dire has occurred, but we are not yet sure what... The gradual reveal is well-done, but this would have been rated higher, except for when it gets to the point where, in addition to the death of her sister, the story adds in her miscarriage. Maybe it's just that I'm not much for the ghosts of fetuses, politically, but I really feel that the story would have been stronger if it focused on the single tragedy instead of making it a double. The Caribbean setting and the elements of folklore are vivid and nicely-done.

      ** G. Carl Purcell—The Mercurials
      Post-apocalypse meets horror in this weird tale of a bunch of mentally-handicapped people trying to survive in a wasteland infested with shapeshifting aliens.

      *** Dylan Horrocks—Kitty Capulet and the Invention of Underwater Photography
      A girl travels with her rock-star father to New Zealand, where a music festival is being staged in a rural location. Local Maori are protesting the environmental impact of the annual event. When the main character meets a water elemental whose home is threatened, she gets involved in the controversy. Not bad, but it verges on didactic.

      *** Nik Houser—Son of Abyss
      More teenagers who are demons, and their school/family/romantic dramas. Honestly, for a bit, I almost felt like the anthology should've included either this one OR Ness' 'Demoning Thing,' not both - however, this one works its way up to something much, much darker and more violent.

      Kathleen Jennings—A Small Wild Magic
      No rating; this graphic feature didn't translate well to the Kindle format. Hopefully it'll be remedied in the final version (this is an uncorrected ARC).

      **** Kelly Link—The New Boyfriend
      On the face of it, this story is a bit teenage-y - but Link's trademark weirdness suffuses it. Here we have a group of four high school friends. Ainslie's a bit more indulged by her mother than the rest of them, and has been given not just one but all THREE models of the hottest new 'toy' - realistic robot 'boyfriends.' The models are Vampire, Werewolf, and the latest, hard-to-get version, Ghost. Ainslie's best friend, Immy, is consumed with jealousy - she desperately wants a fake boyfriend of her own. Things get even more complicated when it seems that the 'ghost' boyfriend may be genuinely haunted.

      **** Joshua Lewis—The Woods Hide in Plain Sight
      Yes, it's a story of a teenage girl meeting a seductive vampire - but I really, really liked it. It made a done-to-death theme feel fresh. The scenario is surprisingly believable, the characters relatable (if, when you were a kid you longed to escape to something greater than the town you were stuck in), and the theme of caring and loyalty is nice (believe me, you want friends like these). On top of all that, it's got some really creepy moments, and a kick-ass ending.

      **** Alice Sola Kim—Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying
      Hmm. No, the 'daughters' aren't what's terrifying here; at least not at first. A tight-knit group of girls, all Korean-American adoptees, decide to dabble in dark magic. At first, their late-night ritual doesn't seem to have any effect - but eventually, the fallout from that one night will tear them apart, in more ways than one. A scary story that works on more than one level, with complex insights into the feelings of adopted children - and teenage girls in general. Very, very good.

      Many, many thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. As always, my opinions are unaffected by the source.
    • 3/5
      Review courtesy of All Things Urban FantasyMONSTROUS AFFECTIONS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF BEASTLY TALES was a mixed bag for me with some stories being pretty entertaining and spooky while others fell flat or just outright confused me. Each story involved a twist on a classic monster or monsters who inhabit the world living alongside humans. My favorite was “Wings in the Morning” by Sarah Rees Brennan which was a story about harpies and fairies. I really enjoyed the world building and the humor involved in learning about being a harpy. Holly Black’s “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler” was cute and I liked how the story was told with each ‘chapter’ being one of the ten rules for being an intergalactic smuggler. It was definitely sci-fi and was a story about growing up and forging your own path in life.Some of the other stories were too bizarre, preachy, or confusing. There were a lot of messages pushed like abortion and suicide that after reading one story about a heavy topic in an anthology I get hit with yet another heavy one right away. Luckily there were enough light stories that didn’t make me want to go watch ‘My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic’ to feel happiness again.MONSTROUS AFFECTIONS is an interesting compilation of fairy tales with unique takes on classic monsters and tales. While some of them I couldn’t get into due to their topics or morbidity there were some that were entertaining and very creatively written stories.
    • 5/5
      Had a blast with this and met some new literary friends. Anyone interested in overturning, inside-outing, or otherwise disassembling and re-forming your ideas about monsters should give this a try. No idea why this was marketed only to the young adult market when it was released, but in doing so they gave it a beautiful cover and a nice, heavy textbook format so I can't complain. Makes the reading experience even more magical. Curl up with some milk and cookies--or absinthe and candied ants, maybe--by the fire and prepare for the Link/Grant version of story time.

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