Books by Carrie Vaughn, Reviewed on Bite-Size Book Reviews

Dangerous Women

by Brandon Sanderson, Caroline Spector, Carrie Vaughn, Cecelia Holland, Diana Gabaldon, Diana Rowland, Gardner Dozois, George R. R. Martin, Jim Butcher, Joe Abercrombie, Joe R. Lansdale, Lawrence Block, Lev Grossman, Megan Abbott, Megan Lindholm, Melinda Snodgrass, Nancy Kress, Pat Cadigan, S. M. Stirling, Sam Sykes, Sharon Kay Penman & Sherrilyn Kenyon

A collection of short stories about women, selected by two men, George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. I had my doubts going in.

Most of the stories in this book are fantasy or fantasy-adjacent. About half are good, with a few standouts. I thought Sharon Kay Penman’s “A Queen in Exile” and Lev Grossman’s “The Girl in the Mirror” were excellent. Brandon Sanderson’s “Shadows For Silence in the Forests of Hell,” Nancy Kress’s “Second Arabesque, Very Slowly,” and George R. R. Martin’s novella, “The Princess and the Queen,” were very good.

The other half save one were forgettable. That one, “I Know How to Pick ‘Em,” by Lawrence Block, was memorably awful. I will spare you the details but it is a gratuitously disturbing pornographic story I wish I hadn’t read. If you find yourself reading this collection I would advise you to skip it.

Block’s odious story was almost enough to get me to quit reading entirely, but I didn’t and good thing, because most of the good stories came right after that one.

The Wild Dead

by Carrie Vaughn

While Enid is investigating a minor dispute over an aging building at the end of the Coast Road, the corpse of an outsider turns up in the marshland. All Enid can do is keep asking questions, even if nobody seems to want to know the answers.

I’m really enjoying this series!

Bannerless

by Carrie Vaughn

A post-apocalyptic murder mystery. Decades after economic and environmental collapse, a string of modest communities on the West Coast are committed to sustainability and avoiding the mistakes of the past. Only those households that have demonstrated their value to the community earn a banner—the right to have a child. This book considers what crime and punishment would look like in such a setting.

Vaughn’s optimistic take on post-apocalyptic storytelling sucked me right in. I loved Enid the Investigator and thinking about what justice would have to look like in such a setting. One of the better books I read this year.