Title: Street Spells: Seven Urban Fantasy Shorts
Author: Various (see back cover)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Trigger Warnings: See review
Back Cover:
Magic stalks modern streets.
Werewolves and witches. Demons and elves. Street Spells compiles seven new and exclusive short stories featuring mythical beings hidden in plain sight.
Aimee Easterling: “Scapegoat”
Tori Centanni: “Dead Goblins and Overdue Rent”
Rachel Medhurst: “Magically Hidden”
Dale Ivan Smith: “Siloed”
Becca Andre: “Alchemy and Destiny”
N. R. Hairston: “Dirty Magic”
Kat Cotton: “Run Away”
Break out of jail, hunt down magical art thieves, and dabble in alchemy as you discover a new author (or seven) in this page-turning collection of paranormal shorts.
Review:
This book is a mixed bag – three of these stories I really liked, and three of them I didn’t even finish. Literally the only thing these stories share is genre, and since my opinions on them vary greatly, I’m going to tackle them all individually.
“Scapegoat” by Aimee Easterling
Trigger warnings: Attempted sexual assault, mild whorephobia
I did not finish this one. It’s one of the longer ones and I didn’t get very far into it. It started with a nineteen-year-old stripper getting almost assaulted on her way home, then she gets saved by a werewolf who turns into a guy that she knew from the strip club, who then asks her to leave town with his pack … because he wants her to be his mate or something? It was like the cringiest werewolf romance ever in the first five pages and I just skipped ahead to the next story.
“Dead Goblins and Overdue Rent” by Tori Centanni
Trigger warnings: Death, blood, zombies
This was one of my favorites. It had the urban fantasy idea of a character with powers navigating a supernatural world while still trying to do ordinary things like make rent. The story was creative, the mystery aspect was good, and I just love characters that win because the antagonist didn’t know they had some sort of ridiculously strong power. The story was left weirdly unresolved, which is my only criticism, but I enjoyed this one.
“Magically Hidden” by Rachel Medhurst
Trigger warnings: Guns
Another longer one, and another one I didn’t finish. The concept was actually interesting – two agents from “Magical MI5” are trying to prevent a museum robbery, and they think they succeeded until they realize they were outwitted. But I couldn’t stand the “romance” between the two main characters, which mostly consisted of the narrator lusting after her partner. I gave up at the line “Mr. Hunky Pants – that’s short for Gerard -” The only thing the narrator seemed to care about was getting in her partner’s pants and I couldn’t tolerate it even to figure out what happened during the museum robbery.
“Siloed” by Dale Ivan Smith
Trigger warnings: Magical torture, blood, death
Another favorite. A very creative story about a guard at a prison for supernatural criminals who gets caught up in a betrayal and escape plan. The world (or at least, the tiny part of the world that was the supernatural prison) was well-developed for as short as the story was, the main character was sympathetic, and the plot is really good, including unexpected enemies and an unexpected ally. I was impressed with how much the story managed to do while still being fairly short.
“Alchemy and Destiny” by Becca Andre
Trigger warnings: None as far as I read
This one I didn’t finish, but I think that might just be me, since it wasn’t a content issue at all. The story started okay, if bland – one brother in a family of Hunters being picked on by his other brothers because he’s more skilled than them. I stopped reading because the way the characters and story were written was something I would expect to see in something I wrote when I was 13. The style was more like my middle school fanfiction than anything I would expect to see published, and I didn’t enjoy it.
“Dirty Magic” by N.R. Hairston
Trigger warnings: Violence, blood, death, organized crime
This is another one that I really enjoyed. It’s one of the longer ones (I think the longest), and deserved the page time. The main character has the ability to open portals between worlds, and uses that ability to hide criminals on the run (who pay her well) and victims of violence (which she does pro bono). When one of the victims she hid goes missing again, she sets out to find and rescue the woman. The setting is great, with several interesting worlds, and I really liked the main character. There’s also something bigger going on than just one missing woman, and overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable story.
“Run Away” by Kat Cotton
Trigger warnings: Homelessness
I am not really sure how I feel about this story, and I think part of that is because it was so short. The main character is a homeless minor (15 I think) who gets chased by some sort of red-eyed shadow entity. She randomly bumps into this adult man who takes her home, feeds her, and helps her deal with the demonic thing. I just couldn’t get over how weird it was for this adult man to take this minor girl home, and even though nothing happened, it still made me super uncomfortable. The story never tells you anything about this man. Why is his house a safe place from the shadow thing? How does he know how to help the main character deal with it? You never find out anything about him besides his name. He’s just … there, with no answers, and it left me unsure how comfortable I really was with the whole situation.
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