The Curiosities: A collection of stories

"The Curiosities:  a collection of stories"  a, well, collection of stories, all by either Brenna Yovanoff, Tessa Gratton, or Maggie Stiefvater.
      Psychopaths with piano wire, dragon slayers with one night left to live, puddles that contain secrets or puddles that contain the zombie virus, silver boxes that hold hearts and the key to living . . . Maggie Stiefvater, Brenna Yovanoff, and Tessa Gratton explore the "playground" (more of an, uh, insane asylum) of their minds with short stories posted to their blogs.  Each author makes comments on the side margins of one another's work, providing extra insight to each of the wonderfully twisted stories, which are works of art themselves.  Whether you're reading about delightful zombies, Nordic beserkers, or a world on fire, the worlds they exist in are both perfectly exquisite, and wonderfully alien.

This is, hands down, the best anthology ever.  Better than that "Steampunk" one, and you know how I prattled on about that.  And this one had hardly a wit of identifiable steampunk in it.
      I have recently discovered, within me, a passion for stories that end unhappily.  I discovered it before I read this book.  But, anyway, if you do not like unhappy endings, do not read further.  Never look for the book on the shelves.  The stories are realistic, to some degree, and not every tale has a happy ending with glitter and butterflies.  Sometimes people have to cut out their hearts. And this makes me happy.
      Each of the stories is something vastly different, if ever the same.  Nearly all of the stories revolve around a teenage girl heroine, who has to overcome some ordeal.  Sometimes she gets slaughtered, sometimes she succeeds in her task, and sometimes you're left standing on a barbed wire fence, an eye on both possibilities.          
      The characters or settings may not be very deep or well-developed characters, but that's only because the stories are brief clips. I can deal with that when the stories are as haunting as they are here, though with every character you want to know more about them. Where did they come from?  Who are they really?  Where are they going?  What are they trying to tell you?  Reading this book is like looking through a picture album, each picture from a different place, telling a different story.
       Maggie Steifvater wrote the "Shiver" series (a bunch of romantic claptrap), don't ask me what the series is really called.  She also wrote "The Scorpio Races," which looks to be infinitely better.   Brenna Yovanoff wrote the amazing "The Replacement" and the equally dazzling "The Space Between."  I've never read anything by Tessa Gratton, but her main focus seems to be with the Nordic Gods, which is always good.
       I can't really do much more analyzing, unless I want to basically tell you what half the stories are.  I can tell you, though, that you have to READ THIS BOOK.  If you don't, there's not telling you what horrible fate you might come to, whether it be death by piano wire or lack of good literature.
   
The idea for this book started on  www.merryfates.com   All of the stories are posted here, as well as some extra ones, if you don't want to get off your computer and go to the library.