Pretty Monsters: StoriesPretty Monsters: Stories by Kelly Link

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A collection of nine short stories with a sort of urban fantasy/horror theme, although low key theme horror rather than scare you into changing your pants horror. What they do is make you think about things. Almost all of the stories could be very normal, with a slightly mentally off kilter protagonist, or there could be something else there that you cannot quite see. A couple are straight fantasy, the Wizards of Perfil, being a good fantasy story about wizards that buy children for a nefarious hidden purpose.

All of the stories are well crafted, and they all have a good premise that is well executed. I didn’t feel that any of them were there just to make up the numbers. There was a level of variety about them too, while all slightly other-worldly and on either a fantasy or horror theme, each story was distinct and pursued a different idea.

This was a semi-random purchase for me, I picked it up from an amazon recommendation on a page I was looking at for something else. I enjoyed it as a refreshing introduction to a new author.

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