My 3 favorite stories from this collection would have to be:Traumphysik by Monica Byrne ★★★★★ (5/5)Her Scales Shine Like Music by Rajnar Vajra ★★★★★ (5/5)That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn ★★★★★ (5/5)And the least favorite ones are:Finnegan's Field by Angela Slatter ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)The Great Detective by Delia Sherman ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)Ratings for other stories in the collection are as follows:The Three Lives of S...

For me, Ellen Datlow is one of the finest anthologists around, so it should be no surprise that this is a superb collection of fiction. If there is any surprise at all, it is perhaps that she could only pick from short fiction published by tor.com the previous year, but I think that the quality of the volume says a great deal about the quality of the work on Tor.There's not a single story on here that i would consider poor - the vast majority I scored 4- or 5- stars and, for those I didn't, it w...

Received for free from Tor.com a while back.Clover by Charlie Jane Andrews - 3 starsThe Art of Space Travel by Nina Allen - 3.5 starsThe Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton - 3.5 starsTraumphysik by Monica Byrne - 3.5 starsThe High Lonesome Frontier by Rebecca Campbell - 2.5 starsLullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard - 4 starsA Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark - 4 starsBreaking Water by Indrapramit Das - 4 starsAutobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage by Alex E. Harrow - 3 starsTh...

Favourite things about this collection. (1) None of the stories are one thing. They all have layers. (2) They come from all around the world and show-case a wide range of sensibilities and perspectives.Perfect for me"The Game We Played During the War" by Carrie Vaughn - The war is over. Enjoyable, worked for me"Clover" by Charlie Jane Anders - Anwar and Joe's cats keep being delivered to their door. Interesting fantasy tale woven into a crumbling future."The Art of Space Travel" by Nina Allen -

Probably averaging more like a 2.5, given that there were some stories I just really wasn't into at all and a fair number that felt unresolved. Still, a handful of interesting ones. I just expected more from any kind of "best of" collection.

Clover by Charlie Jane Andrews - **The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allen - **The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton - ***Traumphysik by Monica Byrne - DNFThe High Lonesome Frontier by Rebecca Campbell - DNFLullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard - **A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark - *****Breaking Water by Indrapramit Das - **Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage by Alex E. Harrow - DNFThe City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin - DNFEverything That Isn't Winter by Margaret Killjoy -

Available for free worldwide from 12 AM EST on January 10th to 11:59 PM EST on January 17th, in DRM-free epub or mobi. Just takes an email address.

...Clover by Charlie Jane Anders 3 ☆The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allan 2 ☆The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton 4 ☆Traumphysik by Monica Byrne 3 ☆The High Lonesome Frontier by Rebecca Campbell 4 ☆Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard 4 ☆A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark 5 ☆Breaking Water by Indrapramit Das 3 ☆Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage by Alix E. Harrow 5 ☆The City Born Great by N. K. Jemisin 5 ☆Everything That Isn't Winter by Margaret Killjoy 3 ☆The Weight of

It's not quite true to say that the price (free) is the best thing about this collection, but sometimes it felt like it. With 25 stories to choose from, it's pretty much inevitable that there are going to be misses as well as hits, but for me the scale was way too loaded in favour of the former, with several stories that I'd only give one star to if I was rating them individually: "Traumphysik" by Monica Byrne, "The Caretakers" by David Nickle, "meat + drink" by Daniel Polansky, and "The Great D...

This one has more stories I enjoyed than some of the other anthologies have had. Several I was "meh" about; a couple I just could not see the reason for. "Meat + Drink" was ... ugh; people, there's a reason we use capital letters--this was basically a blur of letters. (Plus, as an old person who read the archy & mehitable poems, I kept picturing the narrator as a cockroach who couldn't hit the shift key and the letter at the same time. I'm fairly certain the author didn't intend the reader to ha...

This anthology is simply an alphabetical-by-author packing together of individually released Tor.com science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories into a single download. The 25 stories included make up over 40% of Tor.com’s story catalog for the year. And according to goodreads, that’s the equivalent of 667 pages. I found the story quality hit or miss, and with no unifying theme or progression to the anthology, but you can’t beat the price – free. Many of these stories are written by past award

One of my favorite things about Tor.com is that they regularly publish original short stories on their site, and then bind up the year's stories in an e-book anthology. This one is from 2016. And like any anthology, the stories are hit or miss with the reader. I'm not a big fan of the horror ones generally, but others may find those to be the best of this bunch. There's a wide enough range of stories that there's something for everyone. These are the ones I know I will come back to again and aga...

As anthologies go, this was a pretty middle ground one as I found most of the stories readable. Some I really liked, others just went completely over my head wit their utter incomprehensible weirdness, and a few I regret spending my time reading because I had to start them to find out what they were about rather than being given a heads-up because...A few are, infuriatingly, related to series/other published works and this isn't made clear anywhere. Also including the blurb for the story before

I'm not even sure I could recommend it enough. Between the true diversity of the authors and the magic they bring to the stories, this is the best free ebook I've ever gotten. If you don't love at least half this book, I'd be shocked.

Reviewing any kind of collection of short stories by a variety of authors is tough, but it is made even more so when the only connecting theme is publisher and year. Tor.com is usually a solid publisher, but they publish plenty of stuff that's not within my interests. That being said, the majority of this volume is great, although it may be that the final two stories are particularly good, so I am left off on a high note.Other standout stories for me include Charlie Jane Anders' "Clover" (althou...

A very satisfying read. It runs the gamut - sci fi, fantasy, horror, alternate history. Some of the short stories are very clever and some of them are very dark. Almost all of them are excellent.This is a well-curated collection with a diverse list of authors. I’ll be reading more from them and more of these anthologies. Well done Tor!

Some Of The Best From Tor.com is a collection of 25 stories, each with a beautifully illustrated cover, published in 2016. I stumbled upon this free KOBO ebook while searching for a book by Caighlan Smith, who has a short story in this anthology. Keep scrolling to see my rating for each story (P.S. quite a few were a 5 star read for me!) “Clover” By Charlie Jane Anders 🌟🌟“The Art of Space Travel” By Nina Allan 🌟🌟🌟“The Destroyer” By Tara Isabella Burton 🌟🌟🌟🌟“Traumphysik” By Monica Byrne 🌟“The Hig...

Magic spells are chains of words, nothing more. Words that help you imagine a different future and create a shape for it, that help you see what it might be like, and so make it happen. ...In honor of the Gaertners’ German heritage, I’ve decided to call my experiment (and the universe it elucidates and its attendant systems) Traumphysik, which sounds more rigorous than “dream-physics.” Everything sounds more rigorous in German....It’s real late. I didn’t have anywhere to sleep for the night, so

Tor.com has been difficult, they never seem to approve my requests on Netgalley. And yet, every so often I come across a tor.com original freebie, which are quite good, so when I found an entire collection of them for free, it was pretty exciting. First of all, this is a huge collection, 667 pages, good thing it's digital or it would have been a real wrist twister. Second of all, it's actually very good. Not perfectly even, few collection are, particularly so voluminous, but it ranges from good

This was a pretty good collection of Tor.com's short fiction - this is the third one of their annual collections I've downloaded (for free, no less, so that's already one thing going for it), and I'd say that I enjoyed this one overall more than the 2015 collection, thought maybe not quite as much as 2014's. Just like last year's, the format of the collection (assorted short stories/novelettes in wildly varying genres organized roughly alphabetically by author) has advantages and drawbacks: the