I picked up this book solely to read "Curses" by Jim Butcher.Wizard Harry Dresden is hired to life a curse that stops the Chicago Cubs from winning the world series. Harry must figure out who made the curse and how it is still in effect after several decades.I'm a huge fan of The Dresden Files, but I found this story just "OK". Thirty pages is way too short to really get into a good story. My rating: 3 Stars.

I think I would have been happier about this book as a whole if the subtitle had been: tales of urban fantasy and horror. Because really, that's what it is.I did enjoy a handful of the stories (those I liked most are in bold), but there were also quite a few that didn't work for me at all. Quick synopses/impressions below:Curses / Jim ButcherIn which Harry ogles a well-mammaried faerie, gets beat up a shocking zero times and investigates a curse placed on the Chicago Cubs in 1945.How the Pooka C...

An anthology of 20 urban fantasies in a variety of cities.
Series:"Curses" (The Dresden Files, 10.7)"Duke of Riverside" (The World of Riverside, 1.6 before and after Swordspoint, #1)"Guns for the Dead" (Graveminder, 1.6)"Fairy Gifts" (Mercyverse, 0.7)The StoriesJim Butcher's "Curses" is a funny tale of baseball, the Cubs, and Wrigley Field when Harry is hired to lift the curse preventing the Cubs from winning the World Series. Any World Series. Delia Sherman's "How the Pooka Came to New York Cit...

Premise: Urban fantasy tales that focus on the importance of a particular city, making the city a vital part of each tale.My brain is kind of fried after reading this one. It took a LONG time to finish, longer than I really anticipated. Some of the stories are a lot of description, which takes a lot longer to get through than action. It didn't help that the story that I most wanted to read, the Jim Butcher offering, was first in the book, so I had little to look forward to as I read. A lot of th...

Why read: Received from LibraryThing Early ReviewersWhat impressed me: Nothing.What disappointed me: Naked City sealed the deal for me. I hate anthologies. The "urban fantasy" genre means different things to different people. Half of these stories did not fit into what I would consider urban fantasy. It's really clear the editor was way more concerned with getting big names rather than sticking to the types of stories readers would expect from a book like this.Recommended: A thousand times, no.

I've been eagerly awaiting this book primarily for the story "The Duke of Riverside", which I've been waiting YEARS for, and it would certainly have been worth the price just for that. But there are other marvelous, amazing stories here as well. Holly Black's "Noble Rot", about a dying rock star and and his last fan, could have just tipped over sideways into being a horror story, while Elizabeth Bear's "King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree" was a tour-de-force I can't even begin to describe - it...

This book took me a very long time, peppered with a lot of breaks when I had to come up for air and read other books. Either it is not a very good collection, or urban fantasy is just not my thing. I found it tedious to get through.

Only read Curses by Jim Butcher. Wish I understood more about baseball culture in the US

I'm not a Cubs fan, or much of a baseball fan for that matter. I was only vaguely familiar with the "Billy Goat Curse" that is the premise for this story.As a pre Changes story, things feel a bit more of "the old" Dresden. Dresden gets a case, and digs deeper into things. There is almost no action in this one though.Overall it's a decent, but unremarkable story. There are several other Dredsen short stories I think are much better. Hopefully Mr. Butcher will release a Side Jobs 2 that will inclu...

Just read Briggs story. Nice.

I couldn't wait for this book to come out, pre-ordered it, and then after it came out, even saved it and put off reading it so it would last. Silly me. I finally started it, and found myself skipping pages, trying to find something worth reading. Urban fantasy is sometimes difficult to describe, but whatever it is, this isn't it. Urban fantasy, at least in my opinion, and going by books that are generally shelved in that genre, involves characters that are usually considered to be fantastic, suc...

This rating is only for the following:"Fairy Gifts" by Patricia Briggs - 5-starIt's a wonderful story told in few words but weaved together with rich details, excellent writings and sympathetic characters that feels real. I especially like the way Briggs tells her story; it's that ability of a good author to sweep readers off their feet and carry them along with her/him. Loved it!(Given that I only read one story in this, I've toned down the rating to 4-star for the book. But "Fairy Gifts" was 5...

Typical of pretty much all of these UF anthologies, there are some really good stories and then some really bad ones. As per usual when he has a story in one of them, Jim Butcher's story was the best. He has truly mastered the art of the short story. This one about who really placed the curse on the Cubs is the first in the book and the best, by far. The other good ones were Fairy Gifts by Patricia Briggs, Picking Up the Pieces by Pat Cadigan (about the fall of the Berlin Wall), Priced To Sell b...

Anthology1. Curses by Jim Butcher. Harry is hired to remove a curse and finds out how it originated. Good story. 4 stars.2. How the Pooka Came to New York City by Delia Sherman. Enjoyable story about a Pooka trying to fulfill a debt. 4 stars3. On the Slide by Richard Bowes. A man attempt to escape into the past. I liked it. 4 stars.4. The Duke of Riverside by Ellen Kushner. A troubled young man finds a companion and a chance to start over. 4 stars.5. Oblivion by Calvin Klein by Christopher Fowle...

Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy is a themed anthology of original stories edited by Ellen Datlow. With twenty stories, there's bound to be something for every reader. The stories are by some of the top names in urban fantasy so, if you've heard of an author but haven't yet read one of their novels, Naked City is a great opportunity to get a chance to get a feel for the type of fantasy that they write. For me, the beauty of anthologies is a chance to read a selection of authors – and perhaps t...

I can’t tell you how excited I was to get Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy. It sat on my To Be Read shelf for a while, as I finished up other commitments, and it taunted me, whispered to me, enticed me the whole time. There are some great authors included in this collection and I couldn’t wait to dig in.It certainly gets off to a good start! In “Curses” by Jim Butcher, Harry Dresden — the only Wizard listed in the Chicago Yellow Pages — is approached about removing a very old curse from a loca...

I did not expect the philosophical quality of the stories to be so intense. Many of the stories had a quite serious vibe to them. They reminded me of some classics of the speculative fiction genre form half a century ago. Most of the stories had a pensive and thought provoking agendas and challenged the reader to think about reality using some fantastical elements. Some stories were even Kafkaesque in their sombre characters and introspective aim. There were some definite favorites among these s...

I think the day I'm disappointed with an Ellen Datlow anthology will be the day I give up on short stories altogether. Once again, for me there are more hits than misses in this book. The collection starts and ends strong, beginning with a Jim Butcher tale of Harry Dresden's early days and a famous sports franchise curse and ending with a ghostly tale by Elizabeth Bear of Las Vegas featuring One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King. In between, there are stories of ghosts, vampires, spiders (yes, spid...

Picked this up at the library. When I got home and went to add it to my Good Reads list, it showed as my having read it. I started to read and nothing struck me as familiar. There are 20 stories it took until story ten for anything to feel like I had read it before. That was the only one. So I got live the bookeormd dream, I got to read a books second time like it was the first. I enjoyed all the stories.