A Bard, a Prostitute, a Soldier, & a Cat: Enticing Fantasy Shorts
It’s been a long time since I actually had a box of chocolates, but I remember looking at the just-unwrapped package with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, because chances were just as good I’d select a yummy morsel (coconut creme, maybe) as a yucky one (like the dreaded cherry cordial). (And yeah, I know there are supposed to be certain shapes for the various flavors, but I never bothered memorizing them... hence all that uncertainty.) Anyway, the point is that not even the fear of biting into something I really dislike deterred me from enjoying my little box of choccies. So, when a friend recently gifted me with A Fantasy Medley 2 , a collection of four short stories written by popular fantasy authors (and based in the worlds they’ve already created), I treated it the same way as those long-ago boxes of chocolates--with equal parts excitement and concern. And, although I’d previously only read one of the authors in the collection (we’ll call her my coconut ...