The Plot
Most people are probably aware of the Harry Potter
series that takes place at the magical boarding school Hogwarts, but the "magical boarding school" genre is actually much older. Chris and several other authors have written stories of their own set in these types of environments--Chris himself has a lengthy series entitled Schooled In Magic
--and this volume collects fourteen of these magical tales into a book of respectable length.The Good
*The collection is pretty long for an anthology--the Kindle version has 500-odd pages, as does the paperback. You're definitely getting a lot for your money with this one.
*The collection ends with "Gennady's Tale" by Chris himself. I haven't read any of his Schooled In Magic series, but I know enough that this is one of the villains' Start of Darkness. This story starts out with him as a crippled boy treated horrendously by the superstitious ignorant villagers he grew up among. And though magical school brings many improvements to his life, it also brings more bullies. His need to be respected, his need to be powerful, is understandable under such circumstances, but how he goes about trying to get these leads down a very dark road. This story serves as a warning to those whose bad circumstances might tempt them to envy, resentment, and spitefulness. 1 Corinthians 10:12 comes to mind--everybody who thinks they're standing should take heed lest they fall. You can see the train wreck coming, the temptation he falls to, but it's relentless. Our hero definitely has an arc, but it's a very bad one. Definitely well-done, and rather sad.
*One of the other top stories in the collection is "The Last Academy" by G. Scott Huggins, a parody of Harry Potter with a dash of Lovecraft. The Chosen One has defected to the Dark Lord and the only bastion of wizarding society not under his control is a school for magical misfits meant more for containment than teaching them how to function in society. I enjoyed the evil counterparts to the HP Golden Trio (Harry, Ron, and Hermione), especially evil Hermione, and there's a good joke in there about the misuses of the Invisibility Cloak. Not going to go into any more detail for reasons of spoilers.
*Another story I really liked is "How To Get Into A Magic School" by Erin N.H. Furby. Not only do they touch on some deeper topics like high-stakes testing and apply the whole "hidden magical world" to an American setting rather than Harry Potter's British one, but it made me care about the characters and the choices they make. It also touches on Native American mythology in some interesting ways.
*Another story with well-developed characters that makes me care about them is "Metamorphosis" by Roger D. Strahan. Although some of the stories set in pre-existing worlds didn't stand on their own--more on that later--this one followed a completely new character and made the protagonist of his novel The Witch of New Orleans
a side character. That seems like a good technique for writing short works in an established fictional universe and it's something to keep in mind.*I also liked the opening story "Little Witches" by Mel Lee Newmin. It takes a lighthearted approach to a fairly heavy topic--sexism among British wizarding schools in the Victorian era, with the girls' school getting the short shrift on funding. It doesn't appear to be set in a broader fictional universe based on my googling the author's name and checking out their Amazon page. That's helpful because there's no need to be more familiar with a broader fictional universe to understand it, which was an issue with some other stories in the collection.
*Another interesting one is essentially a LitRPG story featuring a Christian seminary student from our world who ends up as a wizard in a Dungeons and Dragons
style fantasy. Who knew that knowing Koine Greek could be so helpful? :)The Bad
*Some of the stories are set in the authors' pre-existing fictional universes and don't really stand well on their own.
*In "Gennady's Tale," a couple characters' actions seem rather out of character and severe and happen far too quickly. It seems like they're there for plot purposes rather than happening organically due to the characters.
*Unfortunately "Metamorphosis," despite being one of the best stories in the collection, begins with what appear to be formatting problems. The paragraphs aren't indented, nor do they have spaces between the paragraphs. The rest of the story looks normal, so I assume this is an error rather than an artistic choice.
*The shadow of Harry Potter hangs heavily on the stories. Although some hang a lampshade on that and even poke fun at the Potterverse, one story does have something that looks to me like the author was copying the Sorting process.
*One of the stories has an absolutely unsympathetic, two-dimensionally evil Complete Monster lead whose capabilities and actions reach Villain Sue territory. The story would have been much better if the reader were able to sympathize with them at all.
The Verdict
Definitely a good concept and with some very good stories in it. Some weaknesses though. 8.5 out of 10.
. A pity iTunes doesn't have this, because I'd love to buy it. For the record, this is a 
(I think), a Wiccan priestess thinks to herself "I will have him. So mote be it" or something to that effect upon meeting the man who will eventually become her husband. This is also by S.J. Tucker. Let the record state that the Bible condemns all forms of occultism, not just "black magic," so listen to the song if you wish but don't go doing what's described.
isn't the type of magic the Bible condemns with the exception of divination, which is generally depicted as fraudulent.)
, one to 
, and a third to the realities of working as an Internet writer. The first two have companion blog posts I've already written that will appear here once the podcast goes up.
.
. So it seems that, not long into the mission, the Enterprise is wrecked by hostile aliens and its crew stranded. Furthermore, they're in the hands of hostile aliens intent on "push[ing] back" against the Federation itself.
spin-off, the film adaptation of 
.
that takes issue with, among other things, the depiction of pirates as some kind of quasi-ethnicity being mass-murdered by the East India Company. In particular, the reviewer objected to the sequence where a bunch of pirates, including a child, get hanged and it's depicted as a bad thing. After all, pirates are basically sea robbers and were prone to committing atrocities--for a paper I did on the historiography of Atlantic piracy, I found accounts of pirate Henry Avery's men 
, and various other grotesque acts. The book 
strongly disputes the romanticized view of pirates that omits or downplays their bad behavior.
and the book he co-wrote 
describe these people in more detail, including accounts of how sailors on ships attacked by pirates would often jump ship and join them. However, that still doesn't acknowledge torturing people to find hidden money, rape, etc. Somebody can have a sympathetic back-story and still be an unpleasant, nasty person. Consider 
). Emphasize that despite the disdain of Port Royal's residents, most of them are making an honest living selling meat to passing ships, fishing, growing enough food in a month to sustain them for a year, etc.
made the Corleones sympathetic by pitting them against even more immoral crime families and dirty cops), plantation types trying to reclaim members of their community who'd fled slavery, former employers who'd mistreated them, etc. Emphasize the more sympathetic parts of Jack Sparrow's back-story in particular--
into multiple-book deal with 
get into) and how a coed military (of said republic) might function. I was outlining it and it turned into a rambling mess, but the prologue did eventually see the light of day as one of the stories in 
. Other than that prologue, nothing from this is likely to see the light of day. 14,750 words.
Notable for a nuclear-armed neo-Aztec cult being manipulated by the surviving U.S. military leadership in Colorado Springs and an independent Alaska trying to avoid resource vassalage to Japan. I'm thinking this would make a really good setting for an RPG. 2,727 words.
. The first part of the story is basically Deathly Hallows from Lupin and Tonks' points-of-view and includes stuff we don't see, like their romantic relationship (a lot of people thought Tonks some kind of stalker, but the impression I had was that Lupin liked her too but was just too hung up on being a werewolf to act on it), wedding and honeymoon, and much of the Battle of Seven Potters. It diverges from canon during Bill and Fleur's wedding and gets really dark. Like, really, really, dark. Of all my fan-fiction, it's probably the best in terms of characterization. Heck, of all my fiction generally it ranks up there.
, but was rather disappointed by 
. Good concept, but mediocre execution. So this is how I would have done it. There was some stuff suggested by the commercials (like a confrontation between female lead Mikaela Banes and Starscream) that never happened, but would have been really cool. Heck, the Bay universe botched Starscream's character massively, and that's just one of its sins. 58,476 words, about the length of a decent novel and not that much longer than Thing. I should probably write a TVTropes page--there's already 
fan-fic in high school that was basically how I would have done 
. Combined I think that's around 100,000 words--there were several 20K to 25K installments. There're also various dribs and drabs from short stories both unfinished and finished, my 2006 
short story 
as opposed to the stereotypical mad ax-murderer). An entire pseudo-science called 
last night. Here's my review:
but not many others would.
, the teen Snape was played by Alec Hopkins. They should have had him playing Snape when he defected to Dumbledore and later when we see him cradling Lily's body rather than Alan Rickman made to look younger. Alan Rickman is in his 50s or 60s--having him playing a 20-something came off as a bit ridiculous. Hopkins is 25, so him playing Snape (who would have been around 21 at the time) would be appropriate.
