Cannibalism, just for the thrill of it? Oh.My.God.

It was also, at least to me, the most hair-rising of the four.

Hunting down leads, some of them false, questioning witnesses, perpetuating evidence - the story had all the elements of a genuine murder mystery, and a very good one at that. Now forced to work together, they slowly find their way back to each other. Former chef turned agent Keith Curry and goblin expert Agent Gunter Heartman used to be lovers once, but their antagonistic parentage drove them apart. And since we're still in the human world here, killing of people is considered murder. Of course, if you want to serve human meat, you need a fresh corpse first. Human meat is a traditional dish among otherworldly races like for example goblins and vampires, but recently it has become a sought-after delicacy for food-crazy humans, too. From there, I felt irresistibly sucked into a world where blissfully oblivious humans live side by side with beings from other realms, where everybody could be wearing a disguise and next to nothing is quite like it seems. The key was using a normal place - Portland, in this case, - and a normal activity - buying food from a food cart - and then dropping a bomb smack in the middle of this peaceful scenery - human meat as contraband. Mind you, we've got four masters of their craft at work here, so each novella contains all aspects, and all stories are beautifully woven, but each story focuses on one particular aspect of the basic scheme.Ĭherries Worth Getting by Nicole Kimberlingīeing in the forefront, this story had to paint the backdrop for the other three, which it did with subtle perfection by using bold strokes. This setup, and of course their shared universe, connects the stories to make four pieces an almost seamless whole, but there's also a distinct individuality to each novella which I'd attribute mostly to each author's personal preferences and style. Fantastic, alluring, and simply awesome.Īll stories are set in the same universe, and each story contains a mystery, a romance, an aspect of worldbuilding, and a message. I've enjoyed each of these author's works separately, but together, they created a world so multi-faceted and unique that someone could easily write dozens of stories inside it without repeating themselves once.

As Wave once put it, this is royalty writing here indeed.

Irregulars by Nicole Kimberling