Games Creatures Play

Games Creatures Play is an anthology of fifteen short stories edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L P Kelner. Fifteen very different stories from fifteen authors, including Scott Sigler, Laura Lippman and Brandon Sanderson; Harris and Kelner themselves also contribute. All the stories involve games, be they of the sporting type, children’s games or games of chance, and all involve some element of the supernatural.

Thus, the reader gets real-life Capture-the-Flag, Hide-and-Seek with malevolent gods or with horrific consequences for the found, a fight-night where a dead victim gets revenge, car racing with the Devil, lacrosse with ghosts, taking on in a game of chance, Greek wrestling with a shapeshifters, fencing in a French finishing school, shoe-skating on thin ice, roller derby with monsters, softball with psychics, a haunted candlepin alley and baseball in the Safeway.

Some of the stories are chilling, some are laugh-out-loud funny and some are just OK. At least one is so verbose it borders on being boring. Harris offers a meeting between Sookie Stackhouse and Manfred Bernardo that feels like a prelude to the Midnight, Texas novels. Kelner’s offering is clever, but the stand-out gem in this collection is Scott Sigler’s The Case of the Haunted Safeway, featuring Hunter Hunterson and family. This is a good chance to sample the wares of fifteen authors without committing to a full novel and worth reading for the Sigler story alone. A mixed bag.

3.5 stars