Magic City: Recent Spells by Paula Guran
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This fantastic anthology brings together a wide selection of authors who are known for their urban fantasy works including a short story from Jim Butcher's popular Dresden Files universe. The twenty-five stories included are extremely diverse featuring love spells, a blind witch, a magical library, and even a mystical Nigerian cab driver. The stories selected were uniformly of high quality with absolutely no filler material.
I particularly enjoyed Scott Lynch's "In the Stacks" where four wizard students venture into a living library to complete their final exams - they are required to re-shelve a book. This proves to not be the simple task that the students might have imagined. Another highlight was Nacy Kress' "Stone Man" about a young skateboarder who discovers that not only is there another, more fantastical world out there, that he has powers that may make him important in that world, but that he already has enemies there.
In truth, nearly every story in this collection was a high point. I truly hope that the title format implies that there are further "Magic City" volumes to come. If so, I look forward to reading each one.
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