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Holidays Are Hell
By Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Majorie M. Liu, and Vicki Petterson

As fun as the holiday season is you can’t deny that the drop in temperature does have the tendency to make you want to run and hide under your nice warm blankets. And honestly, if you’re all snuggled up and warm, why not pick up a good book while you’re at it?

To get you in that festive cheer you may want pick up Holidays Are Hell, an anthology featuring a collection of holiday tales from four New York Times Bestselling Authors. To get the holiday-ball rolling, Kim Harrison opens up the anthology with her tale Two Ghosts for Sister Rachel. The story itself can be read as a complete stand-alone if you like, but fans of Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series will be pleased to see another short story from her set before the series begins. The story opens up with Rachel applying to join the Inderland Security (I.S.) as a runner. It hasn’t been long since her father died, doing the exact same thing she’s hoping to do, and the disease that should have killed is still faintly visible.

Considering her father died doing his job as an I.S. runner it’s not surprising that Rachel’s brother and mother are none too pleased with her career choice. Within the first couple of pages it becomes clear that Rachel’s penchant for trouble runs in the family when her brother (Robbie) agrees to sign Rachel’s I.S. form, since he is her legal guardian, if she can successfully cast an eighth level earth-spell to call up her father who was wrongfully dead (read murdered) and get his permission. Oh yes, trouble runs in this family’s blood. Not too surprisingly, Rachel manages to successfully cast the spell. Not only does she give her ghost full substance, instead of the expected misty form, but she summons a spirit from purgatory instead of her father. Seems her dad has already passed on and is at rest. But a young girl is missing and the spirit that Rachel accidentally summoned was killed in pursuit of the vampire who just might be responsible for her disappearance.

It’s always great to see a character mature as the series progresses, but Harrisons’ Two Ghosts for Sister Rachel allows the reader the interesting chance to travel back in time to see a side of Rachel we never really saw before. We are granted with a chance to see a much more vulnerable young woman overcoming numerous obstacles in pursuit of her goal, such as her weak body and her over protective family. We also get to see all of the flaws that Rachel slowly over comes in the series come rushing back tenfold without the wisdom and jadedness that the character in the series possess to balance them out, which makes for a very interesting and different outlook on the events. I was particularly impressed with the story’s ending as it nicely concluded the story’s events but left the time from the end of the story to Ivy’s story, and later where the series picks up to the reader’s discretion. Nicely done.

Following Harrison’s tale was Lynsay Sands’ Run, Run, Rudolph. Such a hectic way to spend the holidays and it was, essentially, the result of a troublesome toddler. Children are definitely trouble. This tale follows the misadventures of Jill, the owner of a clothing store, who just wants to finish babysitting her brother’s toddler before hurrying off to play Mrs. Claus to a very sexy Mr. Claus in the town’s Christmas Parade as planned. Unfortunately for her, an old colleague of her brother’s is back in town and looking to finish the project that was called off and in his rather twisted mind, Jill will be the perfect lab rat for him to conduct his experiments on. Years back, Jill’s brother Kyle and his wife Claire were working on creating a molecular destabilizer, and had essentially completed it when a fellow colleague, John Heathcliffe, decided to turn the machine on Kyle’s wife so that they might have a human specimen to study. While attempting to rescue her from the beam of the molecular destabilizer, Kyle was also zapped in the process.

The project was ultimately scrapped, and in an attempt to protect his wife and child, as well as himself, Kyle stated the project was a failure, because in all likely hood his family would have been locked away as specimens if the truth had come out. You see, it turns out that when a person is hit with the beam they gain a pretty handy ability, the ability to change their body and shape into whatever they will it to be. Claire stumbled onto this ability by chance when she found herself one day looking at a magazine and wishing that she could look more like the model featured. Her body changed to match that of the model’s appearance, including the model’s clothes.

While watching over Claire and Kyle’s daughter Beth, Jill is lured into the basement where Kyle has been reconstructing the molecular destabilizer in an attempt to better understand the changes and possible side affects of their condition. While attempting to grab Beth, who had crawled behind the machine, Jill is hit with the beam and knocked unconscious. As she’s leaving her brother’s house Jill finds out that the events were orchestrated by John Heathcliffe himself who wants to take Jill away for further study. What results is a comical and exciting chase through the city as a shape shifting Jill and her “Mr. Claus” Nick, who is kindly gifted with the moniker of “Mr. Gay Shoes” by Jill’s brother, attempt to allude and escape this mad loon while their own relationship continues to build.

The tale is exceptionally well written and executed flawlessly, but one thing bothered me greatly about this story which kept me from enjoying it fully. What on earth was it doing in this collection? Holidays Are Hell is supposed to be a collection of horror stories by renown paranormal romance authors. A holiday treat of witches, goblins, vampires, and other things that go bump in the night. So what is a Sci-Fi tale doing alongside these works? If I tuned in for a television marathon of the best episodes from comedic horror sitcoms I certainly would not expect to see episodes of The Bionic Woman nestled alongside episodes of The Munsters and The Addams Family. Why was this tale included in this anthology? Yes, Jill is a shape shifter, however this ability is gained from purely scientific means without any other mention or allusion to the paranormal. Mystique, a comic book character from the X-Men universe, shares the same ability as Jill and yet no one would think a story revolving around Mystique belonged in the horror section alongside Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series or Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville series.

The story was exciting and entertaining, no doubt about that, but it simply did not belong in this collection.

Next in the anthology was Majorie M. Liu’s Six. Although I had heard and read good reviews about Liu’s work I had never actually read anything by the author until today. Liu’s tale made purchasing this anthology well worth it. Indeed I enjoyed Harrison’s contribution, and would have bought this book for her short story regardless, and even though I did enjoy the contributions of Sands and to an extent Pettersson, Liu’s Six was the real eye opener of this collection. An amazing short tale that left me wanting more, more adventures from the characters and more of the author’s signature style.

The tale revolves around Six, a proud woman and a member of the prestigious and downright scary squad 12. She has been trained, since a young age, in combat and weaponry, so that fighting would be as natural as breathing for her. Six is a part of the Chinese military and works to bring down terrorists and other nasty crime figures. Her strong sense of duty combined with the freedom of action that government officials have in China has given Six an abundant amount of confidence in her abilities, as well as the others working alongside her, to bring down whoever stands in their way.

This proud and strong warrior is thrown for quite the loop when an undercover operation blows up in her face and her target turns into a vampire of all things. Liu’s story only gets better at this point, instead of your typical “good looking and insanely powerful” vampires that the fiction world has begun to assume is the norm, Liu delivers a different sort of monster that borrow from Asian folklore more than Western which results in vampires that are very much as powerful as they are scary looking and blood curdling. To top it all off, Six herself becomes infected.

After the first couple of pages of this story I had high expectations for the heroine, a strong female character on a path of self discovery who did not feel the need to whine incessantly or deny what was right in front of her face (very refreshing!) and Liu did not disappoint me in the least. Necromancers, vampires, and terrorist cells all teaming up to throw a country into chaos. This is an action packed tale that will keep you ensnared until the very last page has been turned and the last word read. I strongly recommend picking up this anthology, this tale alone will make it well worth your while.

Wrapping up the collection was Vicki Pettersson’s The Harvest, which is set in the same universe as her “Sign of the Zodiac” series but is a prequel to the series’ main story. The story is told from the point of view of Zoe, Joanna Archer’s mother. At the age of sixteen, Joanna was assaulted and left to die in the desert of Nevada. In this story we are given the chance to see the events that followed immediately after she was forced to give up her baby and all from the point of view of her mother.

Despite this rare chance, I found myself disinterested with the story after the first ten pages and then quickly skimming over the rest. While the story itself held promise and an interesting plot, the author just failed at drawing in her reader’s interest and holding it. This is the exact same problem I’ve been faced with when reading her Zodiac series. An interesting and exciting plot, but the writing style of the author takes away from the story itself and leaves reading, what should by all rights be a fantastic tale, feeling like a chore. I had hoped that this would not be the case with her short story, but alas I was wrong.

If you’re a fan of Petterssons’ Zodiac series I recommend you still read it as it does give interesting insight into Zoe’s actions and sets the pace for the series, but this contribution was definately the weakest of the four.

Over all, this anthology is probably one of the better ones I’ve read lately. The stories share a common thread, and aside from Pettersson’s, they all forced me to set things aside until the last page of the individual tales had been turned. The only reason I didn’t get this review out sooner, was sadly, because of Pettersson’s The Harvest I just could not get into that story at all and eventually had to resort to skimming to get through it.

Joana’s rating: (3 out of 5 stars)