Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier; short stories; 432 pages (about 12 hours on CD)Once, long ago, someone asked the question of which was cooler: zombies, or unicorns? Out of that heated debate sprang this anthology, a collection of horror, fantasy, and adventure stories from some of the hottest writers of young adult fantasy. Each story is prefaced by Black and Larbalestier, who argue for their respective teams (Holly Black heads up Team Unicorn, while Justine Larbalestier captains Team Zombie). While I don't normally like short stories (or unicorns), I have to admit that this collection had me loving almost every entry. In fact, I might have come away from this thinking unicorns are the winners (though, to be fair, I might be getting burned out on zombies). But the unicorns here aren't the glittering Lisa Frank models I was expecting (okay, one of them is, but only one!). Garth Nix's "The Highest Justice" has a unicorn actually creating zombies; Kathleen Duey's "The Third Virgin" has a unicorn who's a serial killer; I burst into tears during Diana Peterfreund's "Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn;" and let's not even go into what was going on in Margo Lanagan's "A Thousand Flowers" (side note: this is the first time I've successfully made it through a Lanagan story. I might be starting to see why so many people like her writing). That's not to say that Team Zombie didn't put in a good showing: stories from Carrie Ryan, Cassandra Clare, Scott Westerfeld, and Libba Bray were compelling reads. I did wonder why neither of the editors contributed a stories to the collection, but I felt like there was a great mix. I know I'll soon be adding the few authors who aren't already on my regular reading list to the top of the To Be Read stack. If you get the chance, check out the audio edition: each story is read by a different narrator, Black and Larbalestier read their own parts, and each story is marked with either a zombie or a unicorn sound effect, for easy skimming.
Unicorns: the next cool thing, apparently. Disagree with me? Let's hear it in the comments!
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Unicorns are way cooler than zombies and, according to my children, they poop rainbows! Beat that!
ReplyDeleteThings I learned from reading this: they only poop rainbows if you feed them the proper diet. If not...well, best not to go into that.
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