Baen Free Stories 2011

Kencyrath #1.5

by Patrick Lundrigan, Larry Correia, Travis S. Taylor

In January of 2011 we started posting free short stories we thought might be of interest to Baen readers. The first stories were "Space Hero" by Patrick Lundrigan, the winner of the 2010 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Contest, and "Tanya, Princess of Elves," by Larry Correia, author of Monster Hunter International and set in that universe. As new stories are made available, they will be posted on the main page, then added to this book (to save the Baen Barflies the trouble of doing it themselves).

As is usual with such copyrighted material from Baen, the contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold. All commercial rights are reserved to Baen Books.

"Space Hero" by Patrick Lundrigan
"Tanya: Princess of the Elves" by Larry Correia
"The Grimnoir Chronicles: Detroit Christmas" by Larry Correia
"Kings" by Travis S. Taylor
"Mole Hunt" by Robert Buettner
"Intelligent Design" by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
"The Brute Force Approach" by Michael Z. Williamson
"Honorverse Tech Bu9" by David Weber and Ken Burnside
"The Talisman's Trinket" by P. C. Hodgell
"Murder at Ford’s Theater" by Bob Conroy
"Pawn to King Four" by Timothy Zahn

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Ebooks

363 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Space Hero" by Patrick Lundrigan.3*
"Tanya: Princess of the Elves" by Larry Correia 3*
"The Grimnoir Chronicles: Detroit Christmas" by Larry Correia 4*
"Kings" by Travis S. Taylor 3*
"Mole Hunt" by Robert Buettner 3.5*
"Intelligent Design" by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller 3*
"The Brute Force Approach" by Michael Z. Williamson 3*
"Honorverse Tech Bu9" by David Weber and Ken Burnside 3.5*
"The Talisman's Trinket" by P. C. Hodgell 3*
"Murder at Ford’s Theater" by Bob Conroy4*
"Pawn to King Four" by Timothy Zahn 4*

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cleaning out old book files from my TBR pile. Found some interesting short stories in this volume related to Grimnoir Chronicles, MHI, Honorverse, Buettner's Orphan series, the Liaden Universe and Cobra. Nice to see little snipets of stories that do not make it into the books.

[Squeaky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great stories here. My favorite was Tanya: Princess Of The Elves.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of teasers and introductions to various sci fi and fantasy universes published by Baen. Many stories are not collected elsewhere, so well worth the read.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Needs copy editing.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 2 out of 5]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

2 stars

A free collection of short stories from Baen authors.

Some time ago, I downloaded Baen's 2011, 2012, and 2013 collections of free stories. I started at random with 2012, and was disappointed. I've tried again with 2011, with a similar result.

Some of these aren't really stories at all. "Honorverse Tech Bu9" reads like David Weber's background notes for another story, and I presume it connects directly to one of his books. As a standalone piece, though, it's not interesting.

Frankly, the only piece in the collection that I found much value in was P.C. Hodgell's "The Talisman's Trinket", which fills in some gaps in Hodgell's breakout book God Stalk, or at least offers another perspective. For those unfamiliar with that book, though, I'm not sure the story would hold up well; too many references would be meaningless.

The rest of the stories range from adequate to downright bad. Aside from completists for one universe or another, the collection simply isn't worth reading, even for free.

[John Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great bunch of stories, some of which I had read before, but enjoyed re-reading..

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

A weak selection of short stories by Baen authors. Not really worth the time.