The Best of Three Crows: Year One: Anthology of Weird Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Alex Khlopenko (Editor), Olivia Hofer (Editor), Anna Smith Spark

A park ranger against eldritch horror...a sea goddess imprisoned by a fisherman...a circus troupe housing unimaginable horror...a man challenging the gods to bind them to his will...a lonely taxman striving to save the world from destruction...a pregnant girl running through cold, guided by the Ursa Major...first contact with an interterrestial civilization turned into a diplomatic catastrophy...Editors Alex Khlopenko and Olivia Hofer present the compilation of the most engaging, heart-wrenching tales from the first year of Three Crows Magazine. Tales both inspiring and cautionary. Be it magical realism or hard sci-fi, the stories from the debuting and well-established authors in this SFF anthology give us a chance to process and make sense of our own world. It engaged me from the first word, and kept me breathless until the last word. Good stuff throughout this publication.”- Amy Blake Hearn“It not only features critically acclaimed authors like Anna Smith Spark, but also gives a chance to upcoming, talented authors.All of their stories represent a different culture, giving us a glimpse into our beautiful, colorful world through the eyes of SFF.”- Timy Takacs, RockStarLit BookAsylum

154 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 2, 2019

Reviews

[Micah Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

RJ Barker and Anna Smith Spark

4/5

Picked this up as a freebie and I really appreciate the free content. RJ Barker and Anna Smith Spark stole the show in this one...I hope they contribute again to the magazine and I'll be on the lookout for more. Can we just have folklore or Silmirillian-esque book from Anna? I'd die for that.

[Robert Adam Gilmour · Rating 2 out of 5]

This magazine seems open to most kinds of speculative fiction, leaning darker than most that aren't exclusively horror magazines. I recently saw Khlopenko on social media complaining about the seeming non-existence of truly experimental speculative fiction these days, so I guess he wants submissions like that.
Every story had something of interest, some were pretty strong, but a few felt underdeveloped or like a chapter from a longer story.

Anna Smith Spark's "Stones" is the most satisfying, she has a knack for writing miserable old men. A selkie story.

Gerard Mullan's "The Necromancer's Garden" is a comeuppance story and I've seen too many of those (probably from so many horror comics and martial arts films) but I liked the style, it's like a goth tinged pre-raphaelite aesthetic. This seems to be Mullan's only story and I hope he gets more published.

One story is missing from the table of contents, but it is in the book.

I'll probably buy the second annual.

[Graham Dauncey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short story anthology with a focus on weird science fiction and fantasy - and this does creep into other areas of speculative fiction with a distinctive horror tilt to some of the stories. Weird is definitely a good descriptor for a lot of the stories here. As with any anthology there is an unevenness to the quality, with some stories definitely superior to others. In the end it was the more well known and familiar authors who produced the stories I enjoyed the most - RJ Barker and Anna Smith Spark's efforts were the two highlights for me, with Barker exploring a strange circus with some kind of monstrous riggers for the bigtop, and Anna Smith Spark returning to the world of 'A Court of Broken Knives' and telling the story of one of the bystanders within the world.

An interesting read, and most of the stories were pretty short and easy to digest.