Tales of Kaimere: Anthology 1

Tales of Kaimere

by Keenan Taylor

"Tales of Kaimere is an anthology of fantasy short stories and novellas. These adventure stories explore love and loss, revenge, and coming of age, and include elements of thriller, romance, and horror. Kaimere is a distant planet much like Earth, but with an ecosystem influenced by waves of life taken from our world and introduced to the native magic. This magic is diverse and chaotic, taking the form of calculating forest spirit Indrakai in Trickster’s Gambit, the essence of luck that aids Argunite in Koban’s Menagerie, or a malicious demon that hunts the protagonists of Spider’s Prey. This book also includes four unpublished anthology-exclusives: one that serves as a backstory to a character in Death Walks on Broken Wings, and three set on Earth exploring the influence of Kaimeran magic on our world. Each story can be experienced independently, or read in sequence. However you choose, please enjoy this introduction to Kaimere: a realm of wonder, danger, and magic."

Genres: Fantasy

435 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 9, 2020

Reviews

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories contained within "Tales of Kaimere" introduce a world filled with various cultures and prehistoric creatures that were interesting to learn about. Worldbuilding, I think, it one of the greatest strengths of this anthology. Although I learned enough about the world to understand each of the individual stories, the author also convinced me that there is so much more left to discover. Due to the nature of short stories, the world does (to be fair) feel fragmented at times. I don't know how the different pieces fit together. However, I am eager to read the upcoming "The Lost Hellfighter", the first full novel in a planned series (I believe) to learn more about the world, and have some of these gaps in my knowledge closed.

One criticism I have is regarding character work. In a couple of the stories, the side characters were not fleshed out enough for me to care whether they lived or died, and there were often more total characters than I felt was necessary. I think these stories could have benefitted, in some cases, from combining multiple characters into one, as this would not only declutter the page (and my headspace) but also add necessary depth. In addition, in instances where I had trouble getting attached to some of the characters, there were a couple stories with plots about which I was less interested. If I don't care about the characters, I won't care about the plot twists or climax.

That said, there were several "good" to "great" stories. My favorite three were "Death Walks on Broken Wings", "Trickster's Gambit", "Songbird's Lament". If anyone is hesitant to purchase the full book, I highly recommend trying one of these first (I believe they're all available individually as ebooks) to get a sense of the author's world and prose style.

Overall Rating: 7/10

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taylor gives us a spectacular world in Kaimere. Truly the star of the setting is the world, its creatures, its people, its magic. In fact, one of my criticisms of the book is that it almost requires a familiarity with the extensive worldbuilding done on other platforms to really enjoy. Additionally, Kaimere is the first fantasy setting when the world feels inherently queer. Explicitly queer main characters abound in Taylor's work here and never fall into any tired stereotypes or harmful tropes. It's nice that in a fantastical setting marked by being populated by prehistoric Megafauna, that we can also have normalized gay and trans protagonists

Highlights of the novel were "Death Walks on Broken Wings", "Songbird's Lament", "Broken Circle" "Frost and Famine" and "Echoes of Laughter". Taylor is especially adept at stories about naturalism and an ecologically adept world. His treatment of "predators" and "man eaters" are his strength as stories unusual to the fantasy genre, stories that treat animals, like, well, animals.

As for the Tales of Earth, Echoes of Laughter was one of my favorite shorts of the series, though the first two modern stories were harder to connect with the world of the previous stories.

I'm extremely excited to see where these tales take us going forward. I'm especially anticipating any world books/art books that may be released in the future.

[Tim Flig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of this book from the author’s YouTube channel. I enjoyed his fictional world full of fauna and flora some familiar and some not.

Taylor has managed to created a very impressive world for his stories, a world that although alien in its origins is inhabited by creatures that we know or have a passing resemblance to those we know. The world of Kaimere is a diverse one, brimming with cultures and characters. These cultures are also essential to the characters showcased.
For example Argunite, hailing from the “sea people” he has a special connection to the sea, allowing him to survive as a pirate. In the story it is presented as a connection between Argunite and a storm goddess.

Along side the diversity of the protagonists are the antagonists, often time they are animals but their depiction is believable and feels like a real creature instead of a monster.

At the end of the anthology are some stories occurring on Earth, I personally did not enjoy them as much as I was more invested in Kaimere.

The only real issue I had were the occasional typos that took me out of the story. The book is self published so I assumed something like that would be present.
If that no bother then I highly recommend reading this anthology. Especially to any lovers of dinosaurs and other prehistoric fauna.