Become Legend: The JordanCon 2021 Anthology

by Richard Fife (Editor), Terry A. Beyer (Contributor), Sara Bond (Contributor)

“A unifying trait for a society is the legends it tells. Whether parables of heroism, warnings to tread carefully, or attempts to give meaning to the unexplained, legends can take many forms. For the second year of the JordanCon Anthology, we gave a simple prompt for the theme: Legends and the Legendary. Our prior guests and attendees rose to the challenge, and we are happy to bring you twenty short stories ranging the genres of fantasy, science fiction and horror. This is a limited edition anthology, available exclusively at JordanCon. Proceeds of the sales will go towards the JordanCon Charity.”

This was a limited one-time-only run, available for sale at the JordanCon Charity room. Sales of JordanCon Anthologies at the 2021 convention raised $4376 that went towards the 2021 Charity for the Mayo Clinic to go towards Cardiac Amyloidosis research.

Table of Contents:

The Legendary Lord Redfield the Reaper – Sarah J. Sover
Urban Planning – Rosemary Williams
Oni Soars – Nicole Givens Kurtz
The Rose Became a Sword – Clint Hall
Entwined – Terry A. Beyer
The Storyteller – Ris Harp
Hipshot – P. Andrew Floyd
The Long Game – Darin Kennedy
The Devil Waits – Sara Bond
Kraken Conquered – Faith Hunter
Goddess of Spring – Paige Vest
Green Dreams – Paige L. Christie
The Witch Hunter – Vincent E. M. Thorn
Never Ending Now – David Alan Jones
The Monk’s Well – Rebecca Wynick
The Watchers – A. K. DuBoff
Beneath the Crimson Sand – Carl Sailor
Easy Meat – Morgan Smith
The Laskim – Raine Palmer

Genres: Fantasy

311 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 2021

Reviews

[Alex of Yoe]

As per recommendation: this is the second JordanCon Anthology I've had the privilege of reviewing. I love that the convention does this for its members and gives them an opportunity to have some of their writings and short stories published.

This collection includes 20 short stories all based off of the theme of "legends". It includes high fantasy, mythology, and a smidge of horror. All the authors are Wheel of Time fans, but the work is completely original, much of it by already established authors with links to their blogs or other works.

I enjoyed this anthology much more than the last one I read. I'm not sure if it was because of the theme or if the writing quality was just better, but this one had more engaging stories in it than the other one. I loved all the creativity and the mixture of genres and settings. I'm not usually a fan of short story collections since short stories can be hard to do correctly, but these were mostly all well done.

I did find it a bit dizzying going from story to story instead of just snuggling into one continuous plot, but that could just be me and my preferences. A few of the stories have some horror or sexual themes, so it is definitely for an older audience, but it's not bad. I think if you're looking for a sampling of stories to help discover a new favourite author or series, this might give you a few ideas.