Review: Faery Tales & Nightmare by Melissa Marr

Faery Tales & Nightmares by Melissa Marr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was a good idea for Marr to gather her short stories from her anthologies and online ebook offerings into one book. But unfortunately for me I'd already read a substantial portion of the book since I got most of the anthologies out of the library and I actually did buy the ebooks that make up a big chuck of it. I still re-read them all and they were fine, but it didn't change my original three star rating of any of them. I did enjoy the two new stories from the Wicked Lovely world, it was nice to revisit the characters and see a bit of what happened after the series ended. But I do have to say that Seth still isn't my favorite character, he's still too perfect to really be interesting, too much of a male Mary Sue, always doing the thoughtful, cool, smart, sweet, brave, perfect thing in any situation. Nevertheless, I did enjoy seeing a bit of resolution for his situation and his relationship with Niall. And I liked the story about Keenan and Donia as well. And people who haven't read the other stories already will really enjoy reading more about Niall and Irial, and the short one about Rabbit.

Fans of the Wicked Lovely series will like this book. There really isn't much to recommend for people who aren't familiar with the series. I didn't think the independent stories were special enough on their own to invest in the book. One or two were fine, but again, I'd read one before, and regardless, they weren't anything I'm going to remember. And most of the longer stories presume familiarity with the characters and history of the series and won't make much sense to new readers. Frequently short stories set in the same world as a series are a good way for new readers to get intrigued about an author's work, but in this case I'd recommend that curious readers try  Wicked Lovely, the first book in the series. It's really a unique book in the way it captures a sense of the fairy magic. And youth. It wasn't a perfect book, and it made me feel really old, but it was special somehow.

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