Death’s Excellent Vacation

Death’s Excellent Vacation is the third anthology edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner. Like the previous anthologies edited by Harris and Kelner, the 13 short stories have one thing in common: they take place during a vacation. There are some gems in this set of stories, some that fall way short, and most fall somewhere in between.

Readers of supernatural or paranormal fiction will recognize some of the authors – Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books are probably the most well-known thanks to the HBO series True Blood. The anthology starts off with “Two Blondes,” where Sookie and her vampire friend Pam mix business with pleasure on a riverboat casino. Also included are “One for the Money” by Jeaniene Frost of the Night Huntress series, starring Cat and Bones, also vampires, and “The Perils of Eferjim” by Katie MacAlister, a spin-off of the Aisling Grey, Guardian series with Aisling’s demon sidekick Jim off on an adventure of sorts. I’ve never read anything but either Frost or MacAlister but I’ve already added the first of each series to my to read list.

Other stories I enjoyed were “The Heart is Always Right” by Lilith Saintcrow, about a gargoyle who must grudgingly follow his duty to feed “the heart,” “Pirate Dave’s Haunted Amusement Park” by Toni LP Kelner, about a newly turned werewolf visiting an amusement park she frequented as a kid, and “Thin Walls” by Christopher Golden, where a man revisiting the places he traveled to with his deceased wife encounters a woman who wants to help him move on, which was reminiscent of Stephen King.

Often with supernatural stories, especially where vampires are involved, there is violence and explicit sex, and this is true with some, though not all, of these stories. Just a heads up if this type of thing isn’t your thing.

Notes on the Audiobook:

The audio version of this anthology is read by 2 narrators. Christopher Lane reads the stories with a male main character and Amanda Ronconi tackles those starring a female. Both narrators did a wonderful job with their stories, though Lane seems a bit more versatile in his characterizations. I’m also used to a different voice for Sookie, having listened to the first few books in that series.

Nancy thinks it would be fun to be a werewolf for a day. She writes about her 2 boys and life in Colorado at Life With My Boys.