Thoughts : Laughter at the Academy

I love Seanan’s short fiction, sometimes I have to be in a mood for her longer stuff just due to the denser style she can have in that format, but her short fiction is almost always a win for me. So I’m not sure why I was surprised I loved this collection as much as I did.

Laughter at the Academy by Seanan McGuire

Source: Library
TL;DR: Very Recommended for Short Story fans, especially of the SFF/Speculative/Urban genre

The Thoughts!

• It’s extremely hard to pick a specific story in this collection I like the most. It’s actually easier for me to point to a few of the weaker ones, but I’m not a huge fan of doing that. I can say that I loved There is No Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold which I read in The Doll Collection last year. It’s an urban fantasy story using dolls as it’s magic source, so if you don’t like dolls stay away. But if you don’t mind them I so recommend picking up either this collection or the Doll Collection to read it. UPDATE – I found it on The Dark Magazine’s Website, this would be a great way to get a taste of Seanan’s style.
• Somehow she’s made things such as office emails amusing. I didn’t think Office Memos was going to tickle me as much as it did when I started it but I was smiling like a loon when I was done.

“Please stop using the time distortion field to age your cheese. It is an inappropriate use of scientific resources, and anyway, you can’t start with Velveeta and expect to get anything decent out the other end.” 

• Each to Each is another excellent example of mermaid fiction- something I’ve only been able to pinpoint Seanan as someone who has done well.
• Most of these stories, yes, can be googled up and read online. But for the convenience of having them together I would definitely purchase this. It’s on my list to get when my budget opens up for book purchasing and for the ebook I 100% believe it’s worth the cost. If you haven’t tried Seanan’s work in short format I would recommend finding one of them and trying it, then just diving into this. I would recommend this to almost all readers of the genre.