Mountain Magic

David Drake's old Nathan alone is worth the price of this book in my humble opinion and Diamonds was a good read also.

I can't praise this collection enough. You have collected here two classic sets of short stories, by Herny Kuttner and David Drake, and a novelette by Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor that stands with them in terms of quality. All the stories revolve around things that happen "back in the hills where outsiders don't go" and are quite good reading. Kudos to Eric Flint for putting together a most enjoyable collection.

This book is a compendium of stories by different authors using the same basic area as a setting - the Appalachian Mountains. The first offering, Diamonds are Forever, by Flint and Spoor, I would liken to a good light beer - great taste, less filling. David Drake's Old Nathan short stories are like a dark, heavy lager- a meal in themselves, complex, perhaps not to everyone's taste but uniquely satisfying. Kutner's Hogben stories are good old-fashioned SF - a Michelob, say. All in all, this book has enough differing tastes to satisfy any reader, and more than meets Robert Heinlein's goal of successfully competing for beer money.

... and I think the other 2/3 are really good company to be in. The third that I wrote (with Eric Flint) is "Diamonds Are Forever". I wish the blurb didn't spoiler it quite so much -- some of the things in the blurb are supposed to be revelations in the story. Anyway, "Diamonds" was very fun to write and I think anyone who liked my prior book "Digital Knight" will enjoy "Diamonds". By itself, I'd probably not quite feel comfortable handing "Diamonds" a 5 star rating; it's a good, fun read, but I know I have a long way to go before I'm at the top level. However, the other two-thirds of "Mountain Magic" are solidly five-star material. David Drake's "Old Nathan" stories may well be the best thing Drake has ever written, complex, somber, quirky, and surprisingly touching in places. The Old Nathan stories were printed before, but were sadly limited in their distribution for various reasons; it's good they're finally getting a new release. Kuttner's "Hogben" stories have been undeservedly out-of-print for a long time; they are humorously macabre stories of one of the most bizarre families ever invented, by one of the lesser-known great authors of SF. Get "Mountain Magic"; you won't be disappointed! Ryk E. Spoor