He Said, Sidhe Said, by Tanya Huff

As usual, Tanya Huff’s stories collected in this ebook are fun; it’s a solid mix of fun and a more serious story. The title story (a sort of retelling of Tam Lin) was probably my least favourite. Since it’s a shortish collection (seven stories), I’ll review each story separately, albeit briefly.

‘A Choice of Endings’: I didn’t remember the character of Mrs. Ruth very well — I read Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light quite a while ago — but I enjoyed the story nonetheless. It’s always interesting when older women are the heroines of a story, you really don’t see it enough, and it was good to get into Mrs. Ruth’s head. And her antics are quite entertaining: she’s deadly with bottles of Tabasco sauce…

‘Finding Marcus’: One of Tanya Huff’s few first person stories, apparently, and narrated from the point of view of a dog — and she’s a cat person. I think she got the essential traits of a dog pretty well: that literally dogged loyalty and persistence which I think is one of the most lovely traits of a good dog. (I’m biased. My nan’s dog, in my childhood, was very dogged and loyal, and heaved his arthritis, tubby body up a step and along the hall to check on me while I curled up on my own in the front room, reading.) The story was pretty simple, but it worked well, even for being something Tanya Huff doesn’t do much.

‘He Said, Sidhe Said’: As I said, my least favourite of the collection. I just didn’t find it very remarkable. The various parallels to Tam Lin are clever, but it wasn’t absorbing for me.

‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’: I have a fairly ‘meh’ reaction to this one, too, for all that its seasonal. Or perhaps because it’s seasonal? I’m not good with seasonal. There’s only one Christmas-themed album I like, in music (Thea Gilmore’s Strange Communion), so maybe I’m the same about stories. It just didn’t grab me, anyway.

‘Tuesday Evenings, Six Thirty to Seven’: I liked this one. Again an older female heroine, and a very non-conventional Brownie troop. I thought that was kind of clever, and I enjoyed the Brown Owl’s attempts to adapt to them and to do her best by them. It was filled with a kind of tenderness toward the whole Brownie movement, too, which I can understand — I never was a Brownie, but I so wanted to be.

‘Under Summons’: I haven’t read Summon the Keeper yet, though I have it, but this story made perfect sense even without it. Loved the pissy cat and the helpful fish. It makes me want to hurry up and read the original series.

‘Word of Honour’: I’m not sure about the quality of the history detail around the events in this story, and the portrayal of the Templars, etc (my knowledge about Templars, such as it is, comes mostly from Assassin’s Creed). I didn’t find the story as emotional as Tanya Huff mentions she does in her introduction, but it is an enjoyable story and there are a couple of moments in it that did really get to me.