I can’t resist a good pun, and I’m a fan of corvids, so I just had to purchase this anthology which was released as a fundraiser to make up for all the money lost due to the covid-related cancellation of RavenCon.

All of the authors in this anthology were new to me. Only six of the stories are reprints, so it’s mostly original material. As with all anthologies, how much you enjoy it is based on personal taste. I’m personally not a fan of flash fiction, reimagined fairy tales, or revenge stories (especially when the revenge is worse than what prompted it). So some stories in this anthology didn’t appeal to me. Many of the authors didn’t seem to have researched corvids much, although a few of them did. One author mentions this anthology had a tight deadline, which makes sense given the circumstances. It does feel like something that was thrown together quickly, however.

My favorite story was “Dominion” by Margaret Karmazin in which humans visit an alternate earth populated by intelligent corvids. It was a reprint (as were two of my other favorite stories, “Windows to the Soul” by Danielle Ackley-McPhail and “The Cruelest Team Will Win” by Mike Allen), so these authors presumably had more time to work on their stories than the authors of the original material did. Of the original stories, I quite liked “A Life in a Moment” by James Maxey and “Feather Fall” by Kara Dennison, in which a woman gets a job as a waitress in a city populated by ghosts.

I didn’t enjoy the anthology overall, but of course everyone has different tastes, so you may end up liking it more than I did.