Once Upon a Winter - Various Authors

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AUTHORS: Various
GENRE: Fantasy Anthology
RATING: 3.75 stars.

An interesting anthology with many outstanding stories. The book is the first of four planned anthologies based on the seasons, with summer, spring, and autumn to follow. The idea is to put on paper the inherent essence of each season. This book is based on winter, so all the stories are set against a cold, snowy background. As the editor’s note declares, for winter, the intention is to capture "its darkest, deepest depths."

The tagline on the cover suggests that it is also a “folk and fairy tale anthology”. Thus all the tales have this fantastical setting that involves magic and mystique, spookiness and surrealism, romance and regret. The collection contains 17 stories from a variety of writing styles. Some are scary, some are funny, some are emotional, some are simply bizarre. The collection goes to show how fairy tales and folk tales are much beyond what people assume them to be. They aren’t always light and frothy. If you read the original Grimm’s fairy tales, you will know how dark and atmospheric they can get. This collection is more on those lines.

Most of the stories in this collection were wonderful. They gave me exactly what I look for in short stories – an impactful experience without compromising on the plot structure or character development. The few that I didn’t enjoy were more because they weren’t my type of stories rather than because of writing fallacies. What’s important is that none of the stories felt similar to each other or repetitive in their themes. It was like reading a multitude of books bound together in a single volume. There are a couple of retellings included in the line-up, and surprisingly to me, I enjoyed the retellings even better than I did the original stories.

My favourites from this collection are:
The Biting Cold - Josie Jaffrey - The second person made it a bit difficult to get into at the beginning but soon the story caught me by its frosty tentacles. Amazing imagination! - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫

The Match Girl - Rebecca F. Kenney - Retelling of the original fairy tale by the same name, darker and yet lighter. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Bharat Krishnan - Takes the urban legend of ‘Nale Ba’ from Bangalore and transfers it to a Christmas setting in the USA. I kind of expected the ending but I still enjoyed it. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫

A Pea Ever After - Adie Hart – ‘Princess and the Pea’ retelling, and what a fabulous job of turning that clichéd story into a sweet yet intriguing one. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

The Snowdrop - H.L. MacFarlane - Retelling of some folk tale I had read but I couldn't figure out which one. Kind of like Thumbelina, but with a twist. The story was superb but the end was a tad too hackneyed. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

The Best Girl This Side of Winter - Laila Amado - Lovely story but seems very inspired from the night watchers of Game of Thrones. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

The Snow Trolls - S. Markem - A story that keeps you laughing from start to end. No thanks to the fun, conversational style is written in. Perfect! - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Lord of the Forest - Katherine Shaw - Though it's easy to set where things were going, it's still wonderfully written. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫



Overall, this was a highly satisfying experience, and I look forward to reading the other three books of this season-based anthology series. Definitely recommended to short story lovers and fantasy lovers.

3.75 stars, based on the average of my ratings for the seventeen stories.

My thanks to Macfarlane Lantern Publishing and BookSirens for the DRC of “Once Upon a Winter”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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