Over the last few years, I’ve gradually shifted away from ebooks. It’s been part of a general return to physical media, an attempt to create a deeper sense of ownership over the art I love and collect. A Kindle is obviously more convenient than a paperback: It’s tiny, holds a huge library, and you can purchase new books instantly. But, much like with retro game cartridges, I find there’s a deeper connection formed with a book dug out of a stack in a used book shop versus simply choosing the next thing in a series from a menu on an e-reader. But I haven’t completely given up on my Kindle, and there’s one big reason — actually, there are lots of smaller reasons why.
Amazon’s Original Stories publishing imprint has steadily curated a huge collection of short story collections, which often feature big-name authors and are particularly great if you’re a fan of genre fiction. The most recent, which came out this week, is called “Magic and Mystery,” and it gathers a bunch of fantasy authors together and has them tackle puzzle box mystery stories, most of which involve a murder of some sort.
Like past collections — which have explored everything from the vast expanse of space to straight-up horror — the stories here are incredibly varied, and explore the theme in different and often clever ways. Travis Baldree’s Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk, for instance, introduces a detective character that I absolutely need to see solve other mysteries: an old woman who wears a full suit of armor covered in enchanted human appendages, and who never shows her face. Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Lion’s Tusk, meanwhile, involves a gruesome murder at a royal wedding, and features a clever and incredibly bizarre murder weapon unlike anything I’ve ever seen or read before.
Some of the most impressive stories manage to cram a whole bunch of worldbuilding into a short you can finish in one sitting. Heather Fawcett’s A Labyrinth of Honeybees introduces a fantasy realm rich with a long history of gods and competing religions, while The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious by Scott Lynch convincingly presents an ancient order of magic users who have been friends for centuries, and meet up every 13 years to hang out and show off their skills.
There are two great things about these collections. One, obviously, is the stories themselves. I’d recommend all seven shorts in “Magic and Mystery,” and some of my favorite authors have contributed to collections in the past. That includes the likes of Min Jin Lee (Pachinko), Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls), N. K. Jemisin (The Inheritance Trilogy), and Jeff VanderMeer (the Southern Reach series). There’s even an original six-part story from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan that Netflix is turning into a movie. Short stories are an oft-neglected form that both let you discover new authors and give established writers a space to get weird and experimental. Often, this results in some of an author’s most memorable work. Arthur C. Clarke published a lot of novels, but nothing has stuck with me quite like the haunting short The Star.
But what’s also great about these series from Amazon is the freedom they offer. Historically, short stories have been available either in magazines or as part of large collections. But on a digital platform like the Kindle, you have more choice for how you engage with the stories. While I think each story in “Magic and Mystery” is worth checking out, you don’t have to buy the whole thing at once. Each short is available individually, giving the collection a sort of episodic feel. It’s like watching an anthology like Black Mirror, where as soon as one episode is done, you can decide where you want to go next, or if you want to continue at all. The stories are also cheap enough — usually running a buck or two — that they stray easily into impulse purchase territory.
The drawback is that these shorts are largely exclusive to Amazon. There’s at least one exception — del Toro’s The Boy in the Iron Box is getting a physical release — but otherwise digging into these collections necessitates owning a Kindle, or reading through the app on your phone. For me at least, that’s been reason enough to keep my e-reader charged even as my shelves become stuffed with physical books.