Sci-Fi & Scary

Hardened Hearts was a well-put together anthology covering a wide range of stories falling under the sole – but never simple – subject of ‘love’. Reading it, I was never quite sure what the next story was going to bring. I can’t say that I claim to understand the point of all the stories involved in the volume, but I appreciate that the editor tried to make sure that as many aspects as possible were represented.

Because of the topic and the fact that many of the stories strayed from my comfort genres, I can’t say that I was super crazy as about Hardened Hearts. The Death’s Realm anthology was definitely more my style. However, there were a few stories in Hardened Hearts that I absolutely loved, and only a couple that I disliked. Most of them were interesting, but just didn’t strike the right chord for me. The stories were all well-edited, the range of characters displayed was wide, and it was obvious that a lot of thought had went into the curation. This is an anthology that should grow to be very popular within it’s target audience.

I wanted to briefly talk about my favorites in Hardened Hearts. The first one was Dog Tired by Eddie Generous (who happens to be the editor as well). It was well-written, the disease caught me off guard, and I liked the twist on fighting the infection. It was followed by another winner in my eyes – The Pink Balloon by Tom Deady. Normally I hate child death in stories, but this one was done right. Then there was Burning Samantha by Scott Paul Hallam, which made me have a rather serious amount of the sads for the main character. Finally, I really liked Matchmaker by Meg Elison, though some of my affection for the story does come from the fact that I thought it was perfectly placed. It was nice to end the anthology on an up note.

Overall, Hardened Hearts was a pleasant reading experience and none of the stories are ridiculously long, so they’d make for good lunch time reads over a week or two. Can’t say I loved it, but it was well-done nevertheless.