Red Phone Box ed by Salomé Jones + a Giveaway

Morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Red Phone Box edited by Salomé Jones, out now from Ghostwoods Books.

I have to start off by saying that I loved this book! I loved the structure (fairly short pieces) and the concept (twenty-eight different authors but all the stories are interconnected) and found that the overall execution was pretty phenomenal. While my fondness for short stories continues to grow (and I'm a pretty huge fan of them these days) I still really adore the idea of a themed collection. I think it makes it easier to get into even for folks who don't like shorts since the collection can somewhat be considered a longer piece. It's true, though, that there are a number of different characters and a slew of things going on in Red Phone Box so it's still very much a short story collection, just a little... different than usual.

Here's the publisher's description from Goodreads to give you a little bit of a better idea:

Shatter a mirror, and rearrange the pieces. What shapes will you find in the splintered glass?

Sinister forces roam London’s streets, skulking through the neon-lit rain. They are not alone. Haunted by memories of the man who abandoned her, Amber goes walking in the deep night. The phone box she enters takes her on a journey she could never have imagined, one in which the past and the future will be rewritten. Others follow in her footsteps, their lives intertwining, and the fate of the world hanging on their dance. Safran, pawn of unfathomable powers. Jon, who has lived and died and lived again. Gloria, who only intended to annoy her daddy. Cory, from a different world, on a desperate quest for allies. They and others will find themselves swept up as the playthings of gods who have managed to get along peacefully for millennia — until now.

Red Phone Box is a darkly magical story cycle, a network of interweaving tales by a dazzling range of masterful authors, including Gun Machine’s Warren Ellis. Let them take you to a very different London — one that hides on the other side of the fractured glass.

Red Phone Box is waiting for you…

It's amazing that with so many contributors this story cycle - as they call it - (I like that!) doesn't really feel disjointed. Instead, I found each author's piece flowed easily into the next. And with the stories as short as they are I was sucked into this collection much the same as I would be with a full length novel. Don't get me wrong, each contributor does have a very distinctive voice of their own but I think the central connection of the phone box itself really propelled each story into the next. There are also a few recurring characters and stories throughout the collection that gives it an overall momentum as well.

This is definitely one I recommend to anyone willing to try out something a little different - and a little dark. This is, as the cover says, a darkly magical read. There are bits of fantasy and bits of horror and lots of weird!

(I used a red phone box and survived!)

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here. I also encourage you to visit Ghostwoods Books's website to see more of their titles. I expect we'll see some great things to come from these guys!

Now for the giveaway: the publisher is offering up one copy of Red Phone Box for giveaway - US/Canada and no PO boxes please. To enter please fill out the Rafflecopter below before Wednesday, December 18.

a Rafflecopter giveaway