The Players of Luck

4 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
In the city of Liavek, everyone has birth luck, but magicians can bind it during their birthday and use it during the year. Those who fail, die. The second in a shared-world fantasy anthology series.

Review
I just ran across a comment by Orson Scott Card that Liavek was an example of what's possible in a shared world anthology when everything goes right, and that seems pretty accurate. Certainly, the Liavek books and stories caught my imagination in a way that no anthology before or since has done. From a well thought out world to a collection of good writers to nicely (if lightly) interwoven stories, the whole thing just works well.

While this second volume isn't quite as effective as the first – it feels slighter – it's nonetheless a solid, self-contained collection of stories. It draws on places and events from the prior volume, but works just fine as a standalone collection. Interestingly, the stories I enjoyed most were not all from ‘known' writers – one I liked, Dry Well, was by Nathan A. Bucklin, whom I have not otherwise heard of.

In any case, another strong entry in the Liavek series.

PS For a while, it was possible to write your own stories in the world of Liavek through an open license from the editors. That now seems to have gone away.