Somewhat mixed bag of stories with a central theme of education. Described by Charlaine Harris as creepy school stories they vary from pure horror to light and some of them caught my attention a lot.
The first story is by co-editor Chalaine Harris, it's a Stookie Stackhouse or Southern Vampire Mystery story, what starts out an ordinary visit to school to visit her god-son turns into a standoff with a crazed man looking for revenge. Small amount of supernatural involved but nothing too much. 3/5
Spellcaster 2.0 by Jonathan Maberry - oh this one made me sit up and take notice. What if you took the spellbooks from history and collated them and made a master spell, as a research project in college? What if things started going wrong with the records? This one was an interesting read about consequences and seriously creeped me out in the end, but a good creeped out 4.5/5
Academy Field by Donald Harstad is a story whose twist was vicious. Vampires and the effect they have on their victims and what lengths authorities will go to use those under their control to fight some of the evil. 4/5
Sympathy for the Bones by Marjorie M Liu is a story about old style hexing and it's pretty twisted, the student bests her teacher in style. 4.5/5
Low School by Rhys Bowen is about a girl finding herself at a new high school where it all goes wrong all the time. I guessed the twist in this one pretty early on. Not bad but outshone by others in this anthology. 3/5
Amber Benson's Callie meet Happy is about Calliope Reaper-Jones taking a class and excelling at it, in all the wrong ways. 3.5/5
Iphigenia in Aulis by Mike Carey is a zombie story with a difference. Melanie is one of the students at a school where they are all in cells and strapped into their chairs for classes. This one was interesting and scary and definitely different. 4.5/5
Golden Delicious by Faith Hunter is about Rick LaFleur who is doing his best to control his beast, learn how to be a special investigator and hopefully not get killed. I like this story, well done, with interesting characters. 4/5
Magic Tests by Ilona Andrews is all about finding a school and settling into it. Of course the school is not normal and nothing about Julie is ordinary. 3.75/5
An Introduction to Jewish Myth and Mysticism by Steve Hockensmith and interesting story of a man who deals with his academic critic in an interesting way. 3/5
VSI by Nancy Holder is about being trained to cope with Vampire crime scenes. 3/5
The Bad Hour by Thomas E Sniegoski is Remy Chandler and his dog Marlowe and obeidence school with a difference. 3.5/5
Pirate Dave and the Captain's Ghost by Toni L P Kelner is a story of a ghost with a grudge whose ways are reformed by a vampire and his mate. 3/5
Overall it was interesting and introduced me to some authors I need to read more of.
