Must Love Hellhounds by Charlaine HarrisMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
***2021 Dog Days of Summer***
It's time for my summer theme and this year I have chosen to read books that include canine companions. This collection of four short fiction pieces feature hellhounds, sometimes as companions, sometimes as obstacles to be dealt with. It seems that Cerberus, the three headed hound of the underworld, is the model for many authors' visions of a hellhound. (It amuses me that Cerberus apparently means “spotted" which suggests that Hades named his dog Spot.)
Hades & Cerberus (Wikipedia)
I was familiar with three out of four of the authors in this collection. The story by Charlaine Harris was not to my taste at all. I find her fiction based in the American South to be far superior to this purely fantasy setting. Plus I'm not a fan of stories where the characters visit Hell. Not an easy location to make believable.
Nalini Singh writes good romance and is one of the more skillful writers of sex scenes. She doesn't seem to have the same inhibitions as other authors and writes unselfconsciously. The story included here is part of her angel series, rather than the Psy-Changling series. Her angels have no religious connotations and would probably horrify those with strong religious convictions.
The Ilona Andrews story features Kate Daniels' BFF, Andrea. I had missed this story which details Andrea and Rafael becoming a couple and Kate & Andrea learning more about Teddy Jo. It was nice to fill in the blanks, though I did feel this story wasn't one of the Andrews' best. Perhaps I'm just hot and grumpy.
Meljean Brook's story was interesting. She has thought up original abilities for some of her characters. I found that I'd already marked a couple of her novels on my TBR list, so I may have run into a short story of hers before. This one ensures that I'll be sampling one of her novels soon.
A fast & fun summer read. Glad I found a copy of it.
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