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When the Hero Comes Home

4.06 · Rating details · 101 ratings · 15 reviews

Heroes come in a thousand guises, and so do stories about them.

The only survivor of a war struggles to return to a home that doesn't exist anymore. A rebel leader loses everything she fought for and must start from scratch. A hero who has fought for her village her whole life must retire into obscurity without ever being known for her deeds. A starship returns to an Earth ...more

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Paperback, 296 pages

Published June 10th 2011 by Dragon Moon Press (first published June 6th 2011)

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Average rating 4.06 ·

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· 101 ratings · 15 reviews

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Jun 21, 2011 Leah Petersen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fantasy, sci-fi, short-stories, dragon-moon-press, women-in-sff, gay

It’s not what you usually think of, is it? What happens to the hero after it’s all over. But that’s the subject of the utterly fantastic anthology When the Hero Comes Home, edited by Gabrielle Harbowy and Ed Greenwood. I came to this knowing I’d like at least some of it, because Gabrielle is an incredible editor and I already love JM Frey’s writing. What I didn’t expect is that I would like--that I would love--all of it. (OK, total honesty, I have no stomach for zombies, so the little bit of tha ...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Erik Buchanan rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author)

Shelves: by-me

Full disclosure: I am in this book. My story, "The Evil That Remains" is the second one you will read. And you will read it, because once you pick up this book, you will be practically unable to put it down. Every story in here is a winner, and every one has its own take on what happens when the hero comes home after his adventures or battles or whatever.

I highly recommend this book, and hope you enjoy it. ...more

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Nov 27, 2011 BL834 rated it it was amazing

Shelves: first-reads

I won this as via Goodreads Giveaway so I really didn't know what to expect. Short story collections are always a mixed bag. Most editors try to have a little of something that appeals to everyone, which usually means I only really enjoy some of the stories. Not this book. Every single story made me go "wow, that was really good" at the least... and there was still a variety of genres. Dragons, magic, generation ships, werewolves, nanobots, ocean dreams and military psyche.

I will be on the look ...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Ira Nayman rated it really liked it

Continuing on my odyssey through anthologies of short stories...

I come to When the Hero Comes Home. The idea behind the anthology is really smart: what happens to the hero after the decisive battle. It's the sort of thing that you never think about, but, once the question is put to you, you smack your head and go, "Yeah. What does the hero do after the decisive battle?"

I must admit, I came to this anthology because a colleague, J. M. Frey, had a story in it, "The Once and Now-ish King." In fact, ...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Wolfkin rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: people looking for unique stories (Sci-Fi/Fantasy)

Shelves: first-reads, fantasy, favorites, sci-fi

The Hero has to me become the most stale and uninteresting of character archetypes. I wonder if that's because the hero is often the most explored of the archetypes associated with the heroic journey. Characters like the Villain and the Sidekick or even the Love Interest have in my opinion more potential for exploration. But we've seen the Hero in pretty much every form: Good, Bad, Reluctant, Unnamed, Anti-, Violent, Pacifist, Dumb, Honorable. Sometimes he's interesting, sometimes he's not. This The Hero has to me become the most stale and uninteresting of character archetypes. I wonder if that's because the hero is often the most explored of the archetypes associated with the heroic journey. Characters like the Villain and the Sidekick or even the Love Interest have in my opinion more potential for exploration. But we've seen the Hero in pretty much every form: Good, Bad, Reluctant, Unnamed, Anti-, Violent, Pacifist, Dumb, Honorable. Sometimes he's interesting, sometimes he's not. This anthology manages to rescue the Hero, as a character archetype, from the obscurity of over exploration by focusing on the part of the Heroic Journey least explored. Aftermath. The short review is simply that it works. It works so marvelously I want to tempt fate and ask for a sequel, just to see if it is possible to even do it again (Edit: Wahoo! There WILL be a second one - Link).

Before that I ask myself: How does one review an anthology? Is it appropriate to rate it as an average of the individual stories? Is it more appropriate to rate it on it's cohesiveness? Especially when there is a given theme as there is here? I'm not sure what answer if any is correct so I'll just try to explain why I finished this anthology with an extremely high opinion of it.

One of the most obvious ways to subvert a genre's expected tropes if to turn the Heroic Journey from one that ends in triumph and joy into one that ends in bittersweet or pyrrhic victory or perhaps defeat outright. Some of the best literature I've read does this and does it fantastically. Yet I rarely seek out stories that will leave the reader with a negative state of mind. The forward while appropriate did give me (and others) pause that this would be a collection of stories where heroes come home to find things negatively reflected with reality. Instead we get imagination, authors taking the most interesting written narrative format (the short story) and doing fantastically interesting and unexpected things with characters that are labeled "Hero".

Not every story has a happy ending. The first story actually fulfills exactly the type of downer ending that I mentioned previously yet even that story is told with so much imagination that the sheer wonder of a girl being returned to life is an instant favorite. The stories only get more varied from there. The only real common thread is that in every story there is a character that has the label "Hero" whether some of them are or are not, whether we or even they would consider themselves such.

Some of the stories take conventional heroic situations and put a unique element (of mythos or plot) to yield unexpected outcomes. Some take stories of unconventional and unexpected heroes like Lesson's Learned and The Blue Corpse Corps). A few rely on word gags that wouldn't work in video similar to video gags that wouldn't work in print as in Twilight Zone's "Eye of the Beholder". One of my favorites was a story steeped in Asian culture simply because it was a type of Hero that haven't been inundated throughout my culture.

The short story format is tight by it's nature. While few like Richard Matheson have been able to turn a short story into a leisurely paced single thought (Pattern for Survival), most are about taking a typical plotline and wording the tale in such a way that the reader can infer most of the previous (or following) events. These stories all pack quite a bit of plot line in such tiny narratives. The best part of a short story is rereading it again and again to watch everything unfold with the clues intact from the very beginning. A few of the stories towards the end were a bit complex and actual required rereading in order to understand the fullness of the story. None of them fall apart. Reading them again they're just as good the second time as they were the first, a few even better.

This anthology is a classic example of taking the boring and making it exciting. Turning the Hero from a worn out symbol into a unique character was almost a form of magic. It's for books like this that I reserve my five star ratings. How much more could be done with the Villain? The Villain when created correctly can be terrifying and/or seductive. The Hero is someone we want to love. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't but we walk into a hero story wanting to love him. The Villain on the other hand is an unknown. I can't wait to read the companion anthology "When the Villain Comes Home" because if a collection of authors can do this much with a Hero. How much more can they do with the Villain.

I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

Updated July 2013: Grammar/Spelling ...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Wise_owl rated it really liked it

I usually read anthologies as 'palette cleansers', sort of 'lighter' fare between heavier or at least lengthier works. In this case I was more than pleasantly surprised to find a collection of works that not only had an interesting theme, but sustained that theme in a variety of tones, all of them compelling.

The theme is that of the Hero coming home. After the Battle is Won. The Evil Vanquished, The Princess Rescued. what happens next?

The stories range from the depressing, to the uplifting, to ...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Penpilot rated it liked it

This is an anthology that I was very much looking forward to picking up as soon as I heard about its theme, answering the question of what happens to the hero after. It's a haunting theme with so much potential.

The result is a mix bag of stories that have varying degree of success in terms of execution. Some are very well written and strike the theme of the book right on the head. Others are well written, but the story barely skims the surface of the theme. And finally there are stories that fee ...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Saphirablue rated it really liked it

Shelves: alternate-history, dragons, fantasy, hurt-comfort, in-english, science-fiction, read-in-2012, anthology

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 31, 2011 Robert Gruett rated it really liked it

Great book, but then, I'm a sucker for collections of short stories. Lots of variety in terms of writing style and storyline concepts, with a few really good humorous tales thrown in for good measure. Most of the stories hit the nail on the head with the theme of the volume, though several just seemed to be fun stories that didn't focus too much on the aftermath of the hero's journey. Nevertheless, an excellent collection which I highly recommend.

-Bob ...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Lori rated it really liked it

Shelves: winner-goodreads

I won this book from Goodreads.
I enjoyed this anthology very much. Some of the stories surprised me, some made me think.

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Jun 01, 2012 Erin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: anthology, sff

Favorite: Ashes of the Bonfire Queen by Rosemary Jones

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Feb 24, 2017 Vanessa Ricci-Thode rated it liked it

As with most anthologies, there are some really amazing stories in here. But most of them are pretty mediocre. At least none were terrible.

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Oct 10, 2013 Nicole Lavigne rated it it was amazing

I loved this anthology. Normally I find with collections of short stories that there will be a couple that I love, a bunch that I enjoy, and a couple that aren't really my cup of tea. That was not the case with When the Hero Comes Home. I loved every single one of the stories in this collection, though there were a couple of favourites that stood out above the rest (quite the feat given the caliber of stories here). There are so many different takes on an interesting idea - what happens when the ...more

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Aug 16, 2011 Steven rated it it was amazing

Shelves: booksbyfriends, fantasy, pulps, science-fiction, anthology-collection

Amazing anthology of wildly different tales about the aftermaths or epilogues of heroes' stories.

I'll confess my favorites were by colleagues and friends (Steve Bornstein, Brian Cortijo, Erik Scott de Bie, Gabrielle Harbowy, Jim Hines, Rosemary Jones, and Ed Greenwood) though a few of these stories made me really want to sit down and share some beers with other authors. ...more

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Jun 25, 2014 Cindy added it

Very enjoyable anthology. Julie Kagawa's "Knights & Beans was brilliant and relatible to any adult who's ever tried to impress their parents. Todd McCaffrey's "Coward" was very well done. He has become a writer in league with his mother. ...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Steve Bornstein rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author)

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