Jason Waltz’s Reviews > Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters > Status Update

Arrg! The best story of this ensemble just became a lame duck. Clines' "The Banner of the Bent Cross" was awesome and brought a terrific character and sound sidekicks with an exciting premise and great vision with looming mystery and tense expectation...only to chicken out and simply stop without truly ending or resolving anything. Not only wasted my time and dashed my excitement, left a great character useless. Sad.

"Operation Starfish' from Peter Rawlik is well-written and well-told, great voice and POV. Doesn't redeem this anthology, but helps it go down a bit easier.

"Of the Earth, of the Sky, of the Sea" by Tracy & Genesse is elegantly marvelous, a wonderfully told tale of honor and loss, tradition and future, samurai and mystic. Read and enjoy it.

Ed Erdelac's "Devil's Cap Brawl" is a rip-roaring hoot of a heroic tale. That right there was fun.

Interesting despite being predictable stories from Jaym Gates and Shane Berryhill. And both of far, far better quality than the chosen openers.

Jonathan Wood's "The Behemoth" is a stunningly deep, beautifully sad, profoundly written story that just blows away its companions.

Among the authors present is Howard Andrew Jones, and I did look forward to his storytelling. I was curious as to his approach, so imagine my surprise at discovering a Dabir tale! I wondered how such would fit alongside what I'd read to this point. The answer: not only is it a delightful addition to the Dabir collection, it is by far the best tale thus far in this anthology. For me. It would fit in a RBE title well.

I will admit to not being the target audience for this title. I bought it in support of the original creators/publishers. I could not care less about kaiju, but there were several quality authors involved, so I thought it'd be tolerable. The stories have essentially delivered on my low expectations and, frankly, are simultaneously boring and ludicrous.

Been reading this pretty much since it came out at the end of 2014. Obviously not very compelling or memorable at this pace. I don't recall the merits of any particular story but I do recall not thinking very much of 2 of those read, that's for certain. It's anthology reading month, so I'm trying to clean out some of this malingerers.