I really struggled to get into this book and ultimately did not finish it. My enjoyment of the individual stories was hit or miss.

This book is everything and more. I love Seanan so much. I’m always hooked. I couldn’t put it down. Now that I am back to reading again this feels amazing to read books that is inspiring and makes you feel things and this is what this does for me. One of my favorite authors hands down.

I really enjoyed the storyline in world building in the novel. I also really liked the characters. I thought this was a solid read, and I will definitely be reading more by this author.

Seanan McGuire's anthology spans years and universes and has a really, really wide emotional range. There are stories about the last tuna in the world. About Neverland. About mermaids. About Innsmouth. They're all tinted with McGuire's bright brush, and they're all worth reading. These are fantasy treasures, every one.

I really do enjoy short stories, and when a book is a collection of short works by one of my favorite fantasy authors I'm really interested.

Laughter at the Academy is a collection of short works by Seanan McGuire, author of the October Daye series, Wayward Children series, Ghost Roads series, InCryptid series, and more!
Like nearly every collection or anthology of short stories I've ever read, there are some stories I really liked, some that didn't do anything for me, and some that were a pleasant enough way to pass some time but maybe not particularly memorable.

My two favorites were "Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves" and "The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells." "Down, Deep Down..." bears a resemblance to Into the Drowning Deep (as written by Mira Grant - McGuire's pseudonym) - one of my favorite dark fantasy novels. In the short story, we are in the future where all-female submarine crews see women being modified to become mermaids.

"The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells" makes McGuire seem quite prescient as the story is about a pandemic. She writes in her introduction to the story:

I also believe that the modern world’s disdain for quarantine
and willingness to support structures which encourage its violation
is going to do a great deal of damage one day…and that with new
diseases emerging regularly from a variety of sources, that day may
not be particularly far in the future.

The story is copyright 2011 and the introduction was probably written in 2018 or 2019. This story also connects to a series of books written by McGuire as Mira Grant (the Parasitology series).

I didn't care at all for "#connollyhouse #weshouldntbehere" - a short story told through a series of tweets. Style over story just never works well for me.

I think that one of McGuire's strengths is her ability to plot a story and the natural progression or growth of her characters. These things are more easily seen in longer works and sometimes, due to the nature of a short story, we don't see these things as often in this collection. We see it best in "Down, Deep Down..." - which is the longest of the works here.

But it is fun to see the growth in McGuire's craftsmanship and her ability to really capture the nuances of individuals.

Although McGuire notes in her introduction that "All these stories take place outside my pre-existing universes..." I've already noted a connection to two series, and other stories, such as "Driving Jenny Home," which feels like it could be a Ghost Roads story, have a tendency to lean heavily toward some of her pre-existing universes, even if they don't fall directly in.

Looking for a good book? I wouldn't necessarily recommend Seanan McGuire's Laughter at the Academy for first-time readers of Ms McGuire, but for those who enjoy her books, this is a really variety pack - a little bit of all the different styles she writes.

This book contains the following:

Introduction
"Laughter at the Academy: A Field Study in the Genesis of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder (SCGPD)"
"Lost"
"The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells"
"Uncle Sam"
"Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage"
"Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust"
"Homecoming"
"Frontier ABCs: The Life and Times of Charity Smith, Schoolteacher"
"We Are All Misfit Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War"
"The Lambs"
"Each to Each"
"Bring About the Halloween Eternal!!!"
"Office Memos"
"Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare"
"Driving Jenny Home"
"There Is No Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold"
"In Skeleton Leaves"
"Please Accept My Most Profound Apologies for What Is About to Happen (But You Started It)"
"Threnody for Little Girl, With Tuna, at the End of the World"
"From A to Z in the Book of Changes"
"#connollyhouse #weshouldntbehere"
"Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves"

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Seanan McGuire has long been one of my favorite authors to the point where I don't even pretend I can be unbiased about her work, but I enjoy that i don't have to try. I love her stories. A book of short ones is a little like filling up on sample spoons from an ice cream store... I want more, but every single bite is still so delicious.

This collection of Seanan McGuire’s short fiction is not only a rich, delightful, heartfelt adventure in itself, but it’s also a journey back through the author’s creative life. Many of the stories are akin to the pencil sketches of great painting masters – exploring shapes and ideas. Themes recognizable from her novels recur in different forms. Yet, because McGuire is a skillful storyteller, each entry is complete in itself, requiring no prior acquaintance with the principles and characters.

This is an enjoyable short story collection. A warning that many of the stories involve disasters, including world-ending apocalypses, many of which explicitly involve children. As a parent quite a few were actually difficult to read - but of course YMMV. But all the ideas were interesting and the stories were well-written.

Laughter at the Academy is Seanan McGuire's first full length collection (there was a previous Newsflesh collection published as Mira Grant) and it takes everything you like about McGuire's novels but distills it downs into shorter and more experimental snacks. You see the shape of McGuire's longer fiction as well as some of the horror of Mira Grant - but with these stories Seanan McGuire gets to play with more ideas and a wider range of nasty than she fleshes out in her novels. At turns horrifying and heartwrenching, Laughter at the Academy is a delight.

Seanan McGuire is one of my favorite authors, and it is a treat to see so much of her short fiction in one place (most of which I haven't had the opportunity to read before). Each story is complete unto itself, and yet they so often leave you wishing they could be explored further. But I suppose McGuire is busy enough as it is....

This collection of short stories by Seanan McGuire shows just why she's one of the best urban fantasy and horror writers today. I particularly enjoyed the Wizard of Oz story and the Twitter story.

As a writer a have a complicated relationship with short stories. I struggle to write them, trying to figure out the exact slice of story to slice thin enough and in exactly the right place to actually be a story.

An interesting realization I had quite late in this fantastically, weirdly delightful collection is that McGuire likes to structure the story around characters who have already made the decisions that are the backbone of the plot, and the story is the slow reveal of those decisions and their consequences being revealed to the reader.

Every single one of these stories, whether they followed this pattern or not, whether I loved them or not (and there were only one or two that I didn't) made me think, and feel, and admire the skill with which they were written.

A+++ collection.

Normally I avoid short stories and novellas like the plague. For most of my life they just haven't done anything for me. Seanan McGuire on the other hand, somehow writes engaging short stories with enough plot and substance that I'm not left feeling completely cheated out of a full novel. It's fantastic that these short stories have all been compiled into one book!

This is a delightfully eclectic mix of short stories in different genres. I love being surprised by a twist or a different take on an idea, and this collection was fun. I highly recommend it!

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed are my own.

This book was perfectly timed! I'd just been on a quest to read all of Seanan's short stories and Laughter at the Academy collected so many of them in one place for me! And I really loved having the short introduction from Seanan herself to each story.

Looking through the table of contents, I'd figured I'd just skip the stories I'd already read. But that proves to be impossible with Seanan's work, so I enjoyed them again, framed so nicely by the introductions. There were definitely stories I liked more than others, but I truly loved them all.

"The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells" was one of the first of her short stories I read and it just cements how talented she is at horror. (Follow that up with the mold stories from "The End Is..." anthologies and you'll know why the CDC is unnerved when she calls.) I'm not usually one to root for the villain, but Seanan does a great job of making them relatable and putting you in their mind.

"Driving Jenny Home" was a sweet one to enjoy in light of Sparrow Hill Road. I went into it thinking I knew what was coming, but it was yet another new take.

"Lost," "Uncle Sam," "Homecoming" (second shout out to Sparrow Hill Road!), "Each to Each," and "Down, Deep Down" are perfect examples of Seanan's unique brand of eerie.

There are also a few of her non-traditional format stories present: "Bring About the Halloween Eternal!!!,""Please Accept My Most Profound Apologies,""From A to Z," and"#connollyhouse." Leave it to Seanan to make these odd mediums work and tell a story. (I was personally not a huge fan of #connollyhouse. I feel like it would have done much better as a "typical" story and may have laid some groundwork for Spindrift House. And also four people livetweeting something that's also being broadcast live? And how did they retain service? I usually completely "buy in" to her work, but that one was a little "what is happening here??" for me.)

The collection wasn't without a few nods to Lovecraft (who I still haven't actually read) as well: ""Lady Antheia's Guide" and "Down, Deep Down." Both are amazing and atmospheric. (I will always be on board for Seanan's mermaids!)

An unexpected favorite was "Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust." I'd never been interested in The Wizard of Oz before, but it left me wanting to read Baum's original work and more of the world she created.

Overall winner for me was "From A to Z in the Book of Changes," though. Who else could take 26 different single-word prompts and turn them into one story? Major bonus points for it calling to mind Good Omens, in its charmingly quirky prophetic nature.

If you've never read Seanan McGuire, this is an excellent place to start, as it provides a taste of her work in several different genres. And if you've read her and love her, this book collects many of her one-off short stories for you to devour. (Trust me, some of them are hard to track down!)

Most of the stories collected here have shown up in various anthologies but one is from her Patreon. I’m a fan of her stuff and there were a few that I hadn’t read before. None of the stories here are set in any of her current series and yet so many of these stories are almost begging for more stories in their setting. A great collection for fans of short stories or fans of McGuire’s writing.



Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

Laughter at the Academy is a collection of 22 short stories written by Seanan McGuire, these stories have all been published before but this is the first time they've been collected together and each has an introduction from the author explaining why she chose to include it in this anthology. None of these stories are linked to existing series (like October Daye or Incryptid) so you don't need to be familiar with Seanan's other books to enjoy them.

This really was a fantastic collection of stories, it includes everything from urban fantasy, science fiction and horror through to a couple of retellings and even a steampunk story thrown in for fun. There are hints of Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz alongside stories of multiverses and mermaids so it really does have something for everyone.

As with any short story collection some stories will resonate more than others but overall there were far more hits than misses and there were a lot of worlds or characters that I'd love the chance to spend more time with. My particular favourites were The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells (a story about a scientist who is fed up of trying to explain the risks of bioterrorism), Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage (which reminded me a little of the Wayward Children series), Please Accept My Most Profound Apologies for What Is About to Happen (But You Started It) (about a social misfit who loves dinosaurs) and Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves (the story of a grad student who has been carrying out an unexpected experiment).

If you're a Seanan McGuire fan then you're sure to love this collection, and even if you're new to her work then this would be a brilliant place to start. She has such an incredible imagination and always manages to throw in surprising twists that turn things upside down. I would love to know where she gets her ideas from!

This was a somewhat uneven collection of short stories written by Nebula-award-winning author Seanan McGuire. Although she is one of my favorite authors, this was not my exactly my cup of tea, though the stories were well-written.

This book is a collection of short stories written by popular fantasy author Seanan McGuire. Some of the genres in this anthology include fantasy, horror, and steampunk.

I liked all the stories in this anthology. The story with the epidemic was very scary. I liked the story that was similar to Peter Pan, where the kids get to go on flying ships and stay young. Glad the author included different genres to fit everyone's tastes.

"There were realities the human mind was never meant to withstand, pressures it was never meant to survive. Knowledge is like the sea. Go too deep, and the crushing weight of it could kill you."

I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Subterranean Press. Trigger warnings: Literally everything. Death, parent/child death, suicide, torture, body horror, severe illness, severe injury, explosions, guns, needles, abduction, blood, spiders, mental illness, grief, war mentions, car accidents, drunk driving, bullying, some ableist/sexist/homophobic language.

Laughter at the Academy is a short story collection spanning nearly a decade of Seanan McGuire’s work and blending horror, fantasy, and science fiction. All the stories are independent of her other series (Wayward Children, October Daye, etc.) but occasionally circle back to similar topics. Readers familiar with her work as both McGuire and Mira Grant will recognize doorways to other worlds, ghostly hitchhikers, epidemics, haunted houses, and murder mermaids. The collection also branches into new territory, from dinosaurs and spooky dolls to fairytale retellings in Oz and Neverland.

It’s hard to talk about a story collection, harder still when that collection has more than twenty stories in it, but I’ll do my best, knowing there isn’t time to cover everything. In sum, this is a very good collection, and fans of her work as either McGuire or Grant will find something to enjoy about it. There’s hardly a story in it that I didn’t like; however, there were also very few that I loved, which may be a product of trying to invest myself in twenty-two distinct worlds in, like, three days. My bad. Hands down, my favorite story (and the one I wept the most over) was “Driving Jenny Home,” which is similar to her Ghost Roads mythology. I never knew I needed a ghostly lesbian hitchhiker story in my life, but I totally did.

So many of the stories remind me of other McGuire/Grant things I’ve read. “Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage” is a clear offshoot of Wayward Children, but it’s sad enough that I’m glad it didn’t get its own novella. “The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells” is a condensed, more brutal version of Kingdom of Needle and Bone, and “#connollyhouse #weshouldntbehere” and “Down, Deep Down, Below the Waves” combined could make up In The Shadow of Spindrift House. “Laughter at the Academy” has mild Final Girls undertones, and “Each to Each” is the distant cousin of Into the Drowning Deep. Far from feeling derivative, the stories are a comforting tread into familiar topics, and I like seeing which ideas stay with a writer so much that she never really moves past them. McGuire is in her element here.

She ventures into new (to me) territory with a couple of solid horror-ish tales about creepy dolls with “We Are All Misfit Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War” and “There Is No Place for Sorrow in the Kingdom of the Cold”, with the latter being more developed. I especially liked “Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare”, which is sort of like Little Shop of Horrors meets The Day of the Triffids, if the main character was the carnivorous plant. (As always, I’m on the side of the monsters.) I also really enjoyed “Homecoming”, a Viking-esque afterlife story, and “Threnody for Little Girl, With Tuna, At the End of the World”, a sad but poignant tale about grief and the end of the world.

I’m on the fence about the fairytale retellings. Of the two Peter Pan ones, “In Skeleton Leaves” is stronger than “Lost”, and like the Oz story, “Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust”, it feels less like a short story than something that’s been excerpted from a larger piece. So many of McGuire’s stories feel like they want to be novels, and if/when she ever gets around to writing those, I’m there. There’s a ton of potential for world and character building.

A couple of the stories play around with formatting: “Bring About the Halloween Eternal!!!”, “Office Memos”, “From A to Z In the Book of Changes”, and “#connollyhouse #weshouldntbehere”, which swap traditional narrative for things like memos or tweets. I’d like to teach them in a classroom about genre. Of all of them, I think “#connollyhouse #weshouldntbehere” works best, since the limited character count and staccato format lend themselves easily to suspense and the gradually building horror of the story. (But I’ll also admit I have no idea what was going on in “From A to Z In the Book of Changes”). If you’re a McGuire/Grant fan, it’s not to be missed. If you’re not, you might be once you’ve finished.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.