This was a good collection of short stories. They all kept my attention and some gave me glimpses into very interesting worlds I wouldn't have minded exploring a little longer.

I also discovered new authors and put some of their novels into my TBR pile, so this anthology accomplished its purpose.

I wrote and rewrote this review before sitting down to do this post. I wanted to list all the authors and a word about all twenty of the stories but realised that it was not feasible. Each story in this collection is relatively short, and if I mentioned something about each, this review might actually turn out to be bigger than required for the volume.
As the title suggests, each story focuses on a villain or a kind of villain. The writers and the locations, and the characters are all pretty diverse. Even the plot lines varied from historical fiction mode to actual fantasy. There were a few I liked better than others, but I enjoyed almost all of them. There were hard choices made by people who do not walk the paths created by the majority of the population.
The writing was consistently good throughout the anthology, something that very rarely happens. They were also consistently heavy and dark (except for the story of the cat of the supervillain). The introductions to the collection, as well as the variety, made it an entertaining read. Some of the tales are part of a bigger series by the authors, I had no prior knowledge of any of them. I had it on my virtual shelf for quite a while before I sat down with it. Once I did- it took me a short while to work my way through it.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley, the review is entirely based on my own reading experience of this book.

Sometimes short story collections work me, sometimes they don't.
In theory, this should've been my jam, judging by the themes and topics: fantasy and sci-fi, anti-heroes, straight-up villains, scoundrels and "the scum of the earth".. it just wasn't something that kept me on my toes, intrigued.

I found that the stories just didn't attract me that much. I do love short stories and Mercedes Lackey one was very good just the rest didn't get my attention

In this anthology we find a set of different characters and situations where nothing is as it seems.
I personally liked the fantasy concepts more than the scifi, but that's a too personal preference.
Some were very dark and interesting.

Howard Taylor introduces this collection of blackguards, fools, thieves, traitors, mercenaries and their ilk quite appropriately. Then begins the tales! You have thieves working on pulling off a heist or a mad scientist needing a cat to complete his image. There is a swindler running for his life and a mother wanting the best for her child. Then there is the mercenaries on a secret mission and a son of the North wind getting in over his head. And the book ends with the unwitting sister giving up what she seeks to protect most. As Howard Taylor stated in his intro "It's really, really good." Read the book, enjoy the engravings and keep in mind the cover!

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this collection of tales!

"Knaves" is a fantasy anthology. I chose to read it because it includes a story by one of my favorite authors, Mercedes Lackey. The stories in this book focus on anti-heroes, soundrels, and various "bad people". In fact, in the introduction, Howard Taylor calls this "a good book about bad people." The point, I suppose, is that if you want a bunch of stories with happy endings, this is probably not the book for you. But of course in real life, not everything has a happy ending!

Normally I love anthologies of this type, and I did enjoy a few of the stories in this collection. However, most of them I either disliked or just didn't find very interesting or entertaining. Overall, I found this book to be a disappointment.

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me a free e-copy of this book.

As a general rule I love fantasy anthologies - they let me have a taste of not just Authors I normally love to read but also of Authors that I have not read before .

This was the case with this book - however I was disappointed at how many I did not enjoy , could not get into .
There were a few that caught my imagination - Hunger in the Bones , the Hand of Virtue , Knaves by Three Things .... but these the rarity

I will keep trying these anthologies even if there is only one gem to be found - it would be one I had not read before and therefore worth it overal

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

trigger warning
<spoiler> being experimented upon, grief, lethal illness, torture, being orphaned, gore, racism </spoiler>

This is the best short story anthology I have read in a long while. Every story falls somewhere on the speculative fiction spectrum, either sci fi or fantasy, and I liked especially that there is such a diverse range of settings, characters and plots. While I love high fantasy in a medieval-esque world with all my heart, I don't want an anthology where it feels like each and every plot could have been set at the same place, with always the same set of characters, and only the names change.
It was fun to discover where it would take me next.

My favourite story was from the perspective of the Bond villian cat, and he was not amused as the next person to adopt him was a <i>teenager</i> of all persons, with no budget to speak of, and gross cleaning habits. Which means no cleaning habits. But he came around as he met the teenager's little sister and was shown the super evil weapon that's build in the gross basement, which might end police brutality or all brutality. Black Lives Matter was directly referred to.

My second favourite story also had roots in real world events, namely hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico, and an entity that might have been involved.

The third story that was interesting to read was by Lian Hearn and the Clan of Otori world, but that was mostly interesting to me because I read the first three or four novels of that series ages ago, but in German translation, and now I got to experience the writing without middle person.

I will check out some of these writers for sure, and other words by the editor, because this was all I wanted. And I wasn't even in the mood for short stories, because I rarely am and have to push myself or I will ignore that type of format.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

2.5/5

I had high hopes for this one but finished disappointed. Most stories are mediocre and uninspiring and I didn't find a single standout short story. I love anthologies, but this one is rather mediocre.

Knaves is (by my count) the third anthology in a series of anti-heros, blackguards, and scoundrels. Released 1st Oct 2018 by Outland Entertainment, it's 287 pages and available in trade paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
One reason I prefer collections and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging. It's spare and the author doesn't have a wealth of wordage to develop characters or the plotting. Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love collections because if one story doesn't really grab me, there's another story just a few pages away. These 14 stories were a mixed bag; there were some standouts, a few middle-of-the-road, and only one I wasn't engaged enough to finish. I read it more or less cover to cover, which is unusual with me for anthologies; I generally hop around.

I picked up this title because of my familiarity with some of the contributors (Mercedes Lackey, Cat Rambo, Anton Strout and others - at least 75% of them will be familiar to most readers of SF/F). I was surprised to find that the stories which really engaged me and kept me enthralled were from the authors with whom I hadn't developed a previous reading relationship. It's always wonderful to find authors to follow, and for this reason alone, this was a useful reading pick.

A short search online leads me to believe that these are all previously unpublished stories. The publisher and other reviewers have provided better précis than I could. I will say that a couple of the high points of this collection for me, personally, were ones which I saw panned by other reviewers (Old Sol Rises Up, as one example).

It's an entertaining and worthwhile collection. I'm fascinated (and happy) to find that it was a kickstarter project. I have been admittedly worried about the future of indie publishing given the current world situation and knowing that really top shelf fiction can successfully be crowdsourced is reassuring.

Four strong stars, several 4.5 - 5 star stories here.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I've read a couple of really great short story anthologies on NetGalley lately, but this one was something of a dud, which is a shame because the idea is really cool.

There were a few stories that I really enjoyed, but mostly I was indifferent to them, actively disliked them, or got to the end and said 'what was the point even?' -- not my usual response to fantasy stories.

Even with the few stories I really enjoyed, my overall feeling about this collection wavers between 'meh' and 'avoid' so I can't really recommend it.

I generally don’t care for short stories. I prefer a novel or novella length story at the shortest, but I really enjoyed this collection! This collection caught my eye based on the cover picture and title. Like any short story collection some are better than others but on the collective whole this was a really fun set of stories to read. If the theme of the collection sounds fun to you I think you’ll enjoy it.

another great anthology in this series, the stories were great and I really enjoyed how each story worked together. I look forward to more anthologies from this company.