To Hold the Bridge by Garth Nix

I finished this one back in the beginning of April. It's another collection of short stories, 19 this time, and like the other Nix collection I read only the title story is an Old Kingdom story. The collection is broken into 5 thematic groups such as Science Fiction or Coming of Age.

Overall this is a strong collection with a large variety of work. Some of Nix's ideas are a little weird, but fun. There's even a story in here based on the Barsoom stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs and one based on the Hell Boy comics.

My favorites were:

1. "To Hold the Bridge" - An Old Kingdom story, this is really a coming of age story where a kid of meager means takes a chance and joins 'The Bridge Company' which involves the older timeline of the books. He learns and thrives there, but is plagued with self doubt.
2.  "A Handful of Ashes" - this was a weird case of being more drawn in by the world than the plot line. It's a magic heavy world dominated by schools of magic. Somewhat dark and gritty, the story focuses on scholarship student who works for the school in exchange for her studies.
3. "The Quiet Knight" - A LARPing story. LARPs, or Live Action Role Play, are an odd little sub-section of the table top role play groups except that they make and dress up in their characters gear, get people to be monsters, and got running around parks like mad fiends. Personally I think it sounds like a lot of fun, but they don't end up in too many pieces of media. In "The Quiet Knight" the protagonist's 'game-life' intersects with real life and it's. . .sweet.
4. "Peace in Our Time" - Science Fiction this time about a world where everyone has tiny pieces of technology inside of them and the people who maintain such are elevated to the position of priests, except it's all fallen apart apparently. However we are getting the story through a somewhat befuddled head of a ancient survivor of the civilization's collapse.
5. "Vampire Weather" - so, it's fun when literature is really social commentary. This story is about vampires, clearly, but it's really about the anti-vaccers. I'm not sure it's ultimately a very good story but I enjoyed the concept.

This is worth having for the title story alone.