The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities: New Stories About Mythic Heroes

As someone who’s read each book in the imprint so far as each came out, these short stories brought me back to worlds and characters I haven’t seen in a while. All the short stories were entertaining, but three in particular stood out to me as extraordinarily well done: The Loneliest Demon (Sarwat Chadda), My Night at the Gifted Carnival (Graci Kim), and My Life as a Child Outlaw (Rick Riordan). I’ve noticed that there isn’t a ton of information out regarding what each short story is about, so to give some very general outlines without spoiling anything: 1. Sal and Gabi go on an adventure filled with inter-dimensional unicorns and talking toilets that I have no other way to describe than pure fun 2. Aru Shah and her sisters learn a bit more about why love is a powerful and terrible emotion 3. Zane and Brooks face a fascinating monster the gods don’t want to discuss. (This one left me dying to find out more!) 4. Min attends a school session and finds herself in the middle of several harrowing training exercises 5. Gum Baby makes an appearance, and is hilarious as usual while fighting those who want us to forget history 6. Nizhoni and her friends spend the day at the All-Nations Assembly powwow, but something’s gone terribly wrong 7. Pao and Dante make another trip to the riverbank, chancla included of course 8. Sik encounters yet another demon, but the dread Rabisu might not be exactly what he expects. (Truly hilarious! My favorite of the stories) 9. Riley and Hattie get a prequel (the only one in the anthology!) at a magical carnival 10. Rick Riordan masterfully retells the childhood of a mythical Irish hero. It left me craving more and desperately hoping for a standalone. I’m reluctant to give much detail about this one, because even the main character’s name is a spoiler at this point! But it’s set in ancient Ireland and felt very much like a more fleshed-out version of a traditional myth or fairy tale. I would highly recommend this anthology to those who have read and loved the standalone books from the same authors. I would cautiously recommend this anthology to select readers who haven’t read the standalones. If you don’t want spoilers, be very careful in picking up this book. Most of these stories take place after the events of the standalone and will contain heavy spoilers. You can safely read the last two stories - those by Graci Kim and Rick Riordan. But if you haven’t read any of the standalones and you’re not too worried about spoilers, there really is no better way to get an idea of which authors’ books you may be interested in trying out. There are so many books now in the Rick Riordan Presents imprint that it can be daunting to figure out which books you’re interested in reading, and this is a great way to do it. Keep an eye out for dimension traveling unicorns, a...

Sal and Gabi! Aru Shah! Tristan Strong! Paola Santiago and MORE!!! This collection was tons of fun! I had a blast reuniting with all my favorite characters from Rick Riordan Presents as well as a few new ones! This collection is a must read for any RR fan! I would recommend having read at least some of the books that these characters are from. If you have read these stories you are in for a treat! It was so fun to read about some of my favorite characters in short adventures! The only problem is you're going to want more!

Pleased with the transaction, gift for grandson, he was surprised! :)

I got this for my son who is a huge Rick Riordan fan. According to him, you have to read the other Rick Riordan presents books in order to understand this one.