Warriors

To quote from George R.R. Martin's introduction "People have been telling stories about warriors for as long as they have been telling stories." I imagine that for most all who enjoy genre fiction, it's the timeless tradition of the telling of warriors' tales that is the heart of our passion. In fact, reading Martin's introduction titled "Stories of the Spinner Rack" is enough to put Warriors on any bookworm's reading list. For many of us who grew up in Small Town USA during the 70's and earlier, before the big book stores and Amazon.com, we know exactly what he was talking about. It's a very relatable trip down memory lane that primes the reader for the adventures that follow.At 736 pages, Warriors is practically a tome. It contains twenty tales, without a bad one in the bunch. I'm not going to summarize each individual story, since that information is already easily available from the publisher and from harder working reviewers than me, but the list of authors is the most impressive I've ever seen for similar books. These are great stories from most all the genres, with more than a few of them being fantasy and science fiction, but also historical fiction, a western, a war story, paranormal, and even a dog story.My experience reading Warriors was a re-acquaintance with some favorite authors that I haven't read in way too long: George R. R. Martin, David Morrell, Tad Williams, Robert Silverberg, and Lawrence Block. It was also an introduction to many authors I've had an interest in but haven't yet given a read: David Weber, Naomi Novik, and Diana Gabaldon, to name only a few.I'm one of the rare odd-balls who didn't care for Robin Hobb's FARSEER trilogy, but her story about a Roman prisoner of war, "The Triumph," was one of my favorites in the book. James Rollin's story about a pit-bull dog actually produced a lump in my throat. David Morrell's "My Name is Legion", about two comrades in the French Foreign Legion during WWII, pulled at my heart strings. George R. R. Martin returns to Westeros some centuries before A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE for another adventure of his Hedge Knight -- for fans of the series, that's all that needs saying.Warriors is an excellent sampler of genre fiction by the some of the very best. Readers won't find a better way to try new genres, revisit past favorites, and still enjoy tales the likes of which are currently on their reading lists.

A couple were “iffy”, but the majority were well with the read. I especially liked the last, by Martin. A good assortment of approaches to the theme.

I enjoyed the short stories written by the different authors. It provided several genres and some I don't really gravitate towards normally. I appreciated the introduction to the author at the beginning of each story because it gave me an opportunity to purchase their work for more reading fun.

I didn’t like the narrator, very boring. Only 4 short stories I thought were engaging including JRR’s, Hobbs, Gabaldon, kitty author.

I enjoyed this anthology a lot, even though I am not in general a fan of military fiction per se. The selection of authors and stories was eclectic and interesting, and the stories ranged from pure adventure to very psychological indeed. While most of the "warriors" were men, as I expected, women did appear, and even one dog in a story that made me cry.The range of styles went from very realistic (historically based or not), through alt-history, into sf and fantasy. One of the sf ones had a twist in it which was unexpected, but also seemed rather a deus-ex-machina ending; in my opinion, the twist was not foreshadowed enough previously, though it was pretty clever in its way. I did enjoy almost all of them to some extent- almost no duds!This hardcover book, though, was physically hard to read because of its sheer size and weight.

This book is filled with stories that are not too short or too long. There is also a wide variety of stories to keep you interested; from the distant future to the fall of Carthage; every story is a page turner.

Nice read

I bought this on a whim, in search of something good to read on my Kindle, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this story collection. The stories come from several genres in style and writing, with war and warriors the focus. What surprised me was the fact that while some stories will be more or less to the taste of the individual reader, there isn't a single dud in the entire collection. All of these are strong stories and good stories with riveting plots and interesting characters. I own several good story collections in various genres, but none with the consistency of this collection. Other reviewers have detailed the stories, I will just add that any reader of science fiction, adventure or fantasy, or even military fiction, will find a lot to interest them here and may find some new authors to read, a side benefit of short story collections. Highly recommended to many different readers.

This is a very good collection of stories to find new authors to read. I recommend reading the other versions, rogues and dangerous women. However, this contains a story from the knight of the seven kingdoms which made me feel a bit cheated as I'd already read that, and the story takes up 100+ pages of this book. But that doesn't really matter because the book is worth it anyway.

I was recently introduced to George Martins "Song of Fire and Ice" books series. This book is one of a number of anthologies that contain a story that talks about characters and events that pre-date the main events of the set of books.

not as good as his other books but interesting.

great book

I'm not generally a fan of military fiction, but I've read a number of anthologies edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois and I tend to really like their picks as editors, so when I heard about Warriors, the huge new anthology of stories written especially for this book, I decided to give it a try. Turns out I've been dipping in and out of it for several months now; although all the stories are excellent in their own way, I found that reading story after novella after novellette about warriors, however uniquely defined that term might be in a given tale, was just too much. As a result of the scatter-shot nature of my reading, I lost track of which were my very favourites, but I will note that the stories range from historical fiction by the likes of Steven Saylor, Robert Silverberg and Diana Gabaldon to fantasy tales from Peter S. Beagle, George R.R. Martin and Naomi Novik, to science fiction David Weber and Gardner Dozois, among others. I admit to not reading one story, "The Pit" by James Rollins, because it had to do with training pit bulls to fight; but I found myself surprised at how much I enjoyed this anthology overall. I especially like the fact that the authors represent a lot of different genres of writing, from the realms of mystery, historical fiction, fantasy, sf, horror and straight-forward war stories; that cross-genre inclusivity is, I think, an excellent development in the realm of original anthologies and I really hope it's one that continues, either from these editors or from others. Recommended!