Witch High

By a bunch of people.

I adored this book. ADORED, people. It's up there in my favorite short story books.

With ah...one flaw. Which might be my own issue than anything else.

Anyway, the premise of this one is that all the stories take place at Salem Township Public High School #4, a.k.a. Witch High, where the witches in town go to school.  It's great fun. Here are the stories:

• "Domestic Magic:" Our nameless heroine's skills are in the domestic arts- she can't do major stuff, but she can cook like a fiend, clean a rat cage instantly, and add practicality to life. She's definitely NOT a precog... but then she starts having dreams about her enemy (who nearly beat her to death when he found out she was interfering with his ability to hang people by changing his rope) killing a bunch of kids in the lunchroom with black magic. Is this for real? She feels like it is...but her enemy is the son of the biggest bigshot in town and nobody believes her about what he did to her anyway. What's a girl with only practical magic to do? This was a very clever and gripping story, even if the name of the enemy freaked me right out (heh). Awesome work here.
• "Temporal Management:" Naturally, someone's gotta try a spell to give herself extra time to study for an exam, right? Naturally, that doesn't go as you'd think it should.
• "Boil and Bubble:" This was another gripping story. Kyle has the same magical talent- correlation (he appears to be able to move objects in time and space?)- that a famous witch criminal had. He's heard a LOT about how they have the same talent, and this gives him the creeps. Then he gets an invite into the school honor society. Kyle doesn't have the grades for it, and he's new in town, so does this have to do with his rare talent? Well, yes... You can perhaps guess the twist in this, but it's a good story anyway and pretty powerful.
• "Chemistry 101:" Kenina's the only fire witch around, and she's stuck in elemental chemistry with a bunch of water bitches being all cranky because her cute water witch lab partner likes her. When she inadvertently does magic in class, she gets in trouble...but was it her fault? This also ends with the most amusing homework assignment given by a teacher to a teenager ever. Heh.
• "Perfect Ten:" Kids involved in sports at Witch High have to play without magic- no cheating. Cassie the cheerleader, however, has noticed that another cheerleader seems to be slipping and having magic push her back into place on the pyramid. It's another case of "nobody's gonna believe you" here, but is it Alison's fault, or is someone else trying to ensure a win?
• "Another Learning Experience:" Awesome one. This is done from the point of view of the school guidance counselor, Thyra. Thyra used to be the biggest pain in the butt in school, until her guidance counselor and parents forced her to drink a karmic potion that will make her "work off her debt..." as a replacement guidance counselor. Guess how all of them get that job...This was fun to read.
• "A Family Thing:"  Chase's best friend Hannah's many-times-great-grandmother is one of those evil fairytale witches. And she's just blown into town demanding to haul Hannah off to Germany to teach her how to be a proper witch. Chase is determined to prove that Hannah's a badass enough witch in her own right...with the help of technology, perhaps.
• "Coyote Run:" At Witch High, everyone either gets a familiar by the age of 17, or it's never going to happen. And Izzy's the one kid left without one. This brings her to the attention of one Colin Finn, hot foreigner who works for some kind of "Inner Circle" (I'm still curious about this), and he recognizes her as someone else likely to have a coyote familiar like him. But having a coyote is darned tricky, and borders on darker magic. It didn't quite feel like it fit with the rest of the stories (see below), but was enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the use of Joan the stepmother. Neat lady.
• "You Got Served:" Here's the other story from the POV of an adult. What happens if you flunk out of Witch High and your dreams of Cordon Bleu school bomb out? You end up working at your old high school as the lunch lady. Josie is very, very depressed about working at Witch High, where nobody appreciates her work, they magic up whatever food they want to eat, and treat her like crap. Adding to her misery, she's got her Perky!Perky!Perky! cousin Cathy staying with her and always wanting her to look on the bright side. But an unexpected gift from Cathy just might flip her luck...I liked this one, especially the twist on it.
• "Remedial Magic:" What's a magical girl to do when her mom's dying and no healer can help? Saranne ends up recruiting her estranged cousin to help her do a spell to sustain the life of her mom when she's in a coma, even at the cost to herself. You can probably guess how this ends, but it's powerful and emotional anyway.
• "Homecoming Crone:" I enjoyed the friendship between Holly (earth/air witch) and Maria (new fire witch), as they team up to defeat the "Wicked" clique trying to befoul the Homecoming ritual. The two come from different religious traditions, but work together and hit it off. Also has quite a twist at the end.
• "Late Bloomer:" Late-blooming Abbi doesn't think she should be attending Witch High at all. She has yet to manifest ANY magical talent, and becomes the school laughingstock on her first day. But when she joins her brother and his hot, friendly friend in working on the school float, she finds a way to work things out for herself.
• "The Price of Gold:" Another late-bloomer tale. This Maria has powers so powerful that everyone's afraid of her and she's a social outcast. But when another kid (shades of Tyler from PS 238) with no magical powers, Michael, disappears, she finds a way to track him down where he's at and figure out how he can escape. Cool talents here, with a nice ending for them both.
• "The House:" Brianna wants to enter the parascience fair with her crush, Arthur. But when he disses her and steals her idea, she comes up with a new one: make a giant gingerbread house out of the fairy tales for real. This may be a bit trickier than she thought, but with the right partner, it could work...

There's not a boner in here. Some are particularly outstanding, but all are good fun to read. I highly recommend this one.

Okay, now that I've raved...here's my flaw. I'll admit this might be my own persnicketiness here. Because I have read the Bordertown books, various books/collections of short stories that take place in the same location, which is a mix between the faery realm and humanville. And in those books, everyone is working within the same world. You have the impression that someone's set up game rules, someone's drawn a map and everyone who writes in the world has seen the map. You know the good ends of town from the bad ends and the social stratas and businesses, and they're consistent from story to story. It really helps create that world.

So it makes me sad that in a book like this, which is essentially everyone working with the same idea, that an entire world of consistency wasn't created. (I guess you could claim they're all in different universes, but...eh, that's not as fun.) I can't help but notice that the principal/headmaster changes names/genders in every story s/he comes up in. Or that in one story there's a spell on the building to prevent texting and in another one kids are texting. Or the story where there's portals so that students can come in from all over the world. Or the story where everyone has to get a familiar before they turn 17. Though I do give points to Jody Lynn Nye and Bill McCay (well, perhaps the points should go to Bill, but clearly some collaboration happened) for bringing Nye's guidance counselor character into McCay's story. Yay!

But I can't help but think that this collection needed more collaboration and rules. At the very least, everyone should have the same principal cropping up in their stories if they all take place around the same time/universe. This is not to say some tie-ins seem to remain consistent between stories, but I suspect that might have been more coincidence than organization. That said, I did appreciate the similarities. The main characters of "Domestic Magic" and "You Got Served" clearly have related magical traits, and elemental witches are mentioned in a good chunk of the stories. Those are good examples of ways to tie things together in a more deliberate way- I could easily see the narrator of "Domestic Magic" becoming Josie from "You Got Served" had her life gone more wrong, for example. I also appreciated the theme of "Salem snobbery" and magical families through the ages running through some tales, as well as the various forms of "late bloomer" stories.

Anyway...I give this four and a half stars. Get this one, folks.