Icing the Puck

Isabo Kelly, Stacy Agdern,
Kenzie MacLir
Genre: 
Paranormal

This anthology of three novellas is about a fictional hockey team, the New York Empires, and in a twist, not one of the stories is about the Captain—though he is a character in all three of them. Do not let the cover fool you into believing these stories to be straight up contemporary jock stories. These are paranormal—not in the zombie, vampire, ghost sense, however. These tales are about professional sports players, with a delicious, yet relevant to the main plot, touch of "extra" abilities in a main character. Sometimes the hockey player is the one with the abilities, sometimes it's the heroine, but always it's something that is internal, unique to just that person. Which makes falling in love rather hard, but reading about it so much fun.

 

The authors have overlapped events in each book; for example, the first novella has a player getting knocked out cold—that player is the hero of the second tale though his story starts before that event—yet each story can be read independently and still work as a fully-fleshed novella. The level of coordination and attention to details needed to pull off smooth characterizations, spot-on settings, and clearly detailed personalities while still showing each author's unique voice is truly amazing. Anthologies are hard to do; one of these novellas has noticeable line editing issues throughout it. While this does not affect the wonderful arcs or personalities, it does affect the rating of the whole. The authors know their hockey, but never let that get in the way of the relationships and characters. This hockey team will have all sports-loving readers falling over themselves to get to know them better!

 

Julie York