The Baen Free Library is a section of the Baen site where a good number of books is offered for free download, as a way to sample authors and their works. During one of my visits, I discovered the existence of a series of short stories collections, grouped by year of publication: as it often happens, anthologies can be mixed bags, but I found a few stories that truly caught my attention: in my next posts dedicated to shorter works I will review the ones that I liked most in this collection from the best of 2016.
TOUCHSTONE
A quite unexpected fantasy tale in a collection where I believed I would find only SF stories, and one that I enjoyed very much. It focuses on two young brothers whose father, one of the king’s trusted generals, leaves for war and never comes back, though he won the decisive battle.
As a form of compensation, the king decides to accept the two kids’ oath of fealty and enrolls them into the Cohort, the group of children from which one day will come Princess Cern’s closest advisers. It’s a move that raises more than one eyebrow, since the two youngsters – Pohut and Innel – come from a commoner family and have no backing whatsoever at court. Worse still, the Cohort, a sort of college for the chosen of the highborn families, is a place where the children should learn how to handle life at court – in other words, they tend to practice prevarication, ruthlessness and duplicity.
The two brothers find themselves out of their element in more ways than they can count, or, as the author describes it, “they were dropped into the world of the Cohort like a pine cone onto a thundering river”, but the elder Pohut – mindful of his father’s last words to him before leaving for war, “make me proud” – decides that they will face all hardships together and refuses to bow to the widespread propensity for nastiness, keeping a low profile and biding his time. I leave to you the pleasure of discovering the rest of the story…
This is a delightful, touching tale that I enjoyed very much and that has compelled me to look for more works from this author.
My Rating: 
Space and Sorcery 
For a second, I totally expected a story that would pit brother against brother, but your line about the two of them facing the hardships together made me rethink that initial assessment. I sure hope Pohut and Innel will continue fighting together, because a tale where brothers actually support each other vs. trying to beat one another up is something I’d really want to read!
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And you would indeed enjoy it! I liked Pohut immensely, how despite his young age he managed to take on the burden of being the strongest of the two, and the protector of his younger brother. This might have been the beginning of a great novel, and I would have loved it very much 🙂
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Yet another story to read! You are too good at writing rave reviews 😉
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Thanks! But it’s not me: great stories speak for themselves 😉
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Thanks for reminding me of Baen Library! Definitively a resource to use. Great review, too!
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Thank you! There are many interesting volumes there: I’m in the middle of a collection of dystopian shorts, and it’s a treasure trove of good stories 🙂
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I’ll have to go and check it out. There’s always space for yet one more to add on my TBR list 😀
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You’ve made me want to read this one – it does sound like it should be the beginning of something much bigger though.
Lynn 😀
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I had the same sensation, and wanted to see more of the story and of the brothers’ journey… 🙂
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I’m not familiar with this author, but the story sounds delightful. And unique to find a fantasy story from Baen!
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I do remember reading a Mercedes Lackey novella they published centered on the fae and their connection with our primary world, so I believe Baen is no stranger to fantasy, even though SF is indeed their primary genre 🙂
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