For the record, Seanan McGuire's Incryptid story is a five star story. The rest run the gammit from mediocre to bad. A few stray towards good but not enough for me to even truly recall them only hours after finishing. Only had to skip one due to pure terribleness, however.

There are werewolves, zombies and steampunk to satisfy anyone's eclectic taste but overall, no standouts. This is a long anthology as well, compared to the new trend of four story anthology collections that take 20 minutes to breeze through.

My goal in every anthology is to walk away with a new author whose work I am interested in tracking down. Not possible with this collection. ( )

I really enjoyed some of the stories, while others were mediocre at best. I didn't keep detailed notes on which ones I felt which way about, and I won't be writing a more detailed review. I also didn't absolutely LOVE any of the stories. However, there were some fun concepts, some interesting plots and twists, and consistently good writing (technique) so this is certainly a compilation to pick up if it sounds interesting to you. ( )

Meh ( )

*This review is only for the InCryptid portion of the book at this time.*

I have not read anything by Seanan McGuire before today. I picked up Westward Weird to read the InCryptid part of the anthology since it's listed as 0.1 in the series. Being unfamiliar with the series, I have to say that I was very impressed with the story considering how short a story in an anthology has to be. I was drawn to the two main characters and intrigued by the type of story it was. A series about this line of work is definitely not something I've read before and I look forward to reading more, as I'm sure this was only an appetizer to what is sure to be a fantastic series in the paranormal genre. ( )

I disliked this book. Most of the stories were boring. I realize that short fiction doesn't have a lot of room for background, but most of the work here failed to impress. I picked it up for the InCryptid short story, which was good. The stories "Coyote, Spider, Bat", "Renn and the Little Men", and "Showdown at High Moon" were enjoyable as well. If "The Flower of Arizona" had been available anywhere else, I could have spared myself the misery of reading this book. ( )