I don't read a lot of short stories, mainly because with so many stories in one volume it's pretty much guaranteed that I'm not going to love all of them. Except this volume. I don't think there was a single story in here that I disliked. Some of them were a little hard to follow due to the format ("Henosis" is told out of order, "The Evaluators" is told through mission logs, and "The You Train" is a transcript of one side of a phone conversation), but none of them were bad. 

There are 22 stories in this anthology, so in an effort to not make this review ridiculously long, I'm not going to go through them one by one. Besides, I'd say the same thing about pretty much all of them. The concepts are unique and fascinating, the stories are well-written, the characters are complex and well-drawn despite the stories being short, and there's not a single bad story here. Some are less memorable than others, but there wasn't a single one that I didn't enjoy reading. 

The concepts are so diverse, too. There's witchcraft in the Jim Crow south, a chef learning to cook with magical ingredients, an alternate-history steampunk-esque version of New Orleans, AIs in a virtual world, space exploration, utopia, dystopia, apocalypses, hard sci-fi, science fantasy, dragons, goddesses, aliens, lucky charms, the personification of Death itself ... And, of course, humanity. Love, death, hope, fear, food, longing, pain, striving, overcoming, living and being and continuing on in weird and wonderful and sometimes frightening worlds. 

N.K. Jemisin packs so much into such short stories. I'm honestly blown away. Not only can I not pick a least favorite, I can't pick a most favorite. These stories are all just so stunningly good, in concept and in execution. I am so glad I read this.