I was really expecting something special after reading Publisher's Weekly's review. I thought the story was predictable and rather foolish. One football player sends six opponents off on stretchers because he knows physics? I also got a little tired of hearing how "brilliant" Tor was. Make the point and move on.

A couple of the stories are actually engaging. "A Sunday in January" and "Whatever It Takes to Win" are by far the best of the lot. I would like to have seen the latter flushed out into a full length novel, and I could actually see it being developed into a screenplay. The rest of the stories are barely readable. Baldacci's novella is nowhere near the level of his writing in his full length books.
PLUS, this is by far the WORST EDITING JOB I HAVE EVER SEEN. I am embarrassed for the authors that their work (as much as I didn't particularly enjoy the stories) appeared in this collection. Page 61 alone had four typographical errors, and it got worse from there. It seemed that every story had a different problem, from periods in the middle of sentences, to transposed 'that's and 'what's, to missing words, misspelled words, forgotten periods and appostrophes--it was atrocious. It literally made the book unreadable.
I wanted desparately to enjoy the stories, but the lack of effort put in by the oft-acclaimed Otto Penzler ruined the experience.
Do not buy this book. All it will do is infuriate you to think that the publisher and editor are profitting from such a shoddy product. Save your money. And if you have already purchased this book, spend another 37 cents on a stamp to send New Millenium Press and Otto Penzler a letter of complaint. But don't forget to proofread before you send it!

I bought this because of the blurbs on the jacket (from Publisher's Weekly and a host of celebs.) Since all of them pertained to the title story, it seems only fair to rate the book on that basis, even though the other stories vary from passable to, actually, quite enjoyable. But that first (title) story is, well, it's abysmal! The plot is inane! The dialogue resembles nothing spoken by living human beings anywhere on the planet! The prose is so many shades darker than purple that no sprectrometer could calculate it! And even the editing reflects all this. No less than three times is the word "though" rendered as "thought", several "the"'s become "he" and one assumes the printer ran out of "w" so left "was" as "as".
In short, this is either one of the most egregious examples of prose by a so-called professional I've ever seen, or I'm living in a parallel universe wherin the matters of style, substance, and grammar are reversed.

George Otto Simms didn't delve very deeply into the facts and fancies of Brendan's voyage in this book. The book is targeted towards "both child and adult," but Simms must think his adult readers to be fairly superficial in their curiosity about the Irish saint and seaman. He sticks to the legend, relating brief anecdotes about the monsters, friendly whales, condemned souls and other creatures and places of interest without ever looking very hard at the reality beneath the myth.

Brendan the Navigator may whet the appetite of a child to learn more about this amazing historical figure, but it certainly won't do much for anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history or legends about the man.