So this is it, denizens. This is what has been the bane of my literary existence for quite some time. True, when the slog became too tedious, I stopped to read some books that I thought I might actually enjoy. Then again, I thought I would enjoy this anthology.
Oh so wrong was I.
I purchased this anthology almost 10 years ago at a charity book sale at my first Big Girl job. I purchased quite a few books that day, including several mint/near mint Stephen King books that I still haven’t read. I believe they might end up on the scheduled reading list at some point this year.
I honestly thought that this more than 700-page tome (which includes more than 100 pages of preface material) would be an inevitable favorite. True, I much prefer to read science fiction than fantasy, but I do enjoy a good fantasy romp now and again. Plus, I’m such a horror junkie that I figured there would be plenty in the mix for me to love.
Right off the bat, I think that the editors of this anthology confused the term “fantasy” with the term “miscellaneous,” because that’s what this collection screams to me. It comprises stories that I wouldn’t in a million years categorize as fantasy stories…and, yes, I do understand that this is already a wide-reaching genre, covering stories from Mary Poppins to His Dark Materials to Edward Scissorhands to Xena. Still, there’s something about several of the stories in this collection that strikes me as decidedly lacking in that fantasy je ne sais quoi. They simply seem to be lacking in anything that would be easily defined as belonging to any other genres as well. So just throw them in with the fantasy grouping. No one will notice.
Also, I’m either far more nonplussed by fear than I used to be, or there are hardly any horror stories in this anthology. I think the only story that really got under my skin in any way was Tim Lebbon’s “White.” Lebbon strikes a strong, disconcerting stride, leaving you descending further and further into a world designed to keep you uneasy, unsettled, uncertain.
Paul J. McAuley also provides a delightfully macabre tale with his “Naming the Dead”; “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman” by Steven Millhauser was indeterminably chilling; and Gemma Files’ “The Emperor’s Old Bones,” Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Halloween Street,” and Tia V. Travis’s “The Kiss” finally prove that sometimes anthologies do save the best for (near the) last.
Add to this the fact that Neil Gaiman makes two strong appearances, “Harlequin Valentine” and “Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story,” and it almost sounds as though I’m not too sure about the fate of this book’s future in my collection. The thing is this though: I recently purchased Gaiman’s Fragile Things, which contains both of the stories from this anthology. As for the other stories I mentioned, as much as I enjoyed them, I feel that the disappointment of the rest of this anthology still greatly outweighs any delight that these few non-Gaiman tales brought me.
Final Verdict: Be gone, oh ye tome of terrific disappointment. I’m tired of dusting you. I will, however, list your Table of Contents so that others might see what you possess and decide for themselves whether or not they’d like to give you a go:
- “Darkrose and Diamond” by Ursula K. Le Guin
- “The Chop Girl” by Ian R.MacLeod
- “The Girl Detective” by Kelly Link
- “The Transformation” by N. Scott Momaday
- “Carabosse” (poem” by Delia Sherman
- “Harlequin Valentine” by Neil Gaiman
- “Toad” by Patricia A. McKillip
- “Washed in the River” (poem) by Beckian Fritz Goldberg
- “The Dinner Party” by Robert Girardi
- “Heat” by Steve Rasnic Tem
- “The Wedding at Esperaza” by Linnet Taylor
- “Redescending” (poem) by Ursula K. Le Guin
- “You Don’t Have to Be Mad…” by Kim Newman
- “The Paper-Thin Garden” by Thomas Wharton
- “The Anatomy of a Mermaid” by Mary Sharratt
- “The Grammarian’s Five Daughters” by Eleanor Aranson
- “The Tree is My Hat” by Gene Wolfe
- “Welcome” by Michael Marshall Smith
- “The Pathos of Genre” (essay) by Douglas E. Winter
- “Shatsi” by Peter Crowther
- “Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story” by Neil Gaiman
- “What You Make It” by Michael Marshall Smith
- “The Parwat Ruby” by Delia Sherman
- “Odysseus Old” (poem) by Geoffrey Brock
- “The Smell of the Deer” by Kent Meyers
- “Chorion and the Pleiades” (poem) by Sarah Van Arsdale
- “Crosley” by Elizabeth Engstrom
- “Naming the Dead” by Paul J. McAuley
- “The Stork-Men” by Juan Goytisolo
- “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman” by Steven Millhauser
- “White” by Tim Lebbon
- “Dear Floods of Her Hair” by James Sallis
- “Mrs Santa Decides to Move to Florida” (poem) by April Selley
- “Tanuki” by Jan Hodgman
- “At Reparata” by Jeffrey Ford
- “Skin So Green and Fine” by Wendy Wheeler
- “Old Merlin Dancing on the Sands of Time” (poem) by Jane Yolen
- “Sailing the Painted Ocean” by Denise Lee
- “Grandmother” (poem) by Laurence Snydal
- “Small Song” by Gary A. Braunbeck
- “The Emperor’s Old Bones” by Gemma Files
- “The Duke of Wellington Misplaces his Horse” by Susanna Clarke
- “Halloween Street” by Steve Rasnic Tem
- “The Kiss” by Tia V. Travis
- “The Beast” (poem) by Bill Lewis
- “The Hedge” (poem) by Bill Lewis
- “Pixel Pixies” by Charles de Lint
- “Falling Away” by Elizabeth Birmingham
