Readers of a Datlow/Windling anthology have certain expectations: that the thick volume will include stories by writers both known and new; that headpieces for each tale will be Vess’s sinuously evocative drawings; that a fully formed introduction will lay out the collection’s parameters; that notes and a bit of biography will follow each story; and that an excellent bibliography will be included. The 22 writers include Jane Yolen, Ellen Kushner, Midori Snyder, Tanith Lee and Peter S. Beagle, among others. Delia Sherman’s “The Selkie Speaks” allows a seal maiden to tell her own tale; Terra L. Gearhart-Serna brings a trickster’s sly voice and a little Spanish into her first published writing, “Coyote and Valarosa.” Marly Youmans turns to glassmaking and the Blue Ridge Mountains for the intensely romantic “The Salamander’s Fire.” The three interwoven motifs of these tales, inspired by many cultures, are beings who shape-shift between animal and human of their own will, who are transformed as a curse or enchantment and who are both human and animal yet wholly neither. Rich reading that meets the editors’ high standards. (Fantasy/short stories. 12 & up)
