Think of it as an early Christmas present to yourself. The perfect bedside book—as long as there’s a light left on in the...
There are pleasures aplenty in this latest doorstopper field-report from the world of unicorns, wizards, altered mental states, and magical transformations.
Inevitably, however, this ambitious gathering of 37 stories, ten poems, and a single nonfiction entry (critic Douglas E. Winter’s argumentative essay “The Pathos of Genre”) is somewhat uneven. Datlow and Windling aren’t really critics; they’re enthusiasts—and it does sometimes seem as if everything not written by Ann Beattie or Ed McBain meets their criteria for inclusion. (Is everything that’s not realistic therefore fantastic? It’s a legitimate critical crux.) That said, who wouldn’t want to encounter in one conveniently capacious volume such knockout stuff as the inexplicably underrated Delia Sherman’s atmospheric “The Parvat Ruby” (which is far superior to her wry poem “Carabosse”), newcomer Elizabeth Birmingham’s imaginative ghost story “Falling Away,” and consensus grandmaster Patricia A. McKillip’s superb “Toad” (which wryly adds sexual panic and species discrimination to the subtext of a classic fairy tale). Other deft retellings of familiar stories include N. Scott Momaday’s Native American fable “The Transformation,” Wendy Wheeler’s sensuous “Skin So Green and Fine,” and Gemma Files’s ingenious hybrid “The Emperor’s Old Clothes.” Old hands Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, and Steven Millhauser appear in fine form, and the estimable Neil Gaiman contributes both an unusually clever trick story (“Harlequin Valentine”) and a hair-raising portrayal of a preadolescent serial killer whose path to fame and fortune coolly updates Horatio Alger (“Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story”). A rather similar story, Michael Marshall Smith’s “What You Make It,” raises merry hell with the legend of the Pied Piper and the image of the kindly old granny. Also not to be missed: Steve Rasnic Tem’s beautifully written “Halloween Street,” Thomas Wharton’s Borgesian “The Paper-Thin Garden,” and April Seeley’s nicely conceived, poem “Mrs. Santa Decides to Move to Florida.”
Think of it as an early Christmas present to yourself. The perfect bedside book—as long as there’s a light left on in the hallway.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26274-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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