Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling are editors of The Year's Best in Fantasy and Horror as well as several anthologies based upon Folk and Fairy tales. Seeing as how I am particular to folk and fairy tales, I enjoyed these, although I think I prefer stories that read like folktales, rather than reading a folktale rewritten for modern readers.
Snow White, Blood Red (1993)
I often have a hard time putting down interesting books. Which means that if I'm reading a book I real like before bed, I end up staying up past my bed time instead of falling asleep. One solution is to read non-fiction before bed. The other solution is to read short story anthologies. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of high quality anthologies out there. At least, not enough to keep up with the rate at which I can read.
So I decided to go back and reread Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's fantasy anthology Snow White, Blood Red. This book has a whole bunch of things going for it at once: it's edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling; it's got stories by Neil Gaiman and Charles de Lint; and the stories are retellings or reinventions of folk and fairy tales. Mostly fairy tales in this book.
Plus, a gorgeous cover by Thomas Canty.
For those who are unfamiliar with folk tales and fairy tales, many of the original tales--before they got cleaned up and given to kids--were filled with sex, (in addition to the casual violence of people getting eyes poked out or chopping off bits of feet or being shoved into ovens.)
In other words, these are not stories for children.
The Charles de Lint story, "The Moon is Drowning as I Sleep," is one of my favorites. It's a Sophie Etiole stories, however, like all of Charles de Lint's short stories, can be read and enjoyed without knowing anything of Newford. Another favorite is Neil Gaiman's "Troll Bridge." I love the idea of paths that take us off to hands hidden just beyond our sight. And I love the way that we are manipulated by the main character and the story.
I also particularly like Patricia A. McKillip's story "The Snow Queen." I reads to me precisely as a version of the tale involving grown-ups instead of children would read. Except of course that I wasn't really sure about how things would end. Some of these stories end as you would expect if you're familiar with the story, and so go off in unexpected directions, so I wasn't sure where this tale was going.
Jack Dann's story, "The Glass Casket," was another story I really enjoyed.
There were a handful of stories I didn't particularly care for, but there weren't that many. And there were different reasons why I didn't like the stories. Lisa Goldstein's "Breadcrumbs and Stones" is excellent, but I found it terribly depressing. Melanie Tem's story, "The Changelings" bothered me so much I couldn't stand to finish it. (I did vaguely remember how it ended.) It was just too awful.
Also, the stories I liked less tended towards horror. This book is a collection of fantasy and horror (as are many Ellen Datlow-Terri Windling anthologies) so I expected that there were going to be at least one or two stories that I don't care for. So it didn't really bother me.
As best I can tell, this anthology is still available, so if you like short stories, this is an anthology you won't want to miss. However, if you like anthologies, this is probably one you already have sitting on your shelves.
Rating: 7/10
A Wolf at the Door (2000) edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
I love folk tales and fairy tales, and I love the idea of stories that have been told and retold, and then finally captured on paper. The problem of course, is finding an author who is good at translating stories from an oral tradition into something that works well written.
There's something wonderful about a well-told short story, and I think that the best short stories in the world are folk and fairy tales.
Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are very good at finding authors who can take these stories and retell them, and they always put together wonderful anthologies. They brought together thirteen writers for this collection of retold fairy tales.
Although one or two of the stories I found to be just okay, others were nothing short of excellent. It also seems as if the stories were I liked the best were towards the end of the book. For me the collection started out okay, and then got better and better the more I read.
Delia Sherman's story, The Months of Manhattan is a retelling of one of my favorite folk tales, and although the moral remains the same--always try to have something nice to say--I was somewhat disappointed by the change in the ending. I thought that Janeen Webb's Ali Baba and the Forty Aliens did a better job modifying a familiar story without making it a bit too neat and pat. And considering some of the other stories in this collection, I'm not quite certain why the The Months of Manhattan ended the way it did.
I was quite pleased by Katherine Vaz's The Kingdom of the Melting Glances, as it was based upon stories that had not heard before. The stories are, I believe, of Hispanic tradition, and most of my folktale collections are European or Asian, so I will definitely need to search for some new collections to read.
Although I don't have much of a ear for poetry, I enjoyed Neil Gaiman's poem Instructions, which was a compilation of the secrets from different stories. A Wolf at the Door, the story from which the title of the anthology was taken, was very good--especially the twist.
And I really liked Garth Nix's Hansel's Eyes. It was one of the tales that kept closely to what I like best about folk and fairy tales--the fact that things aren't always neat and nice.
Not that I think the purpose of these stories is necessarily to scare us, as much as it is to make us pay attention to what is happening around us.
Rating: 7/10
The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (2004)
When I see a fantasy anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, I'll almost always pick it up, because I know it's going to be good. Very good. This volume however, has the added bonus of poems by both Charles de Lint and Neil Gaiman.
Needless to say I snatched it up--even thought it was in hardback--when I came across it.
These faery tales are based not upon the fairies of Disney but upon the faery of folktales. As they say in the introduction:
In this book about our good neighbors, we've asked a number of our favorite writers to travel into the Twilight Realm (an ancient name for the land of Faerie) and to bring back stories of faeries and the hapless mortals who cross their path. "No butterfly-winged sprites," we pleaded. "Read the old folktales, journey farther afield, find some of the less explored paths through the Realm.
It would be hard for me not to love this book.
And I wasn't let down. Tengu Mountain by Gregory Frost was perfect. It reminded me of any number of Japanese folktales without actually being any one of them.
Catnyp by Delia Sherman I quite liked; it reminded me a bit of a Charles de Lint story. In Catnyp, Faerie exists parallel to our world, and includes a New York Public Library that reminds me a bit of Terry Pratchett's library, only without the L-Space.
The Price of Glamour by Steve Berman was the type of tale I like best--not set in this time, and not really set in this reality. I don't have anything against fantasy set in our time and our reality (I do love Charles de Lint after all!) It's just that for me tales set in other realities are more of an escape. And often I really want to escape from this reality.
Bruce Glassco's Never Never is fantastic. I'd never thought about how Hook felt about the part he had to play in Never Never land before, and why he was so bitter about it.
One of my favorite stories was The Dream Eaters by A.M. Dellamonica. Part faerie tale, part hard boiled detective tale, it combines my favorite types of stories. I was, however, a little confused by her faerie and how time ran there.
All in all an excellent anthology. But I hardly expected anything less.
Rating: 8/10
Swan Sister (2003)
I don't think I've come across a short story collection put together by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling that I didn't like, and Swan Sister is no exception to the rule.
The stories are fairy tales retold, by a variety of authors--many some of my favorites.
The collection opens with Jane Yolen's story "Greenkid." I cannot at all think of a specific story from which this tale strung, yet it contains multiple elements of folk and fairy tales, especially the idea of never sharing your name with a faerie, for names give such creatures power over you.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman once again reminds me why I love her writing so much as she retells the story of Bluebeard in "Chambers of the Heart" from the point of view of the young bride. I love how she manages to tell an entire tale in only a short story. "Chambers of the Heart" was probably the story that kept closest to the original tale, of a man who murders his brides and keeps their bodies in the basement. Yet knowing the tale made the story no less compelling.
In other other direction, WIll Shetterly's "Little Red and the Big Bad" was as far from a traditional folk tale as you can get, yet he managed to completely recreate the feel and idea of the original tale--especially in the ending.
"The Girl in the Attic" by Lois Metzger kept the feel of a fairy tale, with its step-mother / step-daughter relationship, however, I loved the way the story turned out.
I know why Katherine Vaz's story "My Swan Sister" was last--because by the end my eyes were too blurry with tears to continue on. Very impressive for a story only twelve pages long. Although this story deviated the most from the traditional fairy tale, it was still excellent. And I particularly like how the story made me see and feel the idea of experiencing each day to its fullest.
All in all, there wasn't a weak story in this collection.
Like A Wolf at the Door, this is a collection for children and young adults. However, the stories are so well written that adults should find them just as appealing. If you like folk and fairy tales, I highly recommend this collection.
Rating: 9/10
The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales (2007)
edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
I love short stories. Aside from collections by Charles de Lint, I best love anthologies by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling best. Their books are like comfort food, and I save them up for when I’m sick or feeling low.
In the same vein as The Green Man and The Faerie Reel, Datlow and Windling have this time collected stories about tricksters, and they’ve got some of my favorite authors in this collection: Charles de Lint, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Ellen Kushner. As usual, they manage to collect stories by some of my favorite story tellers.
For those who are Charles de Lint fans, “Crow Roads” is not a Newford tale, but an excellent story nevertheless, of a girl dreaming to escape her small, restrictive life. There is little more I can cay, other than as expected, this was an excellent story.
As with many of her stories, Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s “The Listeners” is a dark at times, but it’s the dark of the truths from which we all try to hide, rather than from imaginary monsters. And of course being a trickster tale, all’s well that ends well.
I didn’t recognize “Honored Guest” as an Ellen Kushner story initially, until the dialog started to feel familiar and the name Campion came up. Then I belatedly realized that was the Ellen Kushner story. In a way, almost wish I hadn’t recognized the name, because part of me felt the story was stronger for not being tied to that world.
But only a very small part of me.
Besides those there, all the stories in this collection were good, and most were excellent. I especially enjoyed “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche” by Delia Sherman, which is somewhat of a deal with the devil story, except it’s not really the devil, though for all he does, he may as well be acting in the devil’s stead.
Another deal with the Devil story was Holly Black’s “A Reversal of Fortune.” Despite the gross out bits (considering eating candy all day is enough to make me feel ill), was an excellent story.
Some other favorites were Richard Bowes’ “A Tale for Short Days” where a trickster comes back again and again to revisit one family. “Black Rock Blues” by Will Shetterly was one story where the trickster was the main character who did the outwitting rather than being outwitted, as was Elizabeth E. Wein’s “Always the Same Story.”
Another favorite was “The Constable of Abal” by Kelly Link. The story ranged near and far and I was never quite sure where it was going, but that was ok because I was glad to be along for the ride.
If like short story collections, or trickster tales, then you will want to read The Coyote Road. It has stories from many of my favorite writers, and as with all their collections, I was delighted to discover new authors for whom I’ll be on the lookout.
Rating: 9/10
Books by Ellen Datlow:
Anthologies : Snow White, Blood Red (1993), White Rose, Black Thorn; Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, The Green Man : Tales from the Mythic Forest (2002) The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (2004) A Wolf at the Door (2000), Swan Sister (2003)
