books

Kij Johnson

Books: Fantasy

Anthologies

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2004), The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales (2007), The Secret History of Fantasy (2010)

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2004) edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Kij Johnson  - At the Mouth of the River of Bees

Published by St. Martin's Griffin

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.

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.

Published by Viking

Rating: 9/10

The Secret History of Fantasy (2010) edited by Peter S. Beagle

This is an interesting collection of short stories, by some very good authors. I can't say all the stories were to my taste, but they were all very good.

The final story was Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" which I very much liked. Slightly sad, and yet I found its ending lovely.

All in all, an excellent collection of stories, albeit one I don't recommend reading when you're depressed.

Rating: 8/10