books

Gregory Maguire

Books: Fantasy

Anthologies

A Wolf at the Door (2000), The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest (2002), The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (2004), The Secret History of Fantasy (2010), Happily Ever After (2011)

A Wolf at the Door (2000) edited by Ellen Datlow & 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.

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 Green Man : Tales from the Mythic Forest (2002) edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Published by Viking

The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (2004) edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Any time I see a fantasy anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, I'll often as not pick it up, because I know that it's going to be good. Usually 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.

All in all an excellent anthology. But I hardly expected anything less.

Published by Viking

Rating: 8/10

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.

Gregory Maguire's story "Scarecrow" was good, but not particularly to my taste, which perhaps explains why I've never been able to get into "Wicked." This continues the Oz theme, from the point of view of the Scarecrow as he develops awareness and eventually meets Dorothy. Not quite sure what it is I didn't like, because the story that was happening behind the Scarecrow meeting Dorothy was very interesting. Perhaps his writing style simply isn't my thing, .

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

Rating: 8/10

Happily Ever After (2011) edited by John Klima

Happily Ever AfterNot sure how I missed this when I first came out, but this anthology is full of things I love: authors whose books I love, stories based on folk and fairy tales–lovely!

The only thing I didn't like, is I wish the anthology hadn't ended on such a dark and depressing story.

Mind you, the dark and depressing stories were good–very good–but these tales ran very true to the original stories, with a not insignificant amount of rape and incest and general horribleness. Just like the original tales.

But there's also a good amount of humor as well, and I just wished the collection had ended with one of the funnier stories.

The introduction was written by Bill Willingham, whose writing I adore, and whose introduction amused me. Here's the very start of it:

I have to confess I'm no good at writing a proper introduction, because, I'm in the storytelling business, which means I get to lie for a living, and I've become well practiced at it. But introductions are supposed to be true. After so many years, I despair if I have much unvarnished truth in me.

Please note, as previously mentioned, the stories have rape and incest and lots and lots of sex in addition to evil stepmothers and other such killers.

There were also a fair number of very dark and very depressing tales that were very good, but that I didn't enjoy at all.

Published by Night Shade Books

Rating: 8/10

Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy (2013) edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

queen-victorias-book-of-spells

I love anthologies and I love historical fiction. So this should have been an automatic win for me.

Instead it was a two-plus year slog that I finally forced myself to finish.

Published by Tor