The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Terri Windling (Editor), Charles Vess (Illustrator)

From Barnes & Noble

Perhaps the most winning aspect of this delightful assemblage is the editor's willingness to accept "twilight realm" diversity. The fairies and other creatures who populate this anthology refuse to be trampled into restrictive definitions; they rumble into existence in any number of shapes, sizes, habits, and habitats. The Faery Reel contains rustic songs and poems; tales of elves, goblins, and futuristic fairies; and adventures involving Captain Hook and the New York Public Library digital catalogue. The contributors include Neil Gaiman, Patricia McKillip, and Delia Sherman.

From the Publisher

Faeries, or creatures like them, can be found in almost every culture the world over—benevolent and terrifying, charming and exasperating, shifting shape from country to country, story to story, and moment to moment. In The Faery Reel, acclaimed anthologists Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have asked some of today’s finest writers of fantastic fiction for short stories and poems that draw on the great wealth of world faery lore and classic faery literature. This companion to the World Fantasy Award–winner and Locus bestseller The Green Man is edgy, provocative, and thoroughly magical. Like the faeries themselves.

Publishers Weekly

New sequels help kids get through lazy summer days. Faery world fans will find much to savor in The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, a companion to their The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest. Among the 19 tales original to this collection, Gregory Frost's "Tengu Mountain" and "Foxwife" by Hiromi Goto both add flavor with a Japanese setting. Tanith Lee's contribution, "Elvenbrood," one of the darker stories, focuses on the child-stealing tendencies of faeries, while Steve Berman's more conventional "The Price of Glamour" scatters glamour (the magical essence of faeries) and dust amid the streets of Victorian London. Other contributors include Neil Gaiman, Holly Black and Gregory Maguire. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Angela Carstensen - VOYA

This varied and exciting collection of short stories and poems featuring contributions by Charles de Lint, Tanith Lee, Holly Black, Patricia McKillip, Gregory Maguire, Neil Gaiman, and more, is introduced by Windling with an extensive survey of faeries in a variety of cultures and periods. Although she highlights the fact that faeries are found in the folklore of every continent, extra attention is given to British literature in her essay. Highlights of the collection include Tengu Mountain, a story of Japanese demons by Gregory Frost in which a young man's visit with his aunt turns into a horror story where nothing is as it appears. In The Faery Handbag by Kelly Link, a young woman searches for her Grandmother Zofia's lost handbag and her boyfriend who has disappeared into it. In the final story, De La Tierra by Emma Bull, an assassin designed to destroy faeries in Los Angeles realizes almost too late that the world, and especially the environment, would be a better place with more faeries in it. This collection is a natural for young adult fantasy fans. Most stories feature teens, and the variety of fascinating worlds and characters will keep young people reading. The tone of the collection is mature enough to be intriguing, and none of the stories are predictable. These stories are not children's fairy tales but darker works that comment on our world by creating parallel ones. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 204, Viking, 528p., Ages 12 to 18.

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-The editors state in their preface that fairies are as individualistic as humans, with a variety of names, shapes, sizes, customs, habitats, and local histories. This collection includes fairy songs and poems by Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, and Nan Fry; and stories about fairies that live in magical handbags, elves in the Philippines who bewitch and sicken young girls; and futuristic urban societies where fairies siphon people's dreams. Twenty writers contributed tales, including Tanith Lee, Gregory Maguire, Patricia A. McKillip, and Ellen Steiber. Delia Sherman's "CATNYP" concerns a feisty changling girl who helps a changling boy return to the "real" New York City from the parallel fairy world where they were both raised. In the story, the New York Public Library's automated catalog called CATNYP is a real lion and a library page is literally an animated piece of paper that retrieves books. In Bruce Glassco's "Never Never," Captain Hook and his pirate gang find themselves repeatedly resurrected for the amusement of their eternal foe, Peter Pan. Gregory Frost's scary Japanese tale, "Tengu Mountain," is about an evil goblin that disguises itself as a priest or monk to attack and kill unsuspecting travelers. All but one of the 20 stories are new and each one offers an intriguing look at many different kinds of fairies. Teen characters are often featured, but even the selections without them will appeal to fantasy lovers.-Sharon Rawlins, Piscataway Public Library, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

This is a treasure chest. Open it and revel in its riches. The editors asked their authors to re-imagine Faerie in the present time, or search its more dimly lit pathways, and they have responded with bountiful imagination. The title piece is a poem by Neil Gaiman, but most of the others are longer pieces like shards of stories you want to hear more of. Jeffrey Ford limns the heartbreaking tale of the fairies who live in the sandcastles children make; Ellen Steiber's "Screaming for Fairies" sketches the lineaments of desire. Bruce Glassco finds a different voice for Tinkerbell and Hook in "Never Never." Tanith Lee's "Elvenbrood" is chilling. Gregory Maguire, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Patricia McKillip, and Emma Bull all enchant. Delia Sherman's "CATNYP" is both funny and deeply clever, warming the cockles of anyone who has ever had dealings with a research library, especially New York Public's. Wondrous. (Fiction. YA)

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