The Solaris Book of New Fantasy [Mass Market Paperback]

As a lover of short SF and Fantasy, something I've missed over the past several years has been a regular series of unthemed original anthologies, so I've been very happy to see a few new such books in 2007, including two from Solaris, edited by George Mann.

That's the good news. The letdown, at least in the case of this book, is that it is somewhat disappointing. For one thing, I thought several stories did not work independent of their various series novels. In the case of Hal Duncan's "The Prince of End Times", related to his novels Vellum and Ink, at least the reader can fall back on Duncan's quite remarkable prosodic inventiveness, but the story as a story didn't mean anything to me. Janny Wurts's "Reins of Destiny" is weaker still -- nothing that happens (and not much in the way of a resolved story does happen) means anything at all to someone who hasn't read the series of which it is a part. Much better is Juliet McKenna's "The Wizard's Coming," which seems probably to feature characters who have appeared in other stories, but which is a complete story, and a good one, on its own: about a small country threatened by raiders who hire a wizard for protection. Likewise, T.A. Pratt's "Grander than the Sea" is a good story set in the world of his novel Blood Engines, but you needn't have read the novel to follow this tale of Marla Mason dealing with an insane sorcerer who is about to try to raise a dark god from the sea.

I called the book disappointing, but that is relative to my hopes, perhaps. There aren't really any knockout stories here, and there are a couple quite weak stories, but there are plenty of entertaining ones. Mark Chadbourn's "Who Slays the Gyant, Wounds the Beast" is set in an alternate fantastical Elizabethan England, an England at war with Faerie, and spy Will Swyfte has been dispatched to Warwickshire to deal with a problem caused by Edmund Spenser and his love affair with a denizen of Faerie. Nice stuff. Chris Roberson's "And Such Small Deer" sends Abraham van Helsing to the East Indies where he encounters a strange man with the initials F.A.M. (another well-known fictional character -- but I'll leave the secret for readers of the story to suss out) and some terrible mutilations among the native staff. The protagonist of Jay Lake's "A Man Falls" is the son of an influential man in a society living underground, but he gets in a lot of trouble when he foolishly ventures to the surface, and encounters another society of humans -- and huge birds. Jeff VanderMeer's "King Tales" consists of three short "fairy tales" of sorts -- but quite matter of factly different tales. Intelligent and amusing at once. And perhaps the best piece is "Lt. Privet's Love Song", by Scott Thomas, in which a sailor spending some time in a coastal city while his ship undergoes repairs gets in some trouble when a love potion he intended for a pretty barmaid ends up in another man's wife's drink instead. At the same time his kingdom is undergoing a succession crisis, as the old king is dying, and his two twin sons are about to take over. Things work out rather intricately, and pleasantly -- it's a fun and somewhat refreshing work.

This is a thick book, and there is plenty of variety here. I have suggested I was disappointed -- and as I said, I was, relative to expectations. But I worry I'm being unfair -- this may not be as good a book as I hoped for, but there is a lot to like here, and certainly it offers good value for money.

Mann's collection is a follow-up to last year's New Science Fiction collection from Solaris, and like that book, the fantasy collection provides a good overview of what's happening in the field today. Several of the stories are good, with a few exceptional pieces, especially Lucius Shepard's "Chinandega", which brought to mind Marquez's "Innocent Erendira", and Scott Thomas's "Lt. Privet's Love Song", which I went into suspecting an Eliot allusion, but which pleasantly surprised me with its unique and lightly written world (I say "lightly" not to mean "slight," but to indicate Thomas's deft hand in presenting a world just different enough from ours to still be familiar, without hitting his readers over the head with the fantastic).

Several of the stories read either as chapters from a longer piece (Janny Wurts' "Reins of Destiny"), or continue a series with familiar characters (Mike Resnick's "Shell Game", which is another in the Mallory supernatural detective stories). This can be a bit off-putting to someone who isn't up-to-date on the current trends in fantasy, but that said, it works as a good introduction to those very trends, and a foot in the door to discovering new authors and series the fantasy reader might want to explore.

The collection runs the gamut from straight swords and sorcery, through slipstream to an almost purely stream-of-consciousness experiment in Hal Duncan's "The Prince of End Times". Does it work? For this reader, yes. The key is to accept that fantasy in the 21st century isn't your father's fantasy anymore, although there will always be room for a touch of Howard-esque tales (Juliet E. McKenna's "The Wizard's Coming") mixed in with modern urban fantasy such as Conrad Williams' "O Caritas", which reads as a psychologically darker vision of Gaiman's London as seen in "Neverwhere".

Overall, I unreservedly recommend this anthology.

Within this cover are sixteen stories by sixteen Solaris Fantasy authors. Yes, SIXTEEN! You will not be able to simply pick up this book and read it in one sitting. As I began each story, I never knew what magical realm I was stepping into. Readers need to have an open mind with each and every tale. There are stories set in what looks to be our present day on Earth, yet sorcery is normal. (They even have special prisons for the insane ones.) There are stories with fae folk, with dragons at the top of the food chain and humans are like bugs, and some stories are too wild for me to even begin to describe

**** Like all anthologies, some stories are boring (to me), some are good, and some are just fantastic. I wrote down a few author names to keep an eye out for their future titles, if any. There is no doubt in my mind that any fantasy fan will enjoy this thick novel. If you read this review before the December holidays, I recommend this book as a present for anyone you know that enjoys stories that outside the normal box. ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 5 reviews  3.4 out of 5 stars