From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In addition to their individual quality, the 16 stories in this rollicking collection amply demonstrate Hugo-winner Swanwick's impressive versatility. Characters vary from feuding prospectors on a heat-scoured Venus in Tin Marsh to clients of The Bordello in Faerie. On one end of the mood spectrum are the three elegantly wry adventures of Darger and Surplus, roguish postapocalypse con artists; on the other is the gentle Triceratops Summer, told in a matter-of-fact, laconic style that at first seems to show wonderful things becoming commonplace and then reveals that the familiar can still be wonderful. Swanwick (The Iron Dragon's Daughter) pulls apart overused situations to see what makes them tick and then constructs fresh, surprising plots from the pieces. The locked-room mystery may seem hopelessly stale, but not when it's A Small Room in Koboldtown, where voodoo beings and sleazy politics abound. Readers tired of conventional fantasy and SF will find this collection of intriguing characters and lovingly told stories deeply refreshing. (Sept.)
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Rounding up all Swanwick's stories to date about unusually nondescript human Darger and genetically modified dog Surplus, a previously unpublished novella, and three Hugo-winning pieces, this generous volume opens with "Hello, Said the Stick," in which a soldier en route to battle picks up a talking stick that turns out to be unwontedly dangerous. The new publication, "The Skysailor's Tale," is an adventure on board a British airship claiming new lands for Queen Titania that is framed as a father telling his son about some of his strange doings when a lad. The Darger and Surplus capers, occuring after the age of computers in a suspiciously nineteenth-century-ish though far-future Europe, are satisfying tales of plotting and heists involving a great team, indeed. The closer, "Urdumheim," is the brilliantly imagined story of King Nimrod and the time when the world was new, people didn't die, and there was only one language. Swanwick's stories are possessed of sufficient depth and generic variety to satisfy quite a range of genre tastes. Schroeder, Regina
Review
"Surpassingly brilliant . . . storytelling of the highest order" —Locus
"Swanwick's wildly imaginative and beautifully written short stories have been, for several years, one of the primary joys of the field." —Karen Joy Fowler, The Washington Post Book World
"[Swanwick] is an amazingly assured writer, seemingly incapable of writing a sentence that isn't interesting in itself, in addition to the way it moves the story forward." —The New York Review of Science Fiction
"Swanwick has emerged as one of the country's most respected authors." —Philadelphia Enquirer Magazine
"What makes Swanwick special is his ability to wring fresh, unexpected consequences from standard [science fiction] notions." —Kirkus
"Swanwick's graceful prose, prodigious inventiveness and sense of humor are very much in evidence here." —tangentonline.com
"One of contemporary [science fiction's] greatest short-story writers." —Interzone magazine
Book Description
Science fiction and fantasy's most adept short-story author reinvents some classic themes in an engaging collection that includes three of his Hugo award–winning stories. These smart expansions of traditional themes summon dinosaurs, dragons, peril in space, myths, faeries, and time travel, each undergoing artful alchemy to create serious genre literature that is playful, original, and clever. Comprising 16 imaginative and mischievous adventures, including the previously unpublished novelette, The Skysailor's Tale, this adroit gathering makes a collection to truly revel in.
About the Author
Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed science fiction and fantasy short story writers of his generation, having received the Hugo Award for short fiction five times in six years. His novels include Bones of the Earth, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, and the Nebula Award–winning Stations of the Tides. He lives in Philadelphia.
