From Amazon.com
Bordertown is the place where our world and the world of elves meet... but not just any kind of elves. These are hard-rocking, magic-flinging, motorcycle-riding elves who aren't entirely thrilled to be back in contact with lowly humans. Nevertheless, certain types of both elf and human are drawn to Bordertown, a place where magic and science coexist, and where neither works quite the way it's supposed to. Not everyone can find Bordertown, but those who do find it discover that it's a place where anything can happen, and where they can be anything they want to be. This collection of 13 stories continues the grand tradition of one of the most popular shared-world fantasy series of all time, and it also serves as an excellent introduction for anyone new to the border.
--Craig E. Engler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Windling's fecund premise for the series of short-story collections and novels devoted to Bordertown (beginning with Bordertown and Borderland, both co-edited with Mark Alan Arnold, both published in 1986) involves the mingling of the mundane and the freakish that is the earmark of contemporary fantasy writing. These 13 stories share the same setting, place names and ambience. In Bordertown, teeming with runaways from both the human world and "The Realm," magic and science mitigate one another in strange ways. Here, spells are no more exotic than Kleenex. A guidebook written by editors Windling and Sherman is interspersed throughout the current text and is a perfect, hilarious counterfeit of the genuine item, with sly tips to the tourist for saving money and avoiding untoward enchantments. Stylistically, the stories range from Steven Brust's highly literate and exquisitely turned riverboat saga, "When the Bow Breaks," to Midori Snyder's straightforwardly sentimental coming-of-age story, "Dragon Child." More than a few shoot precipitously into undeserved conclusions, relying on sudden dramatic invention or some archetypal subtext insufficiently articulated, as if the authors had become habituated to Bordertown's facile spells. In Michael Korolenko's "Arcadia," a magical videographer's tale, the plot is heavy-handed and the resolution platitudinously tacked on. This is the exception, however; most of these pieces, even those that are more fantastic vignette than story, satisfy.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
