Description:
Forget about Andrew Lang--Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling argue that fairy tales are not the pastel fantasies of Victorian children's books but rather are drawn with primary passions: love, hate, greed, sacrifice, joy, and sorrow. Silver Birch, Blood Moon is their fifth anthology of original stories with fairy tale sources, "reimagined" for adults. Nancy Kress retells "The Emperor's New Clothes" with a delightful twist in "Clad in Gossamer"; Harvey Jacobs unleashes laughter with "The Vanishing Virgin," starring an untalented magician, his lovely but frozen assistant, and "a balding, sullen rabbit" called Pooper; Michael Cadnum and Nalo Hopkinson present equally pointed but distinctly different takes on the story of two sisters spelled to speak according to their natures in "Toad Rich" and "Precious"; Wendy Wheeler reworks "Beauty and the Beast" using Caribbean colors in "Skin So Green and Fine"; and Richard William Asplund blends the Arabian genie with the wonder-working rabbi of Hasidic legends to create "The Dybbuk in the Bottle." The stories here are less gruesome than in the previous collections, and both sexes claim heroic as well as villainous characters. So enter imagination's marketplace, and watch the storytellers at work. It's amazing what they can do with a bit of old legend. --Nona Vero
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