15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
From the best to the worst, January 1, 2002
This review is from: After the King: Stories In Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien (Paperback)
Like many collections of short stories, After the King is a mixed bag, but it contains a higher ratio of stories I liked than most do. Many of the best of the fantasy genre are here, including Pratchett, McKillip, Norton, de Lint, and Beagle. (And though this book is credited to Jane Yolen, she is mainly credited writes a introduction -- a good one. She also writes one of the below)
"Reave the Just" by Stephen R. Donaldson was one of my least favorites -- there's hardly any magic, and none of the characters really connect. We have a besotted youth, a spineless widow, a sadistic suitor, and Reave the Supremely Uninteresting. But fans of Terry Pratchett -- and of Cohen the Barbarian -- will enjoy the wry and funny "Troll Bridge." The SF story "Long Night's Vigil at the Temple" by Robert Silverberg is spellbindingly written and uncomfortably plotted, on the subject of religion and bringing up intelligent questions about the basis of some of them.
"The Dragon of Tollin" by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is a fairly average dragon story. Poul and Karen Anderson's "Faith" is an intriguing story simply by virtue of featuring some goblin POV. I found "In the Season of the Dressing of the Wells" bu John Brunner boring, obnoxious and poorly characterized. "The Fellowship of the Dragon" by Patricia McKillip is perhaps the best of the entire volume, with the poetic language and intriguing plotline. Tolkien would be proud.
I found Harry Turtledove's "Decoy Duck" (what a horrible title) to be intriguing, though a little out of my grasp. Andre Norton's "Nine Threads of Gold" is haunting to the core. Charles de Lint's "Conjure Man" is equally haunting for different reasons, starting with a quote from Tolkien himself, and proceeding to a lesson about nature and life. The dedication is excellent.
Emma Bull's "Silver or Gold" is a delightful story in the tradition of old fairy tales and myths. Similarly Karen Haber's story "Up the Side of the Air" is cute without being cutesy, the tale of a wizard who gets a new assistant -- who happens to be a little girl. Peter S. Beagle pens the story "The Naga," which is rather densely written but also in the tradition of old fairy tales and myths. Some readers may like the quirky contemporary story "Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairies" by Mike Resnick, but I thought it was weird and mildly irritating. ("Number one on our hit list is Walt Disney"?)
"Winter's King" by Jane Yolen is haunting and sad at the end, and much shorter than the surrounding stories. "Gotterdammerung" by Barry N. Malzberg was blah -- I didn't connect to anyone in it, and it was formatted and written somewhat oddly. "Down the River Road" by Gregory Benford is also fairly dull, stretched out over a charmless contemporary setting and divided into chapterettes. Judith Tarr redeems the ending with the haunting, poetically-ended "Death and the Lady."
And finally, for some inexplicable reason Dennis McKiernan wrote a story as well: "Halfling House," one of the worst SF/F short stories I've ever read. A small warning: it contains his ripoff hobbits the "warrows," as well as various other short species staying in a tiny, dimension-traveling inn -- and a few clumsy Tolkien homages that made me wince rather than smile. Not to mention the incoherent ending.
Before anyone buys this simply because it says that the stories are "in honor" of Tolkien, let me warn you: Most of these stories bear no resemblance to Tolkien's work -- whether for good or ill. Some are contemporary stories; some take place in the generic medieval settings, and some take place in specific medieval settings (complete with Viking names). Some are comedic, some tragic, some a combination of both -- several were introspective. Some of them are pure fantasy, no fantasy, mildly fantasy-like, or bordering on SF.
A mixed bag, as I said before, but with several excellent stories. Even if you are not a fan of the authors, you may want to check it out.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book for all fans of fantasy or science fiction!, August 6, 1999
Wow! The first word to come to mind when I read this book after I got it from the library. I searched local bookstores for almost a year before I decided to try Amazon. But don't be fooled, this book is not meant to be anything like Tolkien. It is written by authors who have been greatly influenced by this great man and his work. There is a story here for everyone, whether you like comedy, tragedy, classic fantasy, or futuristic science-fiction. True, not all the entries were "right up my alley", but reading each of them was a pleasure. I recommend it to anyone whose life has been changed by the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.
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