Customer Reviews

Halflings, Hobbits, Warrows & Weefolk

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They say that nobody can write halflings like "Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien, and the tepid collection "Halflings, Hobbits, Warrows and Weefolk" seems to back that up. A few stories are entertaining, but most are poorly written or hideously plotted. (An eagle called King Cumulonimbus? Please, wake me from this nightmare...)

A tale of troll invasion kicks off the volume (Mickey Zucker Reichart's "The Eranis Pipe") followed by plodding, dialogue-heavy tales (Jody Lynn Nye's father-and-daughter "Moon Shadow" and Judith Moffet's leaden "Origin of the Hob"), and the ghastly R.A. Salvatore story "A Sparkle For Homer," which involves an idiot halfling in a giant's castle. Charles de Lint's otherworldly story is good, but seems out of place.

The saving graces of this volume are stories by Craig Shaw Gardner ("A Fumbling of Fairies") and John Dalmas ("The Stoor's Map"). The first involves the adventures of the sneezing wizard Ebenezum and his hapless apprentice, while the second is the story of a halfling elopement that runs into some serious spider trouble.

The title is a bit misleading -- only one story dares to refer to hobbits (the story called "Hobbits," which starts off promising but ends grotesquely). And no stories refer to Dennis McKiernan's Warrows; probably the name was included just to make the title snappy. The standard "wee folk" tend to loosely fit the hobbit mold, but with too many magic spells and too few brains.

Most of the stories are overwritten and unnatural-sounding (enough about wiggling toes already!), and the characters tend to be dull and over-talkative. What's more, some of the authors are sufficiently unimaginative that they cobble bits from J.R.R. Tolkien's work, most notably hobbit holes and the name "Bracegirdle."

If readers are desperately hungry for hobbits, this might make you happy for a little while. But in the end, it's bland and boring, with a few sparkling stories sprinkled through it. Not recommended.