Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looking for a Few Heroic Women?, June 10, 2002
This is Marion Zimmer Bradley's second anthology devoted to exploring the fantasy genre and the women that inhabit it. These aren't romance stories, or tales of Amazons ultimately defeated by a superior man, or domestic stories. These are tales of adventure, where the protagonists are women of the sword or magic staff who actually do something. Despite the cheesy "pulp-fantasy" cover that this second anthology had the misfortune to display, the stories are anything but cheesy. They cover a vast array of tones and styles, ranging from the epic struggle, to the tongue in cheek, to the rough and tumble. These gals aren't waiting for the handsome Hero to step in and rescue them. And with skilled editor Marion Zimmer Bradley selecting the stories for this anthology, each short story has something to offer.Those of you who have read through the first anthology in the series will note the presence of a number of the same authors, as MZB herself mentions in her foreword. "A Night at the Two Inns" by Phyllis Ann Karr continues the adventures of Frostflower and Thorn-- Karr's gentle sorceress and tough swordswoman duo. Likewise, Diana L. Paxson continues the story of her character Shanna with "Shadow Wood". Other returning authors include Stephen Burns with "The Black Tower", Charles Saunders with "Shimenge's Mask", "Fireweb" by Deborah Wheeler, and "Cold Blows the Wind" by Charles DeLint. Jennifer Roberson also returns with "The Lady and the Tiger" which features, I believe, the first appearance of her now famous Tiger and Del characters. Warrior women, thieves, craftswomen, sorceresses and assassins all populate these pages. Some stories are straight adventure and epic fantasy such as "The Black Tower" by Stephen Burns and "Shimenge's Mask" by Charles Saunders. Others are biting and surprise the reader with their endings. Try "The Lady and the Tiger" by Jennifer Roberson or "Hunger" by Russ Garrison. Still others are just sincerely funny. Don't miss Elizabeth Thompson's "On First Looking Into Bradley's Guidelines, Or Stories I Don't Want To Read Either" which does a fine job at elaborating the things that Marion Zimmer Bradley didn't want to see submitted for this anthology. The editor was tickled by the poem; I suspect readers will be too. Beyond the varieties, there are a few tales that defy simple definition, and shine out in this collection. Popular author C. J. Cherryh pens "The Unshadowed Land"; a story that gave the editor goose bumps-not to mention me! The other one I will note is "The Wound in the Moon" by Vera Nazarian, this was the authors first published story and is truly a beautiful, disturbing and thought-provoking piece. What makes these anthologies stand out, besides the exceptional stories and powerful heroines, is MZB's own introductions to each story and author. Her comments are almost as delightful to read as the stories themselves. For anyone who likes this anthology, I highly recommend you check out the first Sword and Sorceress anthology if you can find it. The good news is there are now nineteen Sword and Sorceress anthologies to read and discover, but I will firmly uphold that the earliest anthologies, particularly the first three, are some of the best. Happy Reading! shanshad ^_^
|
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best of the S&S Anthologies., February 11, 1999
By A Customer
The best of the anthologies that MZB put out, the stories in here are some of the best. Sadly, content has sharply declined in the last five or six. I can't bear to waste money on them anymore, but I still read this one. This has some especially potent stories that are more than that, they are alive.This is well worth the price to reorder it! Good fantasy, from when fantasy was actually good.
|
|
|
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The quality varies, June 19, 2005
It's difficult to write original fantasy; the archetypes are so deeply ingrained that it's nearly impossible to shed them. The fantasy short story is even more difficult because there's no time or room to build a world to place the narrative in context. It's difficult for the sword/sorcery ahort story to distinguish itself (and no, placing a story in a non-Western setting is no longer grounds to consider it "original"). This particular installment of the series exhibits this problem.
High points:
--"The Lady and the Tiger" by Jennifer Roberson, from whose seed will eventually spring the half-dozen or so novels in the Sword-Dancer" series. I believe this is where it all begins.
--"Hunger" by Russ Garrison, which has a cute, if highly predictable, twist, which unfortunately is then followed by a significantly less cute twist that seems attached with a rivet gun.
--"The Red Guild" by Rachel Pollack. The actual plot that brings together an assassin and her quarry as lovers is completely forgettable, but the mechanism by which she was chosen as an assassin is ingenious and original.
Low points:
--A poem, each stanza in limerick form, that doesn't even try to scan and exhibits no shame over the fact. If you choose a formal meter for your poem, then there are syllabic restrictions you need to obey or risk appearing sloppy. There's more to being a poet than being able to think of interesting rhymes (otherwise Eminem would be poet laureate). The poem is non-narrative, dealing with the craft of writing original fiction (rather like those poems Isaac Asimov used to come up with).
--"A Night at Two Inns" by Phyllis Ann Karr, which presents its characters, a sensitive, studious wizard and a gruff, lusty warrior (so much for exploding stereotypes), with two inns, mere feet apart, in the middle of nowhere, on a border between two lands, apparently as some sort of character test akin to those that "Star Trek" aliens always seemed to be foisting on the crew as representatives of humanity. The whole situation would seem more at home in someone's Dungeons and Dragons campaign world.
--A lot of other stories whose authors seem to have done just that: listened in on a gaming group and written down what happened. In many cases, there's no narratological reason to tell a lot of these stories; they're just bits and pieces of melee and spellcasting during which the protagonist happens to achieve some epiphany.
It's worth a read. It seems likely that, as with all anthologies, different stories will appeal to different people, and everyone can probably find something here that appeals to them and that they can bring away from the book.
The cover painting is atrocious, though.
|
|
|
|
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
by Elisabeth Waters
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
