A review by errantdreams
Black Swan, White Raven, by Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling
4.0
The concept behind Black Swan, White Raven is simple and beautiful: creative retellings of fairy tales by modern authors. These are not meant to be children’s stories. Many of them depict sex, violence, and other subjects you wouldn’t want to read to your children.
Fairy tales have a sort of fundamental appeal. They’re stories of love and loss, revenge and justice, royalty and peasantry, mundanity and magic. Some have a moral; others are told to explain natural events. Many started out as popular folk tales. Most address what happens when ordinary people meet up with the world of the extraordinary.
The fairy tales found in “Black Swan, White Raven” run the creative gamut of modern fairy-tale-telling. Some are old tales re-written in a modern light. Others are traditional fairy tales told from a new and interesting point of view. Still others take the core kernel of story from a fairy tale and make it something new and uniquely different. Many of the stories play with popular fairy tales such as Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, while others play with less-well-known stories. A couple I didn’t recognize. As always, with so many wildly different stories by very different authors, you’re almost guaranteed to find at least one or two stories that don’t amaze you. But then, that’s a problem inherent in any anthology.
There are 21 new and different pieces in here, including a couple of poems. Anne Bishop, author of “The Black Jewels Trilogy,” has a story in here, and she didn’t disappoint in the least. I’m not quite as enamored of the poems, somehow – they just didn’t have the emotional or intellectual impact that some of the stories did.
I definitely enjoyed it, and there are certain stories in here (most notably “Sparks” and “Rapunzel”) which I expect to read over again. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fairy tales – particularly the old ones, not written for children.
NOTE: review book provided by publisher
View a longer review with information on some of the individual stories at my site: http://www.errantdreams.com/2014/09/review-black-swan-white-raven-ed-datlow-and-windling/
Fairy tales have a sort of fundamental appeal. They’re stories of love and loss, revenge and justice, royalty and peasantry, mundanity and magic. Some have a moral; others are told to explain natural events. Many started out as popular folk tales. Most address what happens when ordinary people meet up with the world of the extraordinary.
The fairy tales found in “Black Swan, White Raven” run the creative gamut of modern fairy-tale-telling. Some are old tales re-written in a modern light. Others are traditional fairy tales told from a new and interesting point of view. Still others take the core kernel of story from a fairy tale and make it something new and uniquely different. Many of the stories play with popular fairy tales such as Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, while others play with less-well-known stories. A couple I didn’t recognize. As always, with so many wildly different stories by very different authors, you’re almost guaranteed to find at least one or two stories that don’t amaze you. But then, that’s a problem inherent in any anthology.
There are 21 new and different pieces in here, including a couple of poems. Anne Bishop, author of “The Black Jewels Trilogy,” has a story in here, and she didn’t disappoint in the least. I’m not quite as enamored of the poems, somehow – they just didn’t have the emotional or intellectual impact that some of the stories did.
I definitely enjoyed it, and there are certain stories in here (most notably “Sparks” and “Rapunzel”) which I expect to read over again. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fairy tales – particularly the old ones, not written for children.
NOTE: review book provided by publisher
View a longer review with information on some of the individual stories at my site: http://www.errantdreams.com/2014/09/review-black-swan-white-raven-ed-datlow-and-windling/