Paperback: 477 pages
Publisher: Night Shade Books (24 May 2011)
ISBN-10: 1597802204
ISBN-13: 978-1597802208
Reviewer: Cara
Copy: Bought in bookshop
From the back of the book
Once Upon A Time...
... in the faraway land of Story, a Hugo-winning Editor realised that no one had collected together the fairy tales of that age, and that the doorstep-thick anthologies of modern fairy tales were sorely lacking...
And so the Editor ventured forth, wandering the land of Story from shore to shore, climbing massive mountains of books and delving deep into lush, literary forests, gathering together thirty-three of the best re-tellings of fairy tales he could find. Not just any fairy tales, mind you, but tantalising tales from some of the biggest names in today's fantastic fiction, authors like Gregory Maguire, Susanna Clarke, Charles de Lint, Holly Black, Alethea Kontis, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, Patricia Briggs, Paul Di Filippo, Gregory Frost, and Nancy Kress. But these stories alone weren't enough to satisfy the Editor, so the Editor ventured further, into the dangerous cave of the fearsome Bill Willingham, and emerged intact with a magnificent introduction, to tie the collection together.
And the inhabitants of Story - from the Kings and Queens relaxing in their castles to the peasants toiling in the fields, from the fey folk flitting about the forests to the trolls lurking under the bridges and the giants in the hills - read the anthology, and enjoyed it. And they all lived...
...Happily Ever After.
This is a beautiful book. The cover art (by Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon) captures the essence of the tales contained within and each story has different small decorative motifs at the top of each page. A lot of care has been taken by Night Shade Books to present Happily Ever After as a volume to treasure and, given the high calibre of authors contributing to this anthology, they are right to do so. Personally, I would be prepared to pay for a hard cover version, so taken am I with this anthology.
From the unusual introduction by Bill Willingham (of the Fables graphic novels series), which is a short story itself, to the chilling final tale by Robert Coover, Happily Ever After has a something for everyone within its pages. Many of the stories are based on the familiar characters from the European tradition - Red Riding Hood, trolls, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, for example - but others take their inspiration from other parts of the world or are completely new yet still recognisable as a fairy tale. The authors hail from across the broad range of speculative fiction: Peter Straub is known as a horror writer, whereas Garth Nix is a familiar name in childrens fiction. Patricia Briggs is the author of a quality urban fantasy series and Nancy Kress is an award winning science fiction writer. Other names familiar to me who have contributed to this anthology include Jeff VanderMeer, Karen Joy Fowler, Howard Waldrop, Michelle West (also known as Michelle Sagara) and Esther Friesner.
Having grown up reading Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and the Andrew Lang 'colours' series of fairy tales (now available on Kindle) I am probably biased in favour of this type of story. I always enjoyed the dark undercurrents that were present in the written versions but were mysteriously absent in the Disney film versions. As a result, I prefer my fairy stories to have a more sinister edge. In Happily Ever After, I was not disappointed; these are fairy stories for adults. Take Wil McCarthy's He Died That Day, In Thirty Years for example. Here we have a modern take on Alice in Wonderland, only in this story she is not the innocent girl who finds herself in a mysterious world filled with white rabbits and mad hatter but instead is a protagonist in a distinctly science fictional piece. One story that stands out is Pinocchio's Diary by Robert J Howe, which is brutal and terrifying yet has a strong moral core. Another that left a lingering disquiet was The Return of the Dark Children, which explored how the parents dealt with the loss of their children to the Pied Piper.
While I enjoyed the book overall, I was annoyed by there being four stories based on the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Also there were 2 stories about Rapunzel, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Although the stories were all quite different from one another, I would have preferred there to have been only one version of each. Of all the stories, however, there was only one I really disliked - The Sawing Boys by Howard Waldrop. I found it confusing (despite the glossary of slang terms used at the end) and was somewhat puzzled by its inclusion in this particular anthology.
Happily Ever After will be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys short stories with a twist. The range of authors combined with new and imaginative approaches to familiar tales will appeal to a broad spectrum of speculative fiction readers. It is a book that lends itself to reading in short bursts rather that straight through from start to finish. I found that reading a story every 2 or 3 days was ideal, and it acted almost like a palate cleanser. It is certainly a book I will return to time and time again and I am sure it will still be prominent on my bookshelves for many years to come.
Overall 8/10
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