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***The Faery Reel

Tales from the Twilight Realm

edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Reviewed June 20, 2005.
Viking, New York, 2004.  528 pages.

I’ve always liked fairy tales.  These stories are about fairies, but show the darker, eerie side of the creatures of Faery.  There are some light ones, too, but all look at the Twilight Realm in a way a somewhat different from the Andrew Lang fairy tale books I read as a child.

One of my favorites is the story by Jeffrey Ford about a Twilmish, a creature that first exists only as an “invisible potentiality of faerie presence,” haunting a shoreline.  Then it finds a well-built sand castle created by a child and is born into a tiny corporeal life to inhabit that castle.  It lives exactly as long as the sand castle.

Another good story by Delia Sherman told about the fairies inhabiting the New York Public Library.  A story by Gregory Frost featured a Japanese mountain demon.  One by Patricia McKillip featured a siren.  These stories are full of variety but all explore the question of what things would be like if there truly were a faerie presence among us.

Review of another collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling:
Swan Sister

Copyright © 2005 Sondra Eklund.  All rights reserved.

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