David Connolly

Assigning most of these stories to the fantasy genre is quite a stretch.

Another candidate for the "I really wanted to like this book" category. I'm not the world's biggest short story fan in the first place, but none of these grabbed my attention. Part of that stems from the fact that most of them aren't really fantasy stories at all, but the language felt dry and stilted. I suspect it's the fault of the translation, but I can't be sure without seeing the original versions. It seems likely to be the translator, though, since the stiltedness appears throughout, despite different authors. The translator doesn't seem to have retained the spirit of each author, instead overlaying his own (unfortunately dull) tone over the whole work.

It would also have been nice if some female authors were included in this anthology. Given how much the editor stretched the definition of the fantasy genre just to scrape together this many stories, surely there's at least a few women who could have been included?

On the positive side, it's a good introduction to several modern Greek authors. I'll be looking for some full-length novels by some of them.… (lisätietoja)