Black Thorn, White Rose (Fairy Tale Anthologies)

“Enchanting, witty” fairy tales for adults from Peter Straub, Daniel Quinn, Nancy Kress, Patricia C. Wrede, and other modern-day Grimms and Andersens (Publishers Weekly). World Fantasy Award–winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling return with another superb collection of wonders and terrors. In Black Thorn, White Rose, the magical tales we were told at bedtime have been upended, turned inside out, reshaped, and given a keen, distinctly adult edge by eighteen of the most acclaimed storytellers ever to reinvent a fairy tale. Our favorite characters, from Sleeping Beauty to Rumpelstiltskin to the Gingerbread Man, are here but in different guises, brought to new life by such masters as Nancy Kress, Jane Yolen, Storm Constantine, and the late, great Roger Zelazny. These breathtaking tales of dark enchantments range from the tragic and poignant to the humorous to the horrifying to the simply astonishing. The story of an aging woodcutter persuaded to help a desperate prince make his way through the brambles to save a sleeping beauty twists ingeniously around like the thorny wall that impedes them. The fable of an all-controlling queen mother who faces her most fearsome adversary in a sensitive princess who appears mysteriously during a storm is a dark, disturbing masterpiece. And readers will long remember the exquisite tale of Death, his godson, football, and MTV. Anyone who has ever loved or even feared the old tales of witches and trolls and remarkable transformations will find much to admire in this extraordinary collection—happily ever after or not.

From Publishers Weekly

Datlow and Windling (Snow White, Blood Red), winners of the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, have compiled a second volume of "fairy tales for adults"-an enchanting, witty collection of 18 original stories that in general achieve relevance without losing their patina of magic. A case in point is Jane Yolen's brilliant retelling of Rumpelstiltskin story, in which the "imp" is a Jewish moneylender caught in a pogrom because he helped the wrong princess. Equally impressive is Midori Snyder's subtly feminist story about how to keep love alive after "happily ever after" has been going on for a while. Several comic entries include Michael Cadnum's hip retelling of the Gingerbread Man story, Howard Waldrop's entry about about Prohibition gangsters at a music festival. The anthology's many powerful themes (e.g., the tyranny of beauty, the sanctity of life) are taken up as suitably by the traditional fantasy voices of Patricia C. Wrede and Nancy Kress as they are in Roger Zelazny's more experimental entry. Even more than its predecessor, this superior volume proves that the notion of modern-day Grimms, Andersens and Wildes isn't just a fairy tale. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The editors of the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror concoct a potent brew of fairy tales spiked with feminism. These intoxicating delights are not meant for children or the timid. Storm Constantine retells the princess and the pea through the voice of the widowed queen of Gordania, a narrator so wickedly charming, sinister, and intimate with the use of poisons that she brings to mind ancient Rome's Livia. In Nancy Kress's version of Rumpelstiltskin, an enchanted young woman surrenders her talent to spin gold, and ultimately her own life, to save her only son. Susan Wade presents overweight princess Ylianna who, to gain the love of a prince, uses a toxic powder to metamorphose into a raven-haired beauty. Life as a mortal is so unbearable after his rejection that Ylianna transforms her wounded spirit into the magnificent black swan. Death gains a face--and a godson--in Roger Zelazny's witty story about the grim reaper who, despite his power of death-over- life, cannot resist sparing his favorite football players. No matter which tour you take through this frightening and dark enchanted wood, Datlow and Windling again prove themselves the best guides. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

“A potent brew of fairy tales . . . These intoxicating delights are not meant for children or the timid.”

Publishers Weekly

“An enchanting, witty collection of 18 original stories that . . . achieve relevance without losing their patina of magic. . . . This superior volume proves that the notion of modern-day Grimms, Andersens and Wildes isn’t just a fairy tale.”

About the Author

Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.   Terri Windling is a writer, editor, and artist specializing in fantasy literature, folklore, and mythic arts. She has published over forty books, receiving nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award (for her novel The Wood Wife), the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA’s Solstice Award for “outstanding contributions to the speculative fiction field as a writer, editor, artist, educator, and mentor.” She writes essays on folklore and fantasy; maintains a popular blog on these subjects (Myth & Moor); and is on the board of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Speculative Fiction (Chichester University). She also creates myth-inspired visual art for exhibition in the US and Europe; and she’s a member of the Modern Fairies music-and-folklore project (Oxford & Sheffield Universities). A former New Yorker, she now lives with her British husband and family in Devon, England.

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