| Title | : | Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1597808385 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781597808385 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 536 |
| Publication | : | First published July 5, 2016 |
Over the years, authors have often borrowed bits and pieces from these stories, grafting them into their own writing, creating literature with both new meaning and age-old significance. In the last few decades or so, they’ve also intentionally retold and reinvented the tales in a variety of ways—delightful or dark, wistful or wicked, sweet or satirical—that forge new trails through the forests of fantastic fiction.
This new anthology compiles some of the best modern fairy-tale retellings and reinventions from award-winning and bestselling authors, acclaimed storytellers, and exciting new talents, into an enchanting collection. Explore magical new realms by traveling with us, Beyond the Woods . . .
Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold Reviews
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I didn't take notes on the stories as I read them and it took me 6 months to finish this (there were a lot of things that cut in line because books are rude and that's the drawback to a collection of stories - you can stop for weeks on end and not miss anything) so I don't remember most of the tales anymore.
However, I know I enjoyed many of them and I gave it back to the library feeling a sense of sadness to not be holding onto this book anymore so I think that's 4 stars.
Added bonus: this has stories from all my new favorite contemporary fantasy/speculative/sci-fi...no, you know what? Let's just call them storytellers. This collection had stories from all my new favorite contemporary storytellers:
Angela Slatter,
Elizabeth Bear,
Margo Lanagan, and
Catherynne M. Valente plus a story from an old favorite,
Neil Gaiman. That made me pretty dang happy. -
Beyond The Woods: Fairy Tales Retold, is remarkable, in that nearly every selection in the anthology is exceptional. There were two which had me snickering out loud: the stories by Kelly Link and by Jeff VanderMeer. Some were just phenomenally stunning and all were evocative. I did not have a lukewarm reaction to a single one.
Kirstyn McDermott's tale might be my favorite, but it's hard to decide among so many. There are some intensely dark reinterpretations/mashups of folk tales and fables, so this isn't passive easygoing reading. It's somehow dense and consuming, expansive and focused, magic and real. These stories command your time and attention. I felt like I needed to spend time with them, that I owed them that. These reimaginings are slippery shapeshifters, highlighting jutting metaphors and oily allegory, each as unrestrained as a lupine howl. -
Probably the best edited collection I've read in a very long time. Most collections are of uneven quality. Beyond the Woods is uniformly wonderful. Some selections I've read before, but very much enjoyed reading again. I can't recommend this highly enough! Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the ARC.
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With two stunning and original retellings included, Tanith Lee is about the only author here that stands out from a collection that, in general, doesn't rise above a decent output for me.
Sadly, none of her stories are new or unpublished as I had been hoping when I checked this book out; both "Red as Blood" (a Snow White retelling) and "Beauty" (a Beauty and the Beast retelling) were previously published in
Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer, which I would highly recommend you get instead of Guran's anthology. Much more worth your money! -
Хороша тема, хороші оповідання, але я має одне зауваження до логіки збірки.
Ніби тема була про переосмисленя старих кахок, але тут є і класичні сюжети, і нові авторські казки, і це позбавляє збірку однорідності. -
I love fairy tales, retellings and short stories. This book is perfect for me.
Before I discuss the stories, I’d like to say that both narrators are excellent, but I have found a new favorite in Tim Campbell. For anyone who loves Scott Brick (as I do), Campbell’s timbre is quite similar, and I’ll be looking for more books narrated by him.
As with any story collection, there will be a few that you dislike, a few you love, and the remaining majority will fall into the middle. Beyond the Woods is no different.
My least favorite stories would be Catastrophic Disruption of the Head, Beyond the Naked Eye and The Juniper Tree. Straub’s comment in The Juniper Tree “Lately I have had the impression that the general perception of me, to the extent that such a thing exists, is that of a hermetic painter inscribing hundreds of tiny, grotesque, fantastical details over every inch of a large canvas. (My books are unfashionably long.) was spot-on perfect to my perception of the author.
My favorite two stories are Bears: A Fairy Tale of 1958 and Rats – both addressing current social issues. Others that I enjoyed greatly were Lebkuchen, Memoirs of a Bottle Djinn, and Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon.
I would average the stories to a 3.5 but round up due to the excellent narration. -
As you may know by now, I'm a huge fan of fairy tales, a sucker for retellings, and a fan of urban fantasy, fantasy and sci fi, so I feel like I'm the target audience for this book many times over. It's also not news that I'm always on the fence about short story collections (unless it's my boy Gaiman, in which case I'm not a reliable source anyway because I'm sort of an obsessive fangirl), and it took me long enough to read this book that I started this review with a knee-jerk three-stars, "it's uneven but those highs" sort of review. Then I went back and revisted the story list to recap my favorites and found that at least 80% were stories that I really enjoyed (even if at least one
disturbed me more than I want to admit). I am SO glad to have read this collection because among these stories live some of the best work in this genre that I have ever seen.
My absolute favorite? Kelly Link's take on the Snow Queen. fucking brilliant, honestly. I loved it so much, I immediately reread it. Next in line are Cat Valente, Elizabeth Bear, and Peter Beagle; no surprise there, but Octavia Cade caught me by surprise because I'd never heard of her and now I have and I'm so pleased! And Ken Liu! Friends, I am not a huge fan of his work just because it tends to be very dude-heavy (see my thoughts on the grace of kings), but his story here! The transhumanism and the kitsune, omg. I was kind of floored.
My least favorite? The three bears. There's a warning in the introduction to this story that the bears face prejudice trying to integrate into 1958 white suburban culture, and our protagonists are, well. Actual bears. But the resolution of this story shouts resoundingly, "If you don't belong, then you should stop trying to fit in and go home where you'll be comfortable," to the point that if someone had told me that it had been written as anti-integration propaganda in the 50's or 60's, I would have totally believed it possible, and I'm deeply uncomfortable with that.
I also understand that The Juniper Tree is named after a fairy tale, but it's a long stretch to call it one as well when it's actually a prequel to many of Stroud's works, detailing his protagonist's molestation one summer. It's really well put together and (depressingly) believable, certainly, but I can't see my way clear to why it's in this collection outside of the title and a vague, vaaaague parallel.
Still this is a book I'm extremely happy to have, and I'm going to shove the snow queen at anyone who will sit still long enough for me to do so. -
Beyond the Woods is a collection of short stories that are in some way take offs on classic fairy tales. Like any collection of short stories there were some I liked ("Beauty" and "Coin of heart's desire,"), some I really disliked ("Juniper tree," "The maiden-tree," and "Catastrophic disruption of the head" are three) and most which were worth reading but not, to me, noteworthy. What made this collection more interesting than most is that the preface to each story talked about the original source, which wasn't always as obvious as you'd expect. I read each story then tried to figure out the derivation but twice the tales were new to me. (How on earth could that have happened?!)
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It's difficult to rate a book of short stories. I truly enjoyed only less than half of the total 30 short stories, but there were also a few favourites that left a great, lasting impression - such that I can forgive and forget the ones that I don't want to remember.
Personal top favourites (in order of appearance):
The Queen Who Could Not Walk (by Peter S. Beagle)
Good Hunting (by Ken Liu)
Greensleeves (by Jeff VanderMeer)
(I'm going to check out the other works from these authors.)
Others I enjoyed:
Halfway People
Lavanya and Deepika
Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon
Lekbuchen
Memoirs of a Bottle Djinn
The Moon is Drowning While I Sleep
And others I sort-of-enjoyed:
The Mussel Eater - I liked the overall story. This left me craving for mussels. But I realised I don't take very well to the imagery of teeth. (Hah!)
By the Moon's Good Grace - Enjoyed the story, but the narrative style tired me out.
Beauty - Learnt some new words. Interesting take on the story. But wouldn't re-read.
The rest were either completely forgettable, or downright weird and exhausting, or in bad taste, at least for me.
My final comment is that if you enjoy searching out retellings of fairytales and fresh stories of faeries and magic, just try this (borrow if you can). Even though not every story may appeal to you, there may be some gems worth the digging. I found a few. Hope you do too. -
I loved and devoured this collection. Yes, there were a couple of clunkers, but the vast majority of the stories were absolutely wonderful. I'm sad I finished it.
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Elizabeth Bear's "Follow Me Light" is the best of the stories I had not previously read in other collections.
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Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold is exactly what it sets out to be - a compilation of fairy tales retold for the modern generation. The modern adult generation. Where fairy tales were once cleaned up and made happy and "family-friendly" for the consumption of children (looking at you, Disney), these fairy tales go back to earlier forms when such tales were cautionary tales.
If you were aware that the editor, Paula Guran, edits the annual Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series, you would be prepared for this. I sort of absorbed that, but it did not register totally until I started reading the stories and found that indeed, most of these tales were on the darker side, with some extremely grim ones. I'm not complaining. I don't need all my stories to have happy endings. As it was, I enjoyed most of the stories included in the anthology; there was only 1 story that I distinctly disliked.
Some of these stories are based on very familiar fairy tales, some on the not-so-familiar. Others are totally new fairy tales, but using plot devices, settings or situations common within the fairy tale formula/genre. These do not only stick to the common English/European/American tales - there are Chinese, Indian and Arabian fairy tales, as well as possibly more from cultures I am not familiar enough with to identify.
But "based on" is a rather misleading term to use. Each writer brings a new perspective to well-worn tales, either retelling the story from a minor character, or from the antagonist's point of view. Some of them rewrite the whole story, giving us new endings altogether. Others retain the shape of the story, but bring it into modern times.
I would recommend this extremely long tome to anyone who is a fan of fairy tales and/or horror stories. Unless you're a kid. I would not recommend this for children.
Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. -
Good
While I liked the majority of these stories, only a few truly stood out to me. I did like seeing “modern” twists, but not my favorite form of retellings. -
As with any short story collection, fairly reviewing it is difficult. As an overall piece, it's well put together with a huge variety of stories ranging from the sci fi to the contemporary, from the fantastic to the mundane, all with a touch of magic on them.
Individually, I skipped some, slogged through some, enjoyed some, and adored very few.
My absolute favorite was The Queen Who Could Not Walk, which absolutely broke my heart and said wonderful things about loss and hope. I was also quite fond of Lee's bookending pieces, which set a lovely tone and helped the volume end strong. Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon was just a good time and had that right flavor of three tries and that dry humor that suits fairy tale absurdity oh so well.
Don't try to tell me three bears wasn't an allegory, though, guran. -
Two time Bram Stoker Award winner has done some impressive edits with this collection.
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Not quite 5 stars across the board, but the story slate is excellent, and the updates always mean something. A worthy read for any tale lover.
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I rate each short story in a collection from 1-3. Then I total the points and compare it to a star rating. Total points 48/90. A solid 3 stars.
Some stories were excellent, some were entirely bad, and very few were in between.
When reading this collection you have to trudge through many mediocre stories until you get to the good ones.
My favorites were :
Follow Me Light
Halfway People
Good Hunting
Full ratings below:
Beyond the Woods
1. Red as Blood - a creepy retelling. Well done 2/3
2. In the House of Gingerbread - it was OK but not memorable 1/3
3. The Bone Mother - Nicely written 2/3
4. Follow me Light - one of the more unique retellings in the collection. 3/3
5. The Coin of the Hearts Desire - kind of predictable and not too interesting 1/3
6. The Glass Bottle Trick - a badly written story that leans heavily on shock factor. 1/3
7. The Maiden Tree - Probably my favorite of the collection. What an eerie story. Great imagery, all around dark and well written. 3/3
8. The Coat of Stars - too many things go on in this "short story" that reads like an excerpt of a novel and completely misses the scope of this collection. It is a classic happily ever after wrapped up nice and tight and leaves nothing interesting to the imagination. 1/3
9. The Road of Needles - this story was a mess. Messy details, messy time line, annoying characters and no direction for the story. We get it, the future sucks, and? There was nothing else to this other than a concept and even that was barely there. 1/3
10. Travels with the Snow Queen - annoying story loaded down with references to make up for its emptiness. It failed both in humor and in heart. 1/3
11. Halfway People - 3/3 beautifully written. I even got emotional at the end. This one just made the entire collection.
12. Catastrophic Destruction of the Head - 1/3 there was no story, no world, not even a character. Just mindless words strung together. It the strenuous attempt to make the story dark and brutal, the writer failed to write a story at all.
13. Lavanya and Deepika - 1/3 it was OK, not bad but not good either.
14. Princess Lucinda and the hound of the moon - 2/3 Solid story that felt nostalgic to old faerie tales. Well written. The imagery had a dreamlike quality. Oh and I thought the small joke included was pretty funny too.
15. Fairy Tale - 1/3 over explained and not nearly interesting enough. Giving an overly realistic modern twist to fairy tails, in my opinion, is kind of a cheap tool to use. It's a way to retell the fairy tale without actually exerting any effort. You're literally just writing bland gritty history. That's not a retelling, that's lazy story telling.
16. The Queen Who Could Not Walk - 1/3 it was nicely written but boring.
17. Lebkuchen - 1/3 it had a interesting style but the story was confusing. It was quite shallow and none of the relationships felt real. Still it wasnt as bad as some of the other stories here.
18. Diamonds and Pearls - 1/3 the weakest story in the collection. There's nothing to read here. Extremely shallow story telling.
19. The Queen and the Cambion - 2/3 it was pretty good.
20. Memoirs of a Bottle Djinn - 1/3 it was decent but forgettable.
21. The Mussel Eater - 2/3 fascinating story. It was the most similar retelling to source material out of the collection. I thought it added an interesting spice to the legend.
22. Bears: A Fairy Tale of 1958 - 1/3 I didn't particularly like it but I think it is a well done story.
23. The Moon is Drowning While I Sleep - 3/3 This story was interesting, it held the mystery and charm of a dream. I felt like I was in a dream. I enjoyed it very much and would even enjoy reading a full novel of it.
24. Rats - 1/3 The beginning is annoying and meandering. You don't need to explain your "moral of the story" without even starting the story. Is the author so unconfident in her writing that she has to spell it out? The ending as well. Overall it was badly written.
25. Beyond the Naked Eye - 3/3 Excellent story. It had a great narrator and a great progression. An original take of the wizard of Oz.
26. Good Hunting - 3/3 Another excellent story. It has all the lost magic and bittersweet sadness of a fairy tale.
27. By the Moon's Good Grace - 1/3 I agree with the introduction, Red Riding Hood has been retold to tatters. This retelling was plainly bad, super predictable, and not interesting nor offering any sort of clever twist on the tale.
28. The Juniper Tree - 1/3 A pointless and incredibly boring story. It was also disturbing and I don't understand what the author wanted to achieve with this.
29. Greensleeves - 1/3 it wasn't bad, still I didn't like it. It was kind of boring. The idea of a library holding magic is cool though.
30. Beauty - 2/3 a very nicely written story with beautiful descriptions and lots of heart. I enjoyed it. -
Everybody likes a good fairy tale, right? There’s reason why they are some of the longest lasting stories in Western history. The fantastic and the romantic pretty much all have roots in those early campfire stories.
I’ve read a few fairy tale-inspired collections over the years, and I like this one because of the range that it presents. It runs the gambit between direct retellings to those only tangentially connected to the tales of old. For example:
“Fairy Tale” by Gardner Dozois places Cinderella in the real world by looking realistically how that tale would’ve played out and thereby turning fairy tale tropes on their heads. In “Beauty”, Tanith Lee reimagines Beauty and the Beast in the future with aliens, establishing once again how love can be unexpected and blind. Kelly Link turns the Snow Queen, a tale of love and sacrifice, into a story of love and loss as a woman emotionally overcoming a failing relationship in “Travels with the Snow Queen”.
Comparatively, “The Juniper Tree” by Peter Straub only thematically and symbolically references the fairy tale it takes its name from, as it tells the story of a sexually abused young boy who finds a way out of it in the end. Ken Liu creates his own fairytale-esque story in “Good Hunting” with steam, gears, and Chinese mythical creatures. Jeff VanderMeer throws everything out the window in “Greensleeves” and presents a wacky account of a librarian, a large frog, and a stained-glass eagle.
On the whole, the stories were delightful and well-written, engaging enough to do their job of entertaining and well-constructed enough to feel satisfying and complete at each end. (Save “By the Moon’s Good Grace” by Kirstyn McDermott which read like a poorly-paced YA novel.) They had heart and spice and never failed to lose sight of the elements and themes of the fairy tales that they were inspired by.
But, looking back, most weren’t particularly memorable. Fun in the moment but no staying power. You see, to write this review, I had to remind myself what even happened in some of the earlier stories. Partly that is because there were so many of them that some crowded the others out. There are 30 stories in this collection after all.
Still, it is an enjoyable read just as fairy tales should be. -
This book was not what I had anticipated.
I was thinking "modern retellings" or "the fairy tales you know and love--but with a twist!". Most, however, weren't just Little Red Riding Hood remade with a romance with the wolf, or Cinderella but she's a cab driver. It was something entirely different. It was a series of intelligent, interesting, diverse, often thought-provoking stories that were often a joy to read. Some of them were of slightly lesser interest, but many were creative and engaging. I enjoyed The Coin of Heart's Desire, Mussel Eater, The Bone Mother, Lebkuchen, and many others. The author selection was great--I love Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Elizabeth Bear, Gene Wolf, and Gardner Dozois. There were authors I didn't know whom I enjoyed quite a bit, and it's definitely worth reading. It was super fun, and often very beautiful. -
Find my full review of all the short stories in this collection on my blog
I love fairy tales and fairy tale retellings, so this collection was a must-read for me and it did not disappoint. There are some very sweet stories in there, some creepy twists on well known classics and some entirely different kinds of fairy tales. Each author adds his or her own unique twist to the fairy-tale genre.
I particularly enjoyed:
Halfway People by Karen Joy Fowler, about a girl who loves the sea and the strange man with a wing for an arm she finds one day
Beyond the Naked Eye by Rachel Swirsky, a retelling of the wizard of Oz, in which a rebellion is brewing and it uses a reality TV show to bring about the wizard's downfall
Good Hunting by Ken Liu, about a world losing its magic to the advancement of steam technology. Except magic will find a way
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This was one of the best anthologies I’ve read. The stories that were chosen are well balanced and all completely fascinating in different ways. I was sold based on the premise of the book and the bevy of great authors (Catherynne Valente, Kelly Link, Ken Lou, Neil Gaiman, and tons of others) but I ended up giving it 5 stars on editing alone. I’m definitely going to try other anthologies that Paula Guran has edited. I will say that this is most definitely a book for adults (solidly 16+ in my opinion), and it gets DARK dark. But if you want dark fairy tale retellings that are lyrical and far from the average retelling, then you will enjoy this read.
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The selection of short stories was pretty good, even though there were some I could have done without. Writing style is paramount to my enjoyment of a novel, and I still can't be completely happy with rapid fire stream of consciousness offerings. There are authors though, such as Jane Yolen, Neil Gaiman, and Charles de Lint, that I will put up with a lot for, in order to get my mitts on any of their stories. This was the case when I first picked up this book. I saw their names, and I instantly had to have it. If I happen to find a new writer that I enjoy, that's just bonus.
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A really nice anthology. I had seen a few of the stories elsewhere, but most of them were new - even if old, as in the case of the Tanith Lee works that bookend the stories... I have read a lot of Tanith Lee, but never saw these before, so it is worth picking up just for that. The last story especially was very good... I wish someone would put together a few new anthologies of her work, now that she has passed.
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Wavering between two and three stars, but I'll give it three because I really liked the two Tanith Lee stories that bookended the compilation. I really liked about a third of these, really did not like another third (too grimdark in the bad kind of way, ie using rape and violence which I am strongly opposed to) and felt ambivalent about the remaining third. Some interesting retellings, but overall a little too presumptuously gritty for my tastes.
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A wonderful collection of well known fairy tales and even some new ones. Red riding hood, beauty and the beast, and sleeping beauty never looked this way before. Charles de Lint brings one of his fresh concepts on faeries and the dream world to a new level while Peter S. Beagle shows that he's got more up his sleeve than the Last Unicorn. If you're a fairy tale lover, you won't want to miss this collection!
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What a wonderful anthology of re-done, updated or not, fairy tales. Favorite is probably the Red Riding Hood where Grandmama WAS the wolf, and stepfather axed her. Of course Red AND her mother AND her aunty were "were"wolves, could switch back and forth. Terrific writing. Neil Gaiman and Peter Beegle part of the collection as well. It would be fun to teach a class (of adults) starting with Brothers Grimm, then ending with this. Blow a few minds, that would!
