Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy
Twenty original tell-all tales about those femmes fatale of fantasy
Edited by Denise Little
You probably won’t recognize most of the author names in this short story collection unless you read a lot of magazine
and anthology SF, but do yourself a favor and don’t let that put you off. The quality of both the storytelling and the
writing itself are consistently high, and the stories range widely enough that there are sure to be ones you’ll really
enjoy.
So what’s a bad girl? In this collection, everything from a true siren to some like, duh, sorority sisters who find
that even sorority ‘Greeks’ have their harpies and avenging furies. Some, like the siren, are true bad girls by choice,
others aren’t really bad girls at all other than in other people’s minds and still others aren’t as thoroughly bad girl
as they like to appear.
There are twenty stories in Hags, Sirens, and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy, and I’m having an unusually hard
time picking out favorites to flag, simply because there are so many excellent ones and I enjoyed almost all of them
so much. But if I had to pick - "Bitter Fruit" by one of the ‘name’ authors, Rosemary Edghill, really stood out as an
atmospheric and chilling play on the royal sacrifice on the tree theme. Phaedra Weldon’s "The Light of Ra" is a nice
offbeat riff on the Egyptian mythology of Isis and Osiris and Set. Greg Beatty reminds us that even monsters have mothers
who love them, while Peter Orullian’s character sketch of a very believable Lilith is one of the best of the not as bad
as they seem stories. I also really liked Christina York’s twist on the Cinderella theme, Lisa Silverthorne’s harpy with
a heart, and Michael Hiebert’s tribute to a real life child whose baby teeth came out a bit early thanks to her brother.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable collection of stories that will not only entertain you, but also make you think and
feel. And maybe lead you to take another look at some of the "bad girls" you know in real life and how they got to be
that way. Recommended. |
The Book |
DAW |
July 2006 |
Mass Market Paperback |
0756403693 |
SF - Fantasy |
More
at Amazon.com |
Excerpt |
NOTE: |
The Reviewer |
Kim Malo |
Reviewed 2006 |
NOTE: |
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