Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This encyclopedic anthology picks up where the VanderMeers’ The Big Book of Classic Fantasy left off, offering a staggering 91 fantasy shorts published between 1946 and 2010. In the introduction, the VanderMeers define fantasy as “any story in which an element of the unreal permeates the real world or any story that takes place in a secondary world that is identifiably not a version of ours.” This encompasses undeniable masterworks, including Vladimir Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” and Gabriel García Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” but is too broad a theme to unify the anthology as a whole. Instead, the VanderMeers offer a sweeping survey, highlighting stories by genre greats (Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Pratchet), modern titans (Stephen King, Victor Lavalle, George R.R. Martin, Haruki Murakami) and beloved cult figures (Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter) and celebrating lesser-known works in translation, including Pakistani legend Intizar Hussain’s “Kaya-Kalp (Metamorphosis),” Guyanese novelist Edgar Mittelholzer’s “Poolwana’s Orchid,” and the first English translations of stories by Mexican author Alberto Chimal, Swedish author Marie Hermanson, and Polish author Marta Kisiel. Though the anthology’s size and scope will intimidate casual readers, anyone with a scholarly interest in the evolution of the genre will find this a treasure trove. Agent: Sally Harding, Cooke McDermid Literary. (July)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A companion volume to The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019), Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s latest anthology—and last together, according to the introduction—explores modern fantasy and its evolution from the end of WWII to 2010 with a shelf-bending collection featuring 91 stories from some of the genre’s biggest luminaries, including Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, and J.G. Ballard. The VanderMeers do an adept job of giving readers a comprehensive view of the narrative scope of fantasy—which they describe as “one of the broadest genres imaginable”—over the last six-plus decades with an impressively wide variety of stories. In addition to featuring iconic adventure fantasy works (Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story “Lean Times in Lankhmar”; “The Tales of Dragons and Dreamers,” a Tales of Nevèrÿon story by Samuel R. Delany; and Michael Moorcock’s introduction to Elric of Melniboné in “The Dreaming City”) and classic “literary” short stories like Vladimir Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” and “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez, the anthology also contains a conspicuous number of dragon-powered stories. Finnish author Tove Jansson’s illustrated all-ages story “The Last Dragon in the World” includes her signature Moomins characters in a delightful tale about a tiny dragon, and Patricia McKillip’s “The Fellowship of the Dragon” follows five armed women as they embark on a perilous quest to find a missing harpist who has been allegedly imprisoned by a dragon. Many of the book’s strongest selections come from international fantasy, with translated stories from Mexican writer Alberto Chimal (“Mogo”), French author Manuela Draeger (“The Arrest of the Great Mimille”), and Belarusian writer Abraham Sutzkever (“The Gopherwood Box”). This doorstopper of an anthology will surely entertain fantasy fans. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

This mammoth anthology from two of speculative fiction's most talented editors collects stories published after 1945, where The Big Book of Classical Fantasy (2019) left off. Ann and Jeff Vandermeer again demonstrate their commitment to presenting not only treasured stories by big names in the field (Moorcock, Leiber, Le Guin) but also a well-rounded range of lesser-known literary or paraliterary fantasists' work and previously under- or untranslated writers. An anthology of this breadth and depth will have stories that will please almost any kind of fantasy reader, but there are standouts: Rhys Hughes' "The Darktree Wheel" follows a skilled thief and footpad as he explores the ice-encased city of Chaud-Melle while attempting to survive a cooking festival and a postal revolution; Stepan Chapman's "State Secrets of Aphasia," set in an Oz-like wonderland threatened by a mysterious black glacier; and the newly translated "The Arrest of the Great Mimille" by Manuela Draeger, in which a horde of wall-fish menace a surreal city by attempting to create a sheriff out of cubic bubbles. The stories range from fantasy adventure to surrealist fable, making this collection an essential read for any passionate reader, period.