Welcome to Bordertown

Sometime in the dim dark ages (mid 1980's) editor Terri Windling dreamt up an idea for a shared world that she called Bordertown. The Borderlands, sometimes called Bordertown was an area where the boundaries between our world and that of the faeries blurred and this seemed to draw disaffected youth from both places like moths to a flame. A number of Terri Windling's authorial acquaintances also liked the idea and contributed to it. There were a number of anthologies released and they achieved respectable popularity at the time.

I never got into Bordertown back then. I had other reading interests and the covers didn't do a lot for me. I wish I had, the original collections are very hard to find and horrendously expensive. The last collection was released in 1998 and the borders remained closed until 2011. Welcome to Bordertown is a brand new anthology of Bordertown stories edited by Ellen Kushner and popular YA author Holly Black with an introduction by Terri Windling. While I found the artwork on the original covers unappealing that's not the case with Steve Stone's bright image of an ivy covered motorcycle on this new collection.

The two ladies have assembled a formidable roster of talent, including names such as Cory Doctorow, Holly Black herself, Jane Yolen, Neil Gaiman, the wonderful Cat Valente and the Urban Fantasy pioneer Charles De Lint.

Welcome to Bordertown is an eclectic collection of stories, poems, songs and even a comic strip.

Like most short story collections there are some good ones, some not so good and one absolute stand out.

I could take or leave the poems, they rarely do connect with me. I don't think the collection would have suffered if they had been removed. Two examples of good stories were Cat Valente's dark, but beautifully written (that woman uses words so well) entry; A Voice Like A Hole, and the bewitching Elf Blood by Annette Curtis Klause. As a new visitor to Bordertown I also appreciated the Bordertown Basics at the front of the book and felt that the excellent Welcome to Bordertown by Terri Windling and Ellen Kushner also gave newbies a good introduction, explaining how the entrance to Bordertown had been closed for 13 years in our world, but 13 days in the Borderlands. One story that I really didn't like or see the point of was surprisingly from one of the original contributors to the Bordertown books Emma Bull's; Incunabulum. The stand out was Charles De Lint's closer; A Tangle of Green Men. I tried De Lint years ago, but could never really get into him, I may have to have another go at it.

Welcome to Bordertown will hopefully entice previous visitors back and attract a new generation to this wondrous place so that more collections can come out and maybe even have the older ones reprinted. I want to go back.

An Artificial Night

An Artificial Night is Seanan McGuire's 3rd October Daye novel, featuring the changeling detective October 'Toby' Daye.

Although Toby is a licensed PI, the cases the readers see her tackle in the books all involve her mother's people; the fae, to a large extent. This time a number of fae and mortal children, including Toby's 'niece' and 'nephew', have gone missing. The children have been taken by the powerful firstborn (a faery child born to Oberon and Titania or Maeve) Blind Michael to be part of his Wild Hunt. No one kidnaps those close to Toby and gets away with it. It's not easy getting the best of a creature as old and powerful as Blind Michael and there will a price for Toby and her motley band of friends to regain what is theirs from the master of the Wild Hunt.

As I've already read and reviewed the first 2 Toby books I decided to do something a little different with this one. I'm going to list my Good and my Not So Good points. Note: there won't be a lot of Not So Good, Seanan really brought her A game with this one.

Good:
The return of Toby's friend the bridge troll cum cabbie Danny.
We got more Quentin. Yay! I'm a fan of the young Daoine Sidhe fosterling and it was not made clear in the previous book; A Local Habitation whether or not he would play a large role in upcoming volumes.
Toby's rose goblin pet (think of a cat made out of rose thorns) Spike plays a big role in this.
Most of the action took place in a truly wondrous and well realised faery kingdom.
Readers got some more of the history behind Luna, the wife of Toby's liege lord Sylvester Torquill, the Duke of Shadowed Hills.
May Daye; Toby's Fetch, very cool character. She looks like Toby and acts like her a lot of the time, but she's really a part of Toby's personality, not the whole of it.
The Luidaeg, the more we find out about her, the more interesting she gets.
Getting to see Toby interacting with her own kind in the human world and having fun with it. I have to admit that I prefer the 'fun Toby' to the cynical, world weary Toby.

Not So Good:
When Toby needs saving from some bad members of the Hunt who should step in, but Tybalt King of Cats? Tybalt does this a lot and it's becoming a little tired. I would have preferred to see Danny show up unexpectedly with his pack of barghests.
Toby spent a lot of this book looking like a nine year old version of herself. Despite this nearly everyone seemed to know who she was. Sometimes it was explained how and other times it wasn't, I felt it was a minor inconsistency.
Initially Toby met resistance when trying to take charge, as the kids she was rescuing saw her as no older than they were. It was a cat princeling Raj who called her on it, but after that it wasn't mentioned again.
There was an entire chapter where Toby was enslaved by Blind Michael and while her thoughts and how she saw her 'master' during this period was very well written, it made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

Seanan's got me on the hook well and truly and I'm locked in for Late Eclipses, Toby's 4th adventure, due out in March 2011.