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Tehani Wessely of Australia reviews the new edition of Black Thorn, White Rose. She mostly likes the stories and overall gives the book a very good review, but this paragraph struck me:
"Fourteen years is a long time, and these stories first saw print in 1994. So much has changed in the world since then: the ways we perceive good and evil not the least, but also the things that have the power to shock us, to scare us, and to permit us to suspend our disbelief. Hence, there were stories in this anthology that felt old, dated, tired. It is possible to envisage them as fresh and groundbreaking when first published, but the intervening years, and many similar collections (including a number produced by the same editors, some of which I will review soon), have left this anthology feeling a little stale."
Dragonkat@LJ
Once I edit an anthology I rarely reread the stories in print. I've already read them a number of times during the editing process. So I'm not a good judge of this.
Is it true that an anthology series such as the adult fairy tale anthologies, all published in the mid-to late 90s can become dated? I'd think it would completely depend on each individual story. (this is for any fiction written after traumatic current events such as post Vietnam war, post 9/11, et al).
If the story is tied to a particular sensibility or for example, air travel is depicted more innocently than now in our time of terrorism fear does this necessarily date the story or merely make it a snapshot of time?
Because my head is a complete muddle of stuffiness and I'm feeling kind of wretched, I'm not sure if this makes sense, but I'd love some opinions.
"Fourteen years is a long time, and these stories first saw print in 1994. So much has changed in the world since then: the ways we perceive good and evil not the least, but also the things that have the power to shock us, to scare us, and to permit us to suspend our disbelief. Hence, there were stories in this anthology that felt old, dated, tired. It is possible to envisage them as fresh and groundbreaking when first published, but the intervening years, and many similar collections (including a number produced by the same editors, some of which I will review soon), have left this anthology feeling a little stale."
Dragonkat@LJ
Once I edit an anthology I rarely reread the stories in print. I've already read them a number of times during the editing process. So I'm not a good judge of this.
Is it true that an anthology series such as the adult fairy tale anthologies, all published in the mid-to late 90s can become dated? I'd think it would completely depend on each individual story. (this is for any fiction written after traumatic current events such as post Vietnam war, post 9/11, et al).
If the story is tied to a particular sensibility or for example, air travel is depicted more innocently than now in our time of terrorism fear does this necessarily date the story or merely make it a snapshot of time?
Because my head is a complete muddle of stuffiness and I'm feeling kind of wretched, I'm not sure if this makes sense, but I'd love some opinions.
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"I adore anything that even comes close to being a retelling of one of my beloved fairytales. Silly, sentimental...I don't care I just love fairytales. I eagerly picked this book up at the library for a little light reading between exams and papers. Boy, was I disappointed! I felt horrid reading this stuff. I just could not finish it. I'm sorry, but I do not find it entertaining in the least to read about adults lusting after children...a theme found in several of the stories. Sleeping with the mother while attempting to seduce the young daughter. Feeling up a child who is clinging to you because she is afraid of the woods. Raping children!!!! This book makes me sad. I only gave it one star because I had to."
and another:
"Then there's "Snowdrop" by Tanith Lee, a totally pointless story which seems little more than a spiffed-up Snow White with a lesbian sex scene to make things more "adult." Such a preoccupation with graphic, pointless sex is not adult; it is adolescent. The end result is that this anthology performs the rather dubious task of removing fairy tales from the nursery and putting them in the adult novelty store instead."
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