When I review novels, I often don’t reference my own work but in this case, it’s warranted. I had just finished publishing my third novel, Kingdom’s Advent, which is a book of fairytale short stories all set in the same world. While I was on my page, Amazon listed a number of books similar to mine. One was Tales of Ever After: A Fellowship of Fantasy Anthology (hereafter, Tales of Ever After).
A collection of fairytale stories? Where was this when I was doing my research? Curiously, I clicked on it, read the introduction, and decided to buy it for comparison purposes, not to review it. I thought I’d read the first two stories and stop if I didn’t like them.
I read the first short story, enjoyed it a great deal, and thought it likely far better than the rest in the collection. That is, until I read the second story. Then I started to wonder if there were any stories in this anthology I wouldn’t like!
Tales of Ever After, a collection from the Fellowship of Fantasy group, is what an anthology book ought to be. It has fun with fairy tales in a way little seen today. Instead of lampooning, dismissing, or twisting in a spirit inappropriate to the source of fairy tales, these authors have embraced the challenge to write modern fairy tales and make them interesting. They’ve succeeded.
No story in this collection left me disappointed or wishing I had spent my time reading something else. Highlights include Cinders by Kendra E. Ardnek which imagines Cinderella not as a person but as a concept, the work of a fairy godmother to uplift the downtrodden, until she meets her match. And then there’s Third Princess by Emily Martha Sorensen which flips the “third child is always the best child” trope on its head. The hilarity of The Quest for a Wide Awake Princess (Lia London) made me want this story to be longer. Contrast that with the serious plot of Being Seen (Gretchen E. K. Engel) about an invisible princess-like woman hiding her transparency, and the range of the book is apparent. Other notable mentions are the clever twist of Tears of the Sea, the urban fairytale fantasy Wake the Moon, the practical Cinderella extension A Week after Midnight, the surprising retelling of How to Hide a Prince, the glorious epic The Greatest Adventure, and a fairytale Grimm would be proud of with The Loathly Princess of Eidimor.
The penultimate story, Believing Fairy Tales, is a phenomenal short story about a mysterious servant guarding a monastery. When thieves arrive at the door, the young servant warns them of their folly. Alternately laugh-out-loud funny and tragically serious, I enjoyed every sentence in this gem of a tale.
The second story, At the Corner of Elm and Main, is one of those tales that when you finish it, you know you’ve read something you’ll never forget. One of the most imaginative and moving stories I’ve read in a long time, I honestly wish Disney would take a look and make a short of it. This one story was worth the price of the entire book.
So, I picked up this anthology in the hopes that I would read a couple, perhaps three, good yarns. But it turns out I read sixteen! The style, the variety, and the pure magic that the book demonstrates deserves my highest praise and rating. Certainly, I’ll be picking up others in this series and more novels by this group of talented authors.
To purchase: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FFMHM8M