Saturday, February 21, 2009

Ages of Wonder-Julie E. Czerneda and Rob St. Martin

Ages of Wonder
Julie E. Czerneda and Rob St. Martin
Daw, Mar 2009, $7.99
ISBN: 0756405432

This anthology collection is based on the premise that there are other eras besides the medieval and the modern periods in which fantasy can thrive. The collection is broken into six categories as follows: the Age of Antiquity with four entries; the Age of Sails contains four tales; the Colonial Age includes three stories: the Age of Pioneers provides three submissions, the Pre-Modern Age includes three stories; and the Age Ahead contains two. All nineteen contributions are new and well written with this reviewer’s favorite period being the Pre-Modern Age with the awe of new technologies and major scientific advancements. Within each age the tales radically differ and even more so between the sections so that a reader can choose to go in placement order (chronological at the section level) or as I did rotate between sections. Fresh, AGES OF WONDER is an intriguing fantasy collection that lends itself to a fascinating “Age” comparability as the reader can determine which era is best suited for “myths, magic, and monsters”.

Harriet Klausner

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