Review: "Wizards," edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

"Wizards" (Berkley, $25) bills itself as a collection of stories by "masters of modern fantasy," and it lives up to that billing.

Almost every author contributing to the book will be well-known to fans of fantasy fiction, ranging from masters like Neil Gaiman and Orson Scott Card to relative newcomers like Eoin Colfer.

Wizards, of course, are a staple of the fantasy world, and almost every different kind of magician imaginable is featured in this collection from the all-powerful to the mere illusionist.

There are warm-hearted and whimsical stories like Neil Gaiman's "The Witch's Headstone," which finds a young resident of a graveyard who can speak with the spirits attempting to buy a headstone for an accused witch buried anonymously, or Colfer's offering, "A Fowl Tale," about a talking dove who backs himself into a corner while trying to spin a tale for his supper. Even the normally dark Tanith Lee takes a light approach on "Zinder," about an abused and mentally impaired man who soars the night skies making things right.

Darker tales do appear. Mary Rosenblum's creative "Color Vision" features a wizard hunting young people with the talent to gain their power. The wizard in Elizabeth Hand's "Winter's Wife" uses her magic to avenge a greedy man's act against the natural beauty of her new home. Peter Beagle's "Barrens Dance" features one of the few truly evil wizards in the collection, a man intent on winning the love of a woman he can't have, through any means he can. But even these stories usually end well, if not always entirely happily.

There are tales that play on legends, such as Garth Nix's "Holly and Iron," drawing on a number of different European tales, including King Arthur. Jane Yolen' s "Slipping Sideways Through Eternity" even places the prophet Elijah in the position of wizard.

Perhaps the strangest story (and title) is Andy Duncan's "A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or the Devil's Ninth Question" which finds a young girl jumping into a diorama and finding herself in a house where she'll face the devil himself.

There are a few forgettable stories in the mix, but very few. For the most part, this is a collection of writers doing what they do best. The stories are entertaining and offer a wide variety of styles and wizards to suit most any taste. "Wizards" is a good way to sample some of the best writers in the genre today.

Get "Wizards."

Review: "The Dragon Quintet"

When you mention fantasy, one of the first images that pops into people's minds is probably the dragon. There's no other single element that better represents the genre. Unfortunately, there's also no element that has become quite as cliché.

For that reason, in recent years, the population of dragons has been steadily declining in the various worlds of fantasy. These days, if there's mention of a dragon, it's often a whispered legend of great creatures that died out long ago. That's bad news for us fans of the dragon.

But there's good news, too. "The Dragon Quintet," ($24.95, Tor) brings together five of the biggest names in fantasy to weave tales of the great magical beasts. Those tapped to bring dragons back to the worlds of fantasy include Orson Scott Card, Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Moon and Michael Swanwick. Their dragons couldn't be more different, either.

Card is undeniably a master of science fiction, having delivered, in my opinion, one of the greatest stories of the genre, "Ender's Game." But he's also an accomplished fantasist too, as he illustrates in the opening story, "In the Dragon's House." It tells the tale of a young man who has come to live in a very strange house with his great aunt and uncle. Curious about the attic room where no one is allowed to go, he sneaks in to discover that there's another, secret inhabitant of the house. The dragon seems benevolent, but he has his own agenda.

Moon is probably best known for writing military science fiction, about the farthest you can get from dragons in the speculative genres. But she's also no stranger to fantasy. Her dragon in "Judgment" is more along the lines of what has become the norm in fantasy, a nearly all-powerful and all-wise being that has the ability to appear in human form. The story begins when a young man and his future father-in-law find some strange rocks near their village. The rocks turn out to be dragon eggs, each containing thousands of young dragons and a whole lot of trouble.

A master of dark and macabre stories, Lee has regularly used dragons in her stories. In "Love in the Time of Dragons," a knight sets out with a village girl in tow to slay the dragon in the nearby mountains. The surprise is all his, though.

Lackey's Valdemar is one of the most familiar worlds in fantasy, and her story "Joust" was the basis for her 2003 novel of the same name. Lackey's dragons are more companion animals than the typical fantasy dragon. They're highly intelligent, but don't have the magical properties that other writers ascribe to them. In "Joust," a young serf is taken on by a dragon rider to tend his beast, but sees freedom within his grasp when he steals an egg from the clutch of a dragon that has been accidentally bred.

In his classic "The Iron Dragon's Daughter," Swanwick took the conventions of fantasy and turned them on their heads. He does it again in this collection with "King Dragon." If you've read the earlier work of Swanwick, it's no surprise that his dragons are malicious metal monsters, made of both magic and technology. In this story, an injured dragon crawls into a local village after a battle and takes over, setting himself up as king.

These five excellent tales from five of the top writers in the genre show just how diverse these stories and the dragons that populate them can be. They prove that there are still good dragon stories out there.

Review: "Graven Images" edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Thomas S. Roche

Since the beginning of time, people have made statues, carvings and other images to represent whatever gods held sway in their civilization. Many of these have been swept away by the tides of time and change, but some are still with us.

In "Graven Images: Fifteen Tales of Magic and Myth" (Ace), editors Nancy Kilpatrick and Thomas S. Roche pull together stories that deal with representations of deities of past and present. Beginning with ancient Greece, Egypt and India the stories progress chronologically through modern times.

The book brings together some established fantasy and horror writers like Robert Silverberg, Tanith Lee, Jack Ketchum, Esther Friesner and Lawrence Watt-Evans, with some lesser-known names like Lois Tilton, Kathe Koja and Kathryn Ptacek. Some stories stick entirely with the theme, while others hang on by a tenuous thread, making for an interesting variety.

One of the best stories in the book has little, if anything at all, to do with deities. Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Heart of Stone" tells the story of a woman trapped in a wall of a wizard's home. When the wizard is killed by superstitious townspeople, she spends a great deal of time alone, before a con artist happens upon the ruins of the house and tries to use her for his own gain. He soon finds that the townspeople he's trying to fleece still harbor their ill will toward magic and its practitioners.

There are a number of other very intriguing tales in the collection. Lois Tilton's "The Goddess Danced" tells the tale of a young girl horribly scarred by an attack from a local bully and cast off by her family to the only people that will take her -- a family of beggars. After years of abuse from her husband's family, the girl develops a bond with the goddess Kali.

In "Shaped Stones" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, a family of orphans in the Great Depression is taken in by a wealthy magician who has designs for one of the orphans who possesses a magical gift. "Mud" becomes a mortal enemy in Brian McNaughton's World War I tale. And in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's "Giotto's Window," a man begins to see monstrous visions of other people and his doctor is not sure he's insane.

The only low point of the book comes from veteran Gene Wolfe. His "The Eleventh City" has an intriguing idea based on a story from the fifth chapter of Mark, but it's written as a memo between a university researcher and his superior. Unfortunately it also reads like a memo, with no emotion and nothing to hook the reader.

The other 14 tales in the book more than make up for the one slow point near the middle. The book ends with a bang as three powerful tales are stacked up back-to-back. Jack Ketchum and Edward Lee's disturbing "Masks" plumbs the darker side of human nature, and what some are capable of when their faces are hidden. Kathe Koja's "At Eventide" looks at a woman given an incredible power and an opportunity to repay the attacker that gave her this "gift." Finally, Tanith Lee's "That Glisters Is" offers a dream-like view of "the other side."

In the introduction, the editors set some lofty goals for the book. They promise tales that will offer some insight into spirituality. Many of the tales in the book succeed in doing that. What the editors have truly succeeded at, though, is bringing together a collection of interesting and intriguing tales that take a look at the past, and in a few cases, perhaps even the future.