Short stories ranging from a children’s tale about a mouse who decided to be a cat, a sequel to his novel “the Last Unicorn,” moralistic tales in the tradition of Aesop’s fables, and lots of good fantasy. Like all good short story collections, it has something for everyone and at least one that you’ll hate. ( )

Basic Reason for Beginning: Two Hearts. No, actually, that was my reason for wanting it. I started reading it because a friend of mine got it for my birthday and I wanted to read more of Beagle's work asap.
Basic Reason for Finishing: Eeh... I did... Because this is what I Do. I finish books. Most of the time anyway.
Texture: *can't recall*

Full review here.

Rereadability: Uhm... Two Hearts definitely does. I'm afraid the other stories didn't really capture my fancy much.
Recommendation: Only if you're deadset determined to read Two Hearts offline. (Beagle's website had a copy up the last I saw it, so you can read that one for free.) ( )

Of course I loved The Line Between, as I love all of Beagle's work. Some of his writings and characters and worlds touch me more than others, but they're all beautiful in their own ways. This collection includes a short story sequel to The Last Unicorn, as well as a prequel tale concerning the history of an Innkeeper's Song character. And the only work in the whole collection that I'd read previously was "A Dance for Emilia" -- but this second reading still made me cry. An especially nice thing about this book is that Beagle prefaces each story himself, so you get his thoughts on his own characters and creative process. I highly recommend this to any Beagle fans, though new converts would probably do better to start with the novels (thereby avoiding "spoilers"). ( )

Beagle is among my favorite authors, having written my favorite book, as well as one that I greatly admire. He's not infallible (see: The Folk of the Air), but he's got a real style about him, and I tend to really like his stories.

Short stories aren't usually very good for me, but having read a collection of his stories before (in Giant Bones), I still thought that this had a lot of potential. And it made some of it, but not all.

The advertising for this book centered mainly on the Last Unicorn sequel short story in it, and that was ultimately disappointing. I think it was probably unwise of him even to try, which he notes in the little intro to the story, but he did anyway. The style isn't all there, and I don't really feel that the new narrator did a good job with it. It's been a while since I read the main story, certainly, but it wasn't so great.

The same thing applies to the Innkeeper's Song story; this one was better, but it wasn't all that good. I should go back and reread the main one, but I think he's lost his feel for the voice of Soukyan, and for one who knows that book as well as I do, it shows.

But there are still some good stories in there: Salt Wine and a Dance for Emilia were both very, very good, and I liked the Sherlock Holmes pastiche one as well, Mr. Sigerson. The imagination is rich, the style is very good and varied, and the plots fit the short story size well. So the book is worth it, but there's a quality difference that's pretty large between the different stories. And I could do without child narrators so often. ( )

I bought this book for "Two Hearts", but I think my favorite story of it was "Salt Wine". Maybe it was because I read it yesterday while feverish, and I can't stop thinking about how great a film it would make, if the movie-makers could get it right. There aren't enough mermaid stories in the world. I'll give Beagle one thing if anything, he always knows how to strike the perfect note between beauty and the terrible.