Richard Gilliam

This is a nice tribute collection of short stories (and a poem) by some of the most popular speculative authors today. They all pay homage to one of the seminal characters in modern fantasy, Elric of Melnibone. Nice to see how they handle Moorcock's creation. I especially welcomed the diversity, from classic Karl Edward Wagner to Neil Gaiman and Tad Williams. Every one respects the weird of the White Wolf!

A quite average collection of quite average short stories. There were just a few I really did not like (those from Stein, Collins, Nye, Partington and, surprisingly, Neil Gaiman), and also just a few I did really, really like (Williams, Ciencin, Cashman, Wagner). The rest were all good-ish and mostly way too short, though they tended to become repetitive and, as a whole, to almost bore me - good thing I have been an Elric fan for so long. Still am.
On the good side, I discovered Wagner's show more character Kane and loved him, then found out there are 6 books of him... oh, goodie, must buy them all! show less

Pretty good variety of poems and all sorts of short stories. Started well with a poem from Jane Yolen and finished well with 'Greggies Cup' by Rick Wilber. In between enjoyed the tales by Andre Norton (of course), Diana L. Paxson, james S. Dorr, Lee Hoffman, Janny Wurts and Neil Gaiman.

There were maybe six stories in here that I really liked, about six that I skimmed completely, and the rest were just...ok. I actually almost stopped reading until I came to the Rusch story, which was excellent. I'm not sure why so many of them weren't great; could be that they tried too hard to be epic? Or send a message? Or explain some unknown historical conundrum? Whatever the reason, this is one book for which to be sneaky and read the good stories at the bookstore. Or, you know, get it show more from the library. Whichever. show less