THE FAERY REEL

This is a treasure chest. Open it and revel in its riches. The editors asked their authors to re-imagine Fäerie in the present time, or search its more dimly lit pathways, and they have responded with bountiful imagination. The title piece is a poem by Neil Gaiman, but most of the others are longer pieces like shards of stories you want to hear more of. Jeffrey Ford limns the heartbreaking tale of the fairies who live in the sandcastles children make; Ellen Steiber’s “Screaming for Fairies” sketches the lineaments of desire. Bruce Glassco finds a different voice for Tinkerbell and Hook in “Never Never.” Tanith Lee’s “Elvenbrood” is chilling. Gregory Maguire, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Patricia McKillip, and Emma Bull all enchant. Delia Sherman’s “CATNYP” is both funny and deeply clever, warming the cockles of anyone who has ever had dealings with a research library, especially New York Public’s. Wondrous. (Fiction. YA)