The Fair Folk: Six Tales of the Fey

edited by Marvin Kaye

Ace Books; $15; 435 pp

The opening story of this terrific, engrossing collection is such a refreshing blast of fantasy. Tanith Lee’s “UOUS” is wonderful, inventive, fascinating and wildly colorful. It’s the Cinderella tale of a young woman who’s living with a nasty stepmother and two step sisters in a weird part of the wood in contemporary England. The aging, crumbling home they have is set in a clearing edged about by trees and vines.

The “Cinderella” here is named Lois, but her stepsisters call her “Louse.” Lois has names for them, too. The stepmum whose name is Irene but it’s pronounced “’Ear Rainer’” has a boyfriend Lois calls Decrepit James. The sisters named Andromeda and Ophelia are called “And” and “Oaf” by the narrator.

Just a lovely disjunctive family.

Of course hard working, treated-like-dirt Lois finally snaps one day and cries out to the wood she has to traverse each day to get the bus to town: “Three Wishes!” That’s all she wants to make her life a little easier.

As we all know: “Never ask for what you want: You may get it.” And brother, does she ever.

An ethereal elf shows up…and Lois gets her wishes…sort of.

There’s an unexpectedly wicked ending to this story.

The rest of the collection has just as tart and lovely tales as Tanith Lee’s.

Megan Lindholm’s “Grace Notes” is a contemporary tale of a house brownie helping out a young man keep his home spic and span…and she does it by shopping HSN and maxing out his credit card.

“Gypsies in the Wood” by Kim Newman is a dark Gothic tale set in an alternate Victorian England and focuses on two children who have been spirited away to Fairyland…with unsettling results. A government organization that investigates the strange and unusual gets involved, along with a detective and a lady journalist, to untangle the events. However, the weakness here for me was the made up names. A “B. Loved” for an artist, characters named P.C. Throttle and Satterthwaite Bulge, a village named Eye. Even though I know some of it is emulating Victorian names ala Dickens, it’s a bit much.

“The Kelpie” by Patricia McKillip is a lovely romantical tale set in a sort of Pre-Raphaelite artistic circle, again, in England. Very dreamy and full of rich description. My second favorite in this collection, after Tanith Lee’s.

“Except the Queen” by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder is about a pair of exiled fairies coping with humans in the contemporary world. Aging and without powers their intrinsic empathy for wounded souls gets them involved with a young man and woman with interesting destinies. The tale quite sweeps you along and the tension builds as the two sisters write back and forth discovering bit by bit the convoluted plans of the Fairy Queen.

The weakest tale in this lot is “An Embarrassment of Elves” by Craig Shaw Gardner. It’s a big noisy guffaw of a story about ooh those wild and crazy elves, and a host of other fey clowns as a line-up of Fantasy Quest clichés Gardner has used in other stories. At the heart of the matter is a spectacular Elvish Party. Well, set in this collection, the Gardner piece is like loud giggling in a silent church: unnecessary and pretty annoying. - Sue Martin