Coyote Road – Trickster Tales
edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Viking, 517 pp, $19.99

One of the highlights of TusCon was listening to Will Shetterly read aloud “Black Rock Blues,” one of the 26 tales in this anthology. This is a collection of new fantasy by such writers as Pat Murphy (author of There and Back Again), Charles de Lint, Patricia McKillip, Ellen Kushner, Jeffrey Ford, Holly Black, and Kij Johnson, with tricksters from around the world gifting and testing and tormenting mortals – and immortals. Coyote is well represented, as several contributors are residents of the Southwest. Hermes gets some good coverage as well, most directly in Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s “The Listeners.” In addition to the stories, the volume includes an erudite introductory essay by Windling, lists of recommended reading, and gorgeous illustrations by Charles Vess.

In “Wagers of Gold Mountain,” by Steve Berman, the Chinese trickster goddess squares off with a deified P. T. Barnum, but they both get outwitted by a young human. Monsieur Brumeux is the disciple-descendant of Daedalus and maker of “The Other Labyrinth” in the story by Jedediah Berry. A kitsune helps an American teenager come to terms with his alien status in Japan in the story “Realer than You” by Christopher Berzak. Delia Sherman’s “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche” concerns an albino girl whose companions are the loup garous, the werewolves of Cajun story-telling. Against her will she is involved in a bet between Murderes Petitpas, the dangerous fiddler, and his five sons. One of the most original stories is “A Tale for the Short Days” in which a trickster god tries to reverse the industrial surges that encroach on his bailiwick. Richard Bowes wrote of his story, “Thinking about old gods in godless times, I wondered if they had lost their powers or were just less and less able to understand the modern world and its technology.” This is one of the most refreshing anthologies I have read in a donkey’s age. Please go buy a copy, so that all these nice writers will receive royalties and more anthologies will be printed. Perhaps there will be sequels.J - Chris Paige