Naked City [Paperback]

With 20 authors contributing to this anthology, I have decided not to break it down by each story. My review would then be endless and y'all would just get bored reading it. Instead, I'll tell you that this is an outstanding collection of short stories that showcases some of the many faces of urban fantasy. From Horror to Faeries, a Wizard Detective, and the Troll of Seattle, you will find something you like in this collection.

My favorites are the following (in order of appearance):

1. Curses by Jim Butcher
2. On the Slide by Richard Bowes
3. Fairy Gifts by Patricia Briggs
4. Picking up the Pieces by Pat Cadigan
5. Underbridge by Peter S. Beagle
6. The Bricks of Gelecek by Matthew Kressel
7. The Way Station by Nathan Ballingrud
8. Guns for the Dead by Melissa Marr
9. King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree by Elizabeth Bear

The other eleven stories are good, but to me, these just stood out as great examples of what a short story should be (a glimpse in a character's life, one theme explored; in short the modern fairy tale). With so many to choose from, I am sure there will be those who disagree with me on which stories are their favorites. But that is the beauty of this collection, it's all good and there is something for everyone

This book is mostly NOT Urban Fantasy- or at least what I think is Urban Fantasy. I consider Urban Fantasy to be the standard and well known elements from High Fantasy (Elves, Dragons, Vampires, Wizards, etc- hence the "Fantasy") taken out of their stereotypical surroundings and brought into a more or less modern setting- often a city (hence the "Urban"). Urban Fantasy is often a little more gritty than High Fantasy, and the heroes are sometimes anti-heroes. However, there's often humor involved too. What's fun is seeing those old fantasy standbys adapt to a modern setting- and the modern urbanites try to adapt to suddenly having magic in their midst.

Jim Butcher is perhaps the current Master of this genre, but there are plenty of others- Simon Green, Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison, Ilona Andrews, Charles DeLint, China Meiville, Melissa Marr, Tanya Huff, Holly Black- and the list goes on.

But of those, only 4 appear here. Mind you, their stories are all quite good. Jim has one of his best short stories yet, full of whimsy and manners.

However, of the other 16 authors I only enjoyed a handful, and only a few are what I'd call Urban Fantasy. Some might even be considered "Speculative Fiction", which is a genre I don't care for.

Besides the "Big Four" I mentioned there's also: Delia Sherman writes a nice period piece "How the Pooka Came to New York City". Naomi Novik, who writes the "His Majesties Dragon" series has a nice little tale set in the crazy world of Manhattan Real Estate sales. Peter S Beagle, a fantasy writer of great renown dips into Urban Fantasy with a story about a bridge and a troll- perhaps the 2nd most famous troll in the world. But altho Beagle is one of the greats of fantasy, this story only barely makes into what most would consider the modern Urban Fantasy genre.

But most of the rest are just Speculative Fiction, or perhaps fantasy set in a city, but not "Urban Fantasy" as we currently think of it. Mostly very modern & very urban, but with little "fantasy" anywhere. The editor has said in her Introduction that if the tale is set in a city, and there is something, anything, weird horrific or outré going on- it's "Urban Fantasy". Well, I don't agree.

Many of these are also very dark and disturbing. Yes, I am sure Spec Fic or "dark & disturbing" has it's fanbase, but by and large the fanbase looking for stories along the lines of those penned by Jim Butcher & Patricia Briggs (whose names are in the largest typeface on the cover) will not like these stories. In fact, they may even be repulsed by some of them.

I am not going to list those stories and their authors- after all, they are all fine Spec Fic (or perhaps other genres of Fantasy) authors. But readers looking for Urban Fantasy along the lines of the Dresden Files will likely not recognize them or like their material.

So fans- be warned. Most of this book is not for fans of Jim Butcher & Patricia Briggs. Yes, you will find a few gems here. But if you're anything like me, you'll also find a lot of stuff you really don't like.

"Urban fantasy" is one of those subgenre labels that I've never been quite sure of the meaning of. I associate it primarily with Charles de Lint, an obviously gifted writer whose work I've never yet been able to enjoy, and with a certain type of contemporary magical realism. But in the case of Naked City, Ellen Datlow's new anthology, the meaning of urban fantasy is quite literal. Each of those twenty tales takes place in a city. The city might be a real one, or fictional; it might be within the United States (New York City features five times) or elsewhere in the world, or in another reality entirely; the setting might be past or present. But always, there is the city, bewitching and terrifying, frustrating and wonderful.

For many readers, the major attraction of this anthology will be Jim Butcher's "Curses," a Dresden Files story set in that series' milieu, Chicago. I'll confess that I've never read any of the series (supernatural detectives aren't my thing), and while "Curses" wasn't dazzling enough to change my mind on that, it's obvious that Butcher has mastered the wry private detective voice and done a credible job placing that voice in a world of fairies, demons, and yes, curses. This particular story is about baseball, another pastime that has entirely passed me by, but I imagine fans of the sport will get a kick out of Harry Dresden's investigation into the true story behind the Cubs' bad luck, and even I enjoyed it.

Fans of Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and other novels set in that fantasy world will certainly want to pick up the anthology for "The Duke of Riverside," a story set both before and after the events of that novel, and featuring St. Vier and Alec. The same mixture of swordplay, sharp humor, and passion familiar from other Riverside fiction distinguishes this story, which also highlights the relationship between the aristocratic corner of the city and its less-wealthy regions.

Another star of contemporary fantasy, Peter S. Beagle, offers a grimly ironic story of the woes of academia in "Underbridge," where a visiting professor of children's literature finds himself drawn to Seattle's Fremont Troll statue... and imagines he sees it move. His discovery of the troll's secret life and his precarious position at the university lead to a harrowing decline and a darkly satisfying climax.

In "The Projected Girl," Lavie Tidhar offers an eerie mystery from a magician's scrapbook, but the real joy of the story is the evocation of a young boy's experience of growing up in Haifa, from bookshop visits to encounters with fascinating or disturbing relatives to the sheer pleasure of exploring the city itself. Multi-faceted yet elusive, exotic yet radiantly human, this is a story not to be missed.

Born out of one of those bizarre comparisons people dream up when trying to communicate the size of something, John Crowley's "And Go Like This" at first seems like it will beat a metaphor to death, but Crowley weaves words so well that what might have been a ridiculous premise becomes a powerful dream of community and the recognition of common humanity. If only it could be true.

For sheer creepiness, nothing in the anthology can match Jeffrey Ford's "Daddy Longlegs of the Evening." Its opening sentence is "It was said that when he was a small child, asleep in his bed one end-of-summer night, a spider crawled into his ear, traversed a maze of canals, eating slowly through membrane and organ, to discover the cavern of the skull." The imagery remains that disturbing, but its scope expands, ending with a vision of widening horror reminiscent of Thomas Ligotti.

And in "The Colliers' Venus (1893)," Caitlin R. Kiernan brings the reader to Cherry Creek, an alternate version of Denver, Colorado in a steampunk-influenced world. Like much of Kiernan's fiction, this stories draws on the author's knowledge of paleontology and the long history of inexplicable Fortean events, as Professor Jeremiah Ogilvy investigates a strange discovery made in the mine tunnels beneath the city. Kiernan's gift for describing weird vistas of cosmic terror in poetic language results in a fine tale redolent of humanity's ignorance and impermanence.

These were my own favorite stories from the anthology, but there are others every bit as striking, from "Oblivion by Calvin Klein," a sharp-edged absurdist satire on conspicuous consumption, to "Picking Up the Pieces," about an unusual encounter during the fall of the Berlin Wall, to "Priced to Sell," an inventive comic fantasy about the New York real estate scene. I hope it's obvious from these bare descriptions that readers should check any preconceptions about "urban fantasy" at the door. This is an anthology that captures the full scope of the genre, from humorous to dark, from epic to magical realism. With a contributor list full of best sellers, award winners, and legends of the genre, Naked City is a thick, rich anthology, not to be missed.