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Naked City: Tales Of Urban Fantasy (2011)

by Ellen Datlow(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0312385242 (ISBN13: 9780312385248)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

St. Martin's Griffin

review 1: Checked this one out from the library. Really enjoyed some of the stories, others were meh. Some of my favorites were: Curses by Jim Butcher; How the Pooka Came to New York City by Delia Sherman; The Duke of Riverside by Ellen Kushner; Fairy Gifts by Patricia Briggs; Underbridge by Peter S Beagle; The Bricks of Gelecek by Matthew Kressel; Guns for the Dead by Melissa Marr; Noble Rot by Holly Black; & King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree by Elizabeth Bear
review 2: This was a pretty good anthology, with a fair number of great stories in it. Curses was a fun stand alone Dresden Files story and it's reminded me that I really need to get around to reading that series sooner or later. How the Pooka Came to New York City had some nice commentary on the experience ... moreof immigrants and made good use of mythology to tell an enjoyable, fairy-tale-esque story. It reminds me of some of the best bits of Neil Gaiman's American Gods. On the Slide was clever, and the main character was quite well written. The Duke of Riverside was enjoyable. I liked that it centered around a gay couple, and it's made me interested in looking into the series it's a part of. Oblivion by Calvin Klein was just kinda weird and uninteresting to me. Probably one of my least favorites. Fairy Gifts was okay. I mostly liked the shifting back and forth between past and present - that's a technique for explaining character backstory that I like. It didn't really get me interested in checking out Briggs' other stuff, though. Picking Up the Pieces was pretty cool. I loved the detailed look at what Berlin right after the fall of the wall was like. The fantasy element was kept fairly mysterious, which worked well here. Underbridge was a lot of fun and pretty clever. Once again, I really liked how the protagonist was written. By the end, I didn't like him much, but he very much felt real. Priced to Sell was great. The idea of real estate for supernatural creatures was really clever, and I hope that Novik writes more about it at some point, because I'd love to explore the concept more. Weston Walks was kinda weird. Some of it reminded me of London Below from Neverwhere. I guess I kinda liked it, but it definitely didn't go where I was expecting. The Projected Girl was okay. Not bad, but it didn't really grab me, and I figured out the main fantasy element relatively early on. Guns for the Dead was really cool and I definitely want to check out the novel it's related to, because the world it shows is really well put together and I want to see more of it. And Go Like This was okay. It didn't really feel like it belonged here, though. Noble Rot was really good and really creepy. It makes me want to read more of Holly Black's work at some point. Daddy Longlegs of the Evening was kinda creepy, but the premise is just a little too odd for me to really get into it. The idea of a man-sized spider is potentially scary, but that it comes from a spider crawling into a kid's brain is just too ridiculous for me to suspend my disbelief. The Skinny Girl was quite weird in a good way. I feel more or less the same about The Colliers' Venus. With both stories, I definitely enjoyed them and the weird stuff that went on, though I am left with a feeling that there might be some hidden meaning that I've managed to miss. King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree was a really fun story. It took me a little while to adjust to the concept of the protagonist being a city (or at least the human version), but once I did, I was hooked. This is another story that reminds me of the better parts of American Gods, and I hope that Bear has written more stuff with the same characters or at least the same concept. (Also, I was once again happy to see a story centered around a gay couple.) Over all, though there were some stories here that I wasn't a big fan of, none of them were really bad, and the good ones were generally excellent. Plus, I discovered some new authors to look into, which is always a good thing. less

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