Mammoth Book of Short Fantasy Novels

As it's a compilation, I'll quickly address each story. Overall I enjoyed it very much; there was one that wasn't my thing, and sadly two had aspects I was really quite uncomfortable with.

* "The Gate of the Flying Knives" by Poul Anderson. Quite enjoyed this quick fantasy adventure, a sort of picaresque style with some fun magic.
* "Unicorn Tapestry" by Suzy McKee Charnas. A bit odd? Modern fantasy as much as it's fantasy at all, and mostly more of that odd 70s philosopsychological stuff. Possibly supposed to be psychological drama. Not really my thing.
* "Sleep Well of Nights" by Avram Davidson. An interesting supernatural tale, rather than fantasy as such, quite gentle and friendly, if occasionally slightly hard to follow.
* "Black Heart and White Heart" by H. Rider Haggard. No-holds-barred boys' own adventure, with the kind of self-interested and treacherous white adventurer who's so often a protagonist, but Haggard has deliberately built this around the man's failings and the native characters are where the real action is. Slightly tough going at times as it's fairly grim, like all Haggard, but decent.
* "Red Nails" by Robert E Howard. Um. Well, I like the fantastical dead city, and the psychotically feuding inhabitants, and the lich-wizard, and even the fight with the dinosaur. Only the apparent heroine gets demoted from adventuress to feeble woman after the first two pages, in favour of a Conan presented as a smug, lecherous groper with no redeeming features except combat prowess. Shame.
* "Storm in a Bottle" by John Jakes. Pretty fun stuff, with our hero trying to escape treacherous wizards and kings.
* "Ill Met in Lankhmar" by Fritz Leiber. A well-written, dark but enjoyable tale full of weird and sinister magic. My only real regret is that he kills off the female characters (at least one of whom's apparently competent) which felt a bit fridgy to me.
* "The Lands Beyond the World" by Michael Moorcock. Weird, but in a good way. Moorcock does a good job of presenting an odd dreamworld and an inhuman protagonist, and I enjoyed this pretty well.
* "A Man and His God" by Janet Morris. One to skip, to be honest. It's not especially clear what is going on (in story terms) sometimes, it's fairly grim, and I was really quite uncomfortable with a couple of elements. One was Morris' handling of the Ilsig character, which reads too much like slavery-era stereotypes for me. Moreover, the protagonist Tempus reads like a confused, irrational psycho and (importantly) I don't get the impression he's meant to. Between torturing the poor Ilsig to death for reasons which make no actual sense with a moment's reflection, and his legalistic approach to other goings-on, he just came across as contemptible. Nothing to care about here.
* "Spider Silk" by Andre Norton. Hooray, a female protagonist! An interesting and thoroughly creative tale, even though it's predictable in many plot aspects (it's not like most of the other stories aren't). Good stuff.
* "Where is the Bird of Fire?" by Thomas Burnett Swann. I didn't read this because the blurb made it sound depressing.
* "Guyal of Sfere" by Jack Vance. A nice, rich, creative quest tale with strange and terrible magic, in a compelling style (especially if, like me, you quite like wordy writing). Thoroughly enjoyable.
* "Tower of Ice" by Roger Zelazny. Another great one, unusual and full of good and unexpected touches. I was pleased because I'd been put off Zelazny by Lord of Light. ( )