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A review by haramis
Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond by John Joseph Adams, Douglas Cohen
4.0
I had high hopes for this anthology, and I don't think they were entirely met. There were some original and interesting things in here, but also what amounted to several retellings of the original story with only a slightly different form. The best of these, in my opinion was "Dead Blue" by David Farland, which had a melancholy feel to it, a bit like what happens when you pull the veneer of childhood off a beloved tale. The imagery in this one just kept coming back to me.
While I have to say that I'm not the biggest fan of Jonathan Maberry, "The Cobbler of Oz" was the strongest story in the book. It is right in tone, feel, narrative, everything. It most of all feels like a real Oz story.
Besides that I enjoyed Tad Williams' "The Boy Detective of Oz" and Jane Yolen's "Blown Away." While I enjoyed most of the other stories in the collection, they really didn't make much of an impression, and 4/15 isn't a very high percentage, thus the three-star rating. I would say that I feel like this is the high side of that, say 3.75, so I guess I'll round it up to four. Plus at $6.00, it's a steal.
While I have to say that I'm not the biggest fan of Jonathan Maberry, "The Cobbler of Oz" was the strongest story in the book. It is right in tone, feel, narrative, everything. It most of all feels like a real Oz story.
Besides that I enjoyed Tad Williams' "The Boy Detective of Oz" and Jane Yolen's "Blown Away." While I enjoyed most of the other stories in the collection, they really didn't make much of an impression, and 4/15 isn't a very high percentage, thus the three-star rating. I would say that I feel like this is the high side of that, say 3.75, so I guess I'll round it up to four. Plus at $6.00, it's a steal.