The Pale Illuminations

Robert Morgan was the uncredited editor of three anthologies reviewed here previously, all of which I greatly enjoyed, so it's nice to see him take credit for them all on this new volume, The Pale Illuminations, which takes its title from a quote from a Charles Williams novel All Hallow's Eve (1945): "She was free from the pale illumination of the dead." Sadly, this collection seems to be the lesser of the four, though it's not a bad compilation at all. All four stories seemed to me a bit off structurally, or a bit too unfocused. The Peter Bell tale drags on for too long, while the Reggie Oliver story felt too short.  Mark Valentine's tale, after an uncharacteristically slow start, comes to life too late, and the ending almost but not quite makes the whole work.  The Derek John story has some interesting sections, but doesn't hang together in toto.  Still a decent anthology, but not quite up to the higher levels of the other three.

The Ogre's Wife

The Ogre's Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups (2002), by Richard Parks, is a collection of fifteen stories collected from magazines and books published in the seven years prior to its compilation. Five come from Realms of Fantasy. Others come from Asimov's, Black Gate, SF Age, and Weird Tales. There is a laudatory introduction by Parke Godwin which rightly notes the eclectic nature of the tales and claims it is "one of the best  SF/fantasy collections I've read in years." Sadly, this is typical overpraise. While the stories are competent and sometimes intriguing, they mostly feel like writings exercises from workshops rather than inspired stories in their own right. And the prose is workmanlike, never exhibiting any special traits or reaching for more than bemused irony.  A decent collection, still, but it didn't make me want to seek out more by this author.