The Very Best of Tad Williams

Starred review from April 21, 2014
This marvelous short fiction retrospective testifies to the breadth of Williams’s creativity. All but one of these 17 otherworldly tales have appeared in magazines or anthologies, but fans will welcome the chance to have them all in one place. Several of the earlier pieces are particularly charming, including “The Old Scale Game,” with its thoroughly modern monsters, and “Every Fuzzy Beast of the Earth, Every Pink Fowl of the Air”, a chortling version of the book of Genesis. Williams effectively portrays poignant human regrets and longings in “Three Duets for Virgin and Nosehorn,” a miniature masterpiece, and explores the paradoxes of religious belief in “The Stranger’s Hands” and “And Ministers of Grace.” “A Stark and Wormy Knight,” a linguistic tour de force, shows without one misplaced word just how clever dragons can be. Williams’s sensitivity to atmosphere and trademark attention to telling detail shine through most of the selections in this varied collection of little gems.

June 15, 2014

Showcasing a wide range of styles, this collection from Williams (The Dragonbone Chair; The Dirty Streets of Heaven) covers both the traditional fantasies with which he made his name ("The Stranger's Hands"), dark urban fantasy ("The Storm Door"), a horror screenplay ("Black Sunshine"), and even an sf story or two ("Not with a Whimper Either"). The author knows the tropes of his genres well enough to have fun with them, such as with the fantasy piece about a long con, "The Old Scale Game." VERDICT These 17 tales have appeared mostly in other anthologies, although some were very small print runs and had limited availability. As a career retrospective, the book definitely shows the author's versatility, and interest in Williams will be higher after he announced in April that he is writing a sequel to his most popular series, "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn."

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.