This was my first, and probably will be my only Peter Beagle. The stories are all well-told and well-written, but too high concept, fairytalish for my taste. This collection contains some stories connected to some of his other work, so many fans will want to gather the collection up for completeness sake.

Salt Wine was probably my favorite of the stories here - a sailer saves a merman and is gifted the formula for salt wine, though he doesn't understand the dire consequences for many in consuming the magical draught. Quite a morality tale, and not overdone with sailor talk.

Also, each story is preceded by a note from Beagle on the origins or backstory for the tale - and I'm always a sucker for getting insight in the creative process.

3 bones!!! ( )

It took me a long time to finish this collection of short stories - I wanted to give each story time and attention. It was well worth it. I aspire to writing this well. Most of the stories moved me to tears, or laughter, and often both.

It's hard for me to give a good critical analysis of this collection - I get so very lost in each story, I can't see how he does it. But I really, really hope I learn to write that seamlessly.

I might let you borrow my copy. Maybe. ( )

I don't think this was entirely bad; I think it wasn't the quality I was expecting after The Last Unicorn and not really my preferred type of reading. One of the major things I loved about The Last Unicorn was the descriptions Beagle used. I found extremely few descriptions of that quality in this collection of his works. I did however enjoy The Two Hearts and believe it has the makings of being an excellent sequel for The Last Unicorn. ( )

http://tinyurl.com/2el6p7a

It probably doesn't help that I read this in bed, which means that I would re-read the same page at least twice, falling asleep after two pages total, thereby only reading one new page a night. But, I swear it didn't help that Beagle is prone to repeating himself at the end of paragraphs, in an obvious move to get his point across more forcefully. Such as (not verbatim): ... I told him what was going to happen. I told him, you know. ...

I would consider this the laziest of writing. If you're not able to get to the point of what you want to say inside a paragraph, then you need to edit that paragraph to do so. Not just punctuate it, for heaven's sake.

This was more irritating as I got further through the stories. So, I enjoyed the mouse tale and the witch/warlock tale quite a lot (the fables seemed fairly useless), but when I reached Quarry, that tale put me over the edge. First off, its premise is clouded. Second, because that's clouded, you don't care about the protagonist. Third, what house? what's weird about it again? who's hunting them? huh?

Everyone says The Last Unicorn is the best thing he's written, and so maybe I'll try that, but I lack a great deal of enthusiasm for it. Especially since his Two Hearts tale in this short story collection (supposed to be a sequel to The Last Unicorn) was a whole lot of who cares for me. (And a double dose of huh.) ( )

I bought this because I really wanted to read "Two Hearts" and it was beautiful, but not my favorite story from this collection. If you're a fan of Peter Beagle this book should be on your bookshelf. ( )