The Line Between

This set of short stories by Peter S Beagle is like all his stuff; of mixed quality. There’s some really good stuff – A Dance for Emilia, for example, which has exactly the right mood for its content, a story about loss. There’s some silly stuff (ala The Last Unicorn) such as his Four Fables. And there’s some clever, interesting stuff (ala Giant Bones) like the story, Quarry. It would be hard to please everyone in a collection with such disparate stories included, but it’s not too bad; you can see the workings of his mind, the workings of a writer, and that’s an interesting thing.

The reviewer compared him to Tolkein (has there ever, ever been a fantasy writer not compared with Tolkein?) but he isn’t at all, of course; he actually reminds me a lot of Ray Bradbury. He has a very American voice, unmistakable, and a kind voice, an earnest voice. He puts a lot into his writing, and he enjoys it; with the result that we enjoy it, too.