For years, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have edited The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, consistently one of the best annual anthologies of speculative fiction. They've recently begun to concentrate on more specific themes, such as Queen Victoria's Book of Spells--a collection of "gaslamp fiction" set in a 19th-century world where magic exists.
The anthology features a range of talent and tones, and the streets of Victorian London (and other locales) come weirdly and wonderfully alive throughout. Some stories are "fantasies of manners" that might appeal to any Jane Austen fan, while others serve a darker muse. Jeffrey Ford's "The Faerie Enterprise," for example, proffers a severe critique of the Industrial Revolution under its chilly veneer. The title story by Delia Sherman, in which a modern scholar attempts to unlock the great Queen's magically locked teen diaries, offers insight to the actual Queen Victoria as well as the sexual politics and gender disparities inherent in an academic setting. Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer collaborate on "The Vital Importance of the Superficial," a wonderful epistolary short story that is as artful in what it reveals as what it conceals.
As is common in many of the anthologies that Datlow and Windling have edited, there is a small gem of an essay by Windling to start the proceedings. Her essay on the 19th-century English literature that inspired this collection is every bit as wonder-filled, learned and intellectually stimulating as the stories that follow. --Donald Powell, freelance writer