As with any short story collection, fairly reviewing it is difficult. As an overall piece, it's well put together with a huge variety of stories ranging from the sci fi to the contemporary, from the fantastic to the mundane, all with a touch of magic on them.Individually, I skipped some, slogged through some, enjoyed some, and adored very few.My absolute favorite was The Queen Who Could Not Walk, which absolutely broke my heart and said wonderful things about loss and hope. I was also quite fond...

With two stunning and original retellings included, Tanith Lee is about the only author here that stands out from a collection that, in general, doesn't rise above a decent output for me. Sadly, none of her stories are new or unpublished as I had been hoping when I checked this book out; both "Red as Blood" (a Snow White retelling) and "Beauty" (a Beauty and the Beast retelling) were previously published in Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer, which I would highly recommend you get i...

Not quite as good as the one I read recently about intersection of forest and fairy tale. some interesting retelling of fairly tales in here though.

Two time Bram Stoker Award winner has done some impressive edits with this collection.

Beyond The Woods: Fairy Tales Retold, is remarkable, in that nearly every selection in the anthology is exceptional. There were two which had me snickering out loud: the stories by Kelly Link and by Jeff VanderMeer. Some were just phenomenally stunning and all were evocative. I did not have a lukewarm reaction to a single one. Kirstyn McDermott's tale might be my favorite, but it's hard to decide among so many. There are some intensely dark reinterpretations/mashups of folk tales and fables, so

It's difficult to rate a book of short stories. I truly enjoyed only less than half of the total 30 short stories, but there were also a few favourites that left a great, lasting impression - such that I can forgive and forget the ones that I don't want to remember. Personal top favourites (in order of appearance):The Queen Who Could Not Walk (by Peter S. Beagle)Good Hunting (by Ken Liu)Greensleeves (by Jeff VanderMeer)(I'm going to check out the other works from these authors.)Others I enjoyed:...

I loved and devoured this collection. Yes, there were a couple of clunkers, but the vast majority of the stories were absolutely wonderful. I'm sad I finished it.

Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold is exactly what it sets out to be - a compilation of fairy tales retold for the modern generation. The modern adult generation. Where fairy tales were once cleaned up and made happy and "family-friendly" for the consumption of children (looking at you, Disney), these fairy tales go back to earlier forms when such tales were cautionary tales. If you were aware that the editor, Paula Guran, edits the annual Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series, you would

Not quite 5 stars across the board, but the story slate is excellent, and the updates always mean something. A worthy read for any tale lover.

I rate each short story in a collection from 1-3. Then I total the points and compare it to a star rating. Total points 48/90. A solid 3 stars.Some stories were excellent, some were entirely bad, and very few were in between.When reading this collection you have to trudge through many mediocre stories until you get to the good ones.My favorites were :Follow Me LightHalfway PeopleGood HuntingFull ratings below:Beyond the Woods1. Red as Blood - a creepy retelling. Well done 2/32. In the House of G...

Probably the best edited collection I've read in a very long time. Most collections are of uneven quality. Beyond the Woods is uniformly wonderful. Some selections I've read before, but very much enjoyed reading again. I can't recommend this highly enough! Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the ARC.

I didn't take notes on the stories as I read them and it took me 6 months to finish this (there were a lot of things that cut in line because books are rude and that's the drawback to a collection of stories - you can stop for weeks on end and not miss anything) so I don't remember most of the tales anymore.However, I know I enjoyed many of them and I gave it back to the library feeling a sense of sadness to not be holding onto this book anymore so I think that's 4 stars.Added bonus: this has st...

Beyond the Woods is a collection of short stories that are in some way take offs on classic fairy tales. Like any collection of short stories there were some I liked ("Beauty" and "Coin of heart's desire,"), some I really disliked ("Juniper tree," "The maiden-tree," and "Catastrophic disruption of the head" are three) and most which were worth reading but not, to me, noteworthy. What made this collection more interesting than most is that the preface to each story talked about the original sourc...

GoodWhile I liked the majority of these stories, only a few truly stood out to me. I did like seeing “modern” twists, but not my favorite form of retellings.

Full disclosure: I checked this out because I remember reading "Greensleeves" when I was younger and it has stuck with me vaguely, and I wanted to see if it still held up. Unfortunately, the "Greensleeves" I was remembering was by Paul Jennings, so. "Red as Blood": 4/5 The classic re-imagined story of "Snow White" that probably everybody has read or heard of. Still holds up."In the House of Gingerbread": 2/5 Honestly not that bad, but I didn't even remember it until looking back through the tabl...

As you may know by now, I'm a huge fan of fairy tales, a sucker for retellings, and a fan of urban fantasy, fantasy and sci fi, so I feel like I'm the target audience for this book many times over. It's also not news that I'm always on the fence about short story collections (unless it's my boy Gaiman, in which case I'm not a reliable source anyway because I'm sort of an obsessive fangirl), and it took me long enough to read this book that I started this review with a knee-jerk three-stars, "it'...

Some I particularly enjoyed:Tanith Lee – “Red as Blood”Shveta Thakrar – “Lavanya and Deepika”Theodora Goss – “Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon”Gardner Dozois – “Fairy Tale”Jeff VanderMeer – “Greensleeves”Pretty good:Yoon Ha Lee – “Coin of Hearts Desire”Peter S. Beagle – “The Queen Who Could Not Walk”Holly Black – “Coat of Stars”Some interesting twists:Gene Wolfe – “In the House of Gingerbread”Nalo Hopkinson – “The Glass Bottle Trick”Neil Gaiman – “Diamonds and Pearls: A Fairy Tale”Stev...

Elizabeth Bear's "Follow Me Light" is the best of the stories I had not previously read in other collections.

Everybody likes a good fairy tale, right? There’s reason why they are some of the longest lasting stories in Western history. The fantastic and the romantic pretty much all have roots in those early campfire stories. I’ve read a few fairy tale-inspired collections over the years, and I like this one because of the range that it presents. It runs the gambit between direct retellings to those only tangentially connected to the tales of old. For example:“Fairy Tale” by Gardner Dozois places Cindere...

This book was not what I had anticipated.I was thinking "modern retellings" or "the fairy tales you know and love--but with a twist!". Most, however, weren't just Little Red Riding Hood remade with a romance with the wolf, or Cinderella but she's a cab driver. It was something entirely different. It was a series of intelligent, interesting, diverse, often thought-provoking stories that were often a joy to read. Some of them were of slightly lesser interest, but many were creative and engaging. I...