As others have said this is a very odd collection of short stories. Odd, not because of the mix of genres and fantastical settings, nor because it's themed around cats. Odd because more that half the stories are about people who hate cats. There's someone who's trying to kill a cat, a bunch of people throwing cats back and forth like a ball till it dies, someone burning a house full of cats, etc. Why would someone picking up a cat anthology want to read about cat torture? A very odd choice by th...

I've been reading this Christmas present on and off for over two months and have now forgotten the details of the first few stories. Ooops! As you'd expect in any large anthology, the quality, style and tone all very considerably. I was surprised, however, to find myself enjoying many of these. I don't like Ray Vukcevich's unpleasant Catch, but I remember it. Kelly Link's Catskin reminds me of There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, a superior fairy tal...

I'd probably call this a 4.5, but only because I've been completely blown away from Datlow anthologies in the past, and this one wasn't *quite* as good. Which is not to say it wasn't great, only that she's set the bar quite high for herself. This is an anthology about cats: House cats, big cats, mythological cats. There are sphynxes and manticores alongside tigers and lions. Some of the cats have speaking roles. Others are side characters or serve only as catalysts of a greater story. Many of th...

Tails of Wonder and Imagination is an anthology of short stories by various writers. I picked it up because one of the stories is by Susanna Clarke, who wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Also included are Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, George RR Martin, Joyce Carol Oates and many others, of course. I thought, due to the name, that the stories would be of the more fantastical nature, but some of them are just scary, or disturbing. The Gaiman story, called "The Price", was haunting, it has stuck...

I love speculative fiction of all kinds, and I adore cats; you'd think this would be a slam dunk; some of the stories were really good, but overall the collection dragged, and seemed *really* long, and some of the stories were just not good at all. On balance, I'm glad I read it.

What is it about cats that captures our hearts and enslaves us through their furry charm? Award-winning anthologist Ellen Datlow showcases that unanswerable question with an assortment of 41 stories devoted to felines of myriad sorts—where cats are both the heroes and the villains, mythical and domestic, feral and cuddly, and so forth. Enclosed in this anthology christened Tails of Wonder and Imagination are works by some of the most accomplished writers of the last century, both known and new,

WOW. One of the best anthologies I've ever read. Every story was at least good or interesting or had something to recommend it, and some of the stories were really wonderful. Heartbreaking, beautiful, funny, quirky... amazing. I was a little concerned at how exhausting a huge book of 40 cat-centric stories could be, but they were all so different from eachother. Datlow is an amazing editor to pull this together.Warning for some readers. If you are a true cat lover and cannot stand the idea of ca...

Okay, I have admit that I had no idea this book was about cats when I bought it. I saw that Datlow had edited it, and the TOC had tons of great writers. Only on the way home did I realized I had inadvertently purchased feline fiction. (Note: There are cats on the cover, Tales is spelled "tails" and the O in wonder has a cat in it. The cover also states, in small print, "Cat Stories By." So it's not a misleading theme at all, just one that I completely missed.)I like cats, quite a bit as it turns...

May 14, 2010: Edit! Done with this book!Sometime early May: I'm going to be...ambitious and try to review all the short stories in this anthology. There are 40 stories though, so I may fall off midway. I'm only on story #17 now...All the stories in this book are reprints of short stories focusing on cats, so there was nothing originally written for this anthology. I've read a few of the short stories present in this anthology and there are definition familiar names and authors. Prior to each sto...

I wanted to like this as a whole much more than I did. It's not that any of the individual stories themselves weren't strong - in fact, I'm sure I'd have more likely rated more stories four- or five-stars, but as a whole there was a whole lot less "wonder" and "imagination" as there was "murder" and "death." This is likely in part due to my love of cats. I'm a cat-guy (our ending up with a dog rather than a cat notwithstanding). A significant portion of these stories had people who definitely we...

Love. Love. Love. These short stories. The one by Neil Gaiman is great. A must read for cat lovers.

Okay first of all this book is a really long book. But that's a good thing because after all it is a collection of stories not just one story. I did read the reviews of this book before I got it and I had some concerns but I also knew that quite a few of the authors were really top-notch excellent amazing authors. I'm glad I followed my instinct instead of the reviews! If you want the kind of person who is not into anthologies and collections of stories then this definitely is not for you but if...

I returned this after struggling through it for months. Most of these stories were exceedingly bad, and big names that were included only contributed stories that were decades old. I saw another review that called the spin off of "Tales of Wonder and Imagination" to "Tails..." disingenuous and shady, and I'm apt to agree because I had no idea I was buying a cat stories book until I started the intro and was very confused. I only considered FIVE stories in this collection to be fantastic. Some ar...

This is a collection fantasy/horror stories that involve cats, some forty ‘tails’, many by well known authors- Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates, Charles de Lint, Stephen King, Kelly Link, and Susanna Clarke among others. But this is *not* an anthology for cat lovers, or at least not for those with soft hearts. These are dark stories all, not light-hearted fantasies where the noble young cat discovers he’s a prince and goes on adventures. In a rather uneven collection, cats meet dire fates at times...

A collection of short stories on the general theme of cats edited by the immensely talented Ellen Datlow. Sadly, aside from a handful of stories by well-known authors who don't have to publish at every opportunity (Neil Gaiman, Catherynne Valente, etc.), this collection was rather mediocre overall. I found only about 5 or 6 (out of 41) stories really worth reading, and ended up not finishing a number of stories that went rather too predictably into "here's your shock" horror territory.

"Tails of Wonder and Imagination" is an anthology of previously published fantasy stories featuring various types of felines, ranging from 1977 to 2009, with a brief excerpt from Lewis Carroll’s "Through the Looking Glass" thrown in for good measure. Editor Ellen Datlow is well-known for her many anthologies in the realm of fantasy, dark fantasy and outright horror, and a few of her choices here (such as Edward Bryant’s “Bean Bag Cats” and Kaaron Warren’s “Tiger Kill”) are just too gruesome for

Kept picking up and putting this down. Some stories were great and some were not. I love cats, but after a while even I was getting a bit tired of the theme because there are many stories in this collection. It was easier to read for a while and leave it for days and go off and read something else.

Read: August 2015Tails of Wonder and Imagination is a mammoth anthology featuring a wide range of different authors, and of genres ranging from fantasy, to contemporary, to science-fiction, fairy tales, romance... pretty much every story you could ever want to read if you like cats :) All of them have been printed before in different anthologies or magazines but there are so many stories that for every one you have read before there are five new-to-you stories. Some of the stories were first pub...

Although many well-known authors like Charles De Lint, Neil Gaiman, and George R.R. Martin are featured, I particularly enjoyed the selections from rising stars in short fiction: Elizabeth Hand's retelling of a traditional fairy tale "The Poet and the Inkmaker's Daughter", the psychological thriller "Every Angel is Terrifying" by John Kessell, and Carol Eshmiller's unsettling "A Safe Place To Be." I was thrilled to see Christine Lucas included - I've been a fan of her writing for years - and her...

Some very good pieces in this anthology.As always, I'm torn between wanting an anthology of all new stories, but enjoying discovering all the pieces collected from older works. The only three I'd read previously were Lewis Carroll, the Cat Skin one which was in the witches anthology, and the Stephen King short (poor kitty.)