Review: 'The Big Book of Classic Fantasy' by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

I adore Fantasy, no ifs or buts about it. My first introduction to Fantasy were fairy tales, which showed me the magic of the everyday as well as the possibilities of the extraordinary. From there I moved to The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series. A  lot of the Fantasy I consumed was very European and very Western, and it is only in the past few years I've been able to expand on it through books like Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi and Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean. I have loved expanding my Fantasy horizons and The Big Book of Classic Fantasy was a great way of digging deeper into the diverse roots of my favourite genre. Thanks to Knopf Doubledat, Vintage and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date:7/2/2019
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; Vintage

Unearth the enchanting origins of fantasy fiction with a collection of tales as vast as the tallest tower and as mysterious as the dark depths of the forest. 

Fantasy stories have always been with us. They illuminate the odd and the uncanny, the wondrous and the fantastic: all the things we know are lurking just out of sight—on the other side of the looking-glass, beyond the music of the impossibly haunting violin, through the twisted trees of the ancient woods. Other worlds, talking animals, fairies, goblins, demons, tricksters, and mystics: these are the elements that populate a rich literary tradition that spans the globe. A work composed both of careful scholarship and fantastic fun, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy is essential reading for anyone who’s never forgotten the stories that first inspired feelings of astonishment and wonder.

INCLUDING:
*Stories by pillars of the genre like the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Mary Shelley, Christina Rossetti, L. Frank Baum, Robert E. Howard, and J. R. R. Tolkien*Fantastical offerings from literary giants including Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Vladimir Nabokov, Hermann Hesse, and W.E.B. Du Bois*Rare treasures from Asian, Eastern European, Scandinavian, and Native American traditions*New translations, including fourteen stories never before in English

Collections of any genre are tricky. What, and perhaps more importantly who, do you include. How do you organize it? Do you go chronologically or thematically? Do you introduce each story or do you let them speak for themselves? In the end, no single collection can encompass an entire genre or reflect all its nuances. However, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy does a brilliant job at showing just how wide the Fantasy genre is. Covering the time period from the 1800s to World War II, the Big Book gives its readers both the usual suspects and some rather unexpected ones. I was not looking for Franz Kafka in a Fantasy collection, and yet his story fits in perfectly with the other ones. The Big Book does contain many stories never  before translated into English and a few non-Western stories, but not as many as I would have liked. However, overall the collection shows how all-encompassing the Fantasy genre is and just how much variety it has to offer to its readers.

It's hard to pick a favourite story but there were a few key standouts for me. One of my absolute favourites was 'Furnica, or The Queen of Ants', which first appeared in 1893 and is written by Pauline Elisabeth Ottilie Luise Zu Wied, the Queen Consort (!) of Romania. I discovered a whole new author for me to be fascinated by and the story itself is a tragic story about 'love and responsibility'. Another favourite was 'The Ensouled Violin' by Helena Blavatsky, inspired by a nightmare and full of music, body horror and black magic. It's a stunning story that is also slighty terrifying. Another story I wanted to highlight was 'The Kingdom of Cards' by Rabindranath Tagore. I had already put down Tagore as someone I wanted to read, so his short story popped up at the perfect time. It's a great, absurdist tale that comments on the pitfalls of bureaucracy while telling a great story. There are a great number of literary gems in The Big Book and i loved discovering one after the other.

Every story in the Big Book is prefaced by a short introduction. What this does is separate one story from the other, preventing them from bleeding into each other, while also giving readers an idea of whom they're reading. This is especially useful for some of the lesser known stories and also gives the Big Book something of a didactic feel. I personally love that, but it may not be for everyone. This collection might not contain what many readers expect when they think of Fantasy. The pages aren't covered with dragons and knights and fairies and ogres. The Big Book shows the different directions people can take with this genre, the depth of topics it can explore and the varied emotions it can arouse in its readers.

I give this collection..

4 Universes!

I loved reading The Big Book of Classic Fantasy. The VanderMeers did an amazing job at collecting a variety of different stories and different authors. For anyone wanting to explore the Fantasy produced in the previous century, the Big Book is definitely a good start.