Cat Tales: Fantastic Feline Fiction
FormerWeird Taleseditor Scithers launches a planned series of cross-genre cat anthologies with a vow to avoid the clichéd talking feline. Although the few reprints—by Lovecraft, Leiber and Baudelaire—are classics, the original stories are the real reason to buy this volume. Standouts include K.D. Wentworths Cat Call, a charming cats-eye-view mystery, and Geoffrey Maloneys Not Another Black Cat Story, featuring a novel deal with the Devil, as well as darker tales, like The Eye of Ra by Jim Hines, a story of murder and revenge set in ancient Egypt, and Mary Turzillos short but effective science fiction story, Scout. Despite a few sour notes (most disappointingly in Nancy Springers by-the-numbers mystery American Curls) and twee moments, Scithers commendably unearths solid new material in a theme that has been milked extensively for decades.(Dec.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.