About the book

Author: Silverberg, Robert. (ed.)

Title: Legends: Short novels by the masters of modern fantasy. Volume 1, 1998.

Publication: New York, NY : Tor Fantasy, 1998. ISBN 0312867875.

DAISY audio format narrated by Kristin Allison. CELA library call number DA20360. 715 pages in the paper edition; 25 hrs., 29 mins. as a recorded book.

About the story

Now, if you are trying to get a feel for science fiction and fantasy at the end of the 1990s, this is an excellent beginning. It takes a long time for CELA to produce a book, unfortunately, so if you rely on this service for your books, you are always a few to many years behind the times.

Full disclosure: I picked this one up because it had Dragonfly, an Earthsea novella by Ursula K. LeGuin, one of my all-time favourite authors.

This is a very long book (over 25 hours), and contains 11 novellas by different authors. At the beginning of each text, the editor lists the titles and dates of the author’s other books (in series order, if applicable). This works less well as a recording, but it’s very useful if you enjoy the story that follows. Next, he summarises the major plotlines of the author’s books, providing the details necessary to understand the novella’s place in the overall story and giving the reader a good background of the world.

From a reader’s advisory perspective, this is wonderful!

The book opens with an introduction that traces the history of the fantasy genre by Robert Silverberg. The writers represented in the collection represented the very best of modern fantasy at the time (1997). Here are the eleven short novels in the collection:

  • The Little Sisters of Eluria, part of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Very creepy.
  • Terry Pratchett’s The Sea and Little Fishes from the Discworld series, for some comic relief.
  • Debt of Bones, from the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.
  • Orson Scott Card’s The Grinning Man, from the Tales of Alvin Maker series.
  • Robert Silverberg’s The Seventh Shrine, set on his world of Majipoor.
  • Dragonfly, a novella set in  Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea
  • The Burning Man, from Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series.
  • George R.R. Martin’s  The Hedge Knight, A Tale of the Seven Kingdoms, from his series A Song of Ice and Fire.
  • Anne McCaffery’s The Runners of Pern, set in the future of the familiar dragon world just before a Threadfall.
  • The Wood Boy, a tale from the Riftwar saga, by Raymond E. Feist.
  • New Spring, part of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

I read all the stories except the one by George R.R. Martin, The Hedge Knight, since I know the graphic and unpredictable violence of his work disturbs me.

Kirstin Allison, the narrator, does her job very well. She reads all of these widely different stories – including the often outlandish names – in a way that lets the stories themselves shine through. And she is very pleasant to listen to: always a bonus.

I really enjoyed this book. The stories are long enough that it doesn’t feel like a short story collection, and many of these short novels will stay with you for a long time, I think.

If you are buying it in print, be careful because there are two versions out there: one with all the stories, and one with many fewer. Caveat emptor. Always best to get it from a public library!