The Green Man: Tales From the Mythic Forest

[meganbmoore]

The Green Man was the first book  in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's mythic anthology series(which, naturally, means it the one I read last.)  The Green Man is the traditional lord of the forest in myth, though he wasn't given that name until recently(I always forget and the book says when but I'm too lazy to look) and Jack in Ridley Scott's Legend and the central concept and function of myth in Robin of Sherwood are both based around the tradition, to give the most accurate examples that immediately pop to mind.

Like Coyote Road and The Faery Reel, most of the stories here apply old ideas to modern times, often specifically geared to urban or rural, instead of general modern, mostly from the perspective of a "normal" person walking into otherworldly matters.  In a way, I wish I'd read this one first instead of last.  There isn't as much of a concentrated vision here as there isin the other two anthologies in the series, and there are several stories where I'm not quite sure why they were there as they didn't seem to fit, unlike the others in the series where they were almost seemless in the story selection, even if there were a few stories I wasn't as fond of.  Still, it remains a number of steps up from most fantasy anthologies I've read.

Comments

[filmi-girl.livejournal.com]

I read a few from this series, but I wasn't too impressed. The quality of the stories was very uneven.

Still, they did introduce me to a few new (to me) authors.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The quality of stories in these boojs was infinitely better than in most anthology books, and high recs are the only season I checked them out. Usually I'd get perhaps 5 good stories to and 20 story anthology, here it's the reverse. This is easily the weakest book in the series, though.