Strange Tales - Daniel Morden - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Daniel Morden

GENRE: Folktale Anthology.

RATING: 3.8 stars.

In a Nutshell: A really good collection of fantastical stories, but these are better described as retold folktales than as “strange” or “weird” or “bizarre”. The title and the cover establish wrong expectations.

This anthology contains nine stories, all of which are retellings of old folktales and fairy tales. Actually, I don’t know if ‘retelling’ is the right word in this case, because the stories match the original tales to a great extent. There are only minor modifications, and these changes don’t even alter the core plot. Rather, they just add more details.

The blurb, the title, and the cover – all seem to market this book as a kind of dark fantasy anthology, possibly venturing into horror. This does the book a great disservice. It works nicely as a folklore/fairy tale collection, but if you expect to get chills and thrills from any of the stories, you will be utterly disappointed.

Furthermore, the blurb declares that these stories have been “retold with a contemporary twist”. I simply couldn’t figure out what was contemporary herein. Except for some scattered modern lingo in a couple of the stories, the tales seemed to fit the historical period they were originally set in.

I would have appreciated a mention of the original story’s name and/or origin alongside. If none of the stories here are original. it is only fair that the source of the folktale be mentioned. As it is, there is no author’s note, nor any kind of foreword or acknowledgement. The book begins directly with the index and first story, and ends with the last story. Luckily, the theme is quite clear the moment we begin reading the first story, but I do wish every anthology came with a kind of introductory note.

I was familiar with eight out of the nine stories in this collection, having read them in some or the other anthology. So most of the stories generated a sense of déjà vu in me. If you aren’t an avid reader of fantastical story collections, you might enjoy the stories even more.

At the same time, I liked almost all the stories in this book. The original folktales on which these retellings are based are quite diverse in terms of plot and approach, so we get that same variety here as well. Not a single tale bored me or caused my mind to wander into its own fantasies. Every story feels like a fable, with ample sprinklings of old-time magic and charm.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Except for ‘Spellbound’, every other story was a minimum of 3.5 stars for me. Again, I would have enjoyed them even more had I not already read them before in a slightly modified form. There was just one story that was new to me: ‘The Tale of Daniel Crowley’. This was the only genuinely strange tale and though it was bizarre, it was also amusing. I burst out laughing at the ending, thereby happily giving it 5 stars. Another favourite was ‘The Other Eye’, where I loved the balance of the human and the “other” elements. This was a 4.5 star experience for me. The remaining six stories were all either 3.5 or 4 stars.

I’d still recommend this anthology, because I am sure my familiarity with the stories dampened a little of my experience. If you are a fairytale or folklore newbie and are looking for a nice anthology to test out this genre, this would be a great collection to start with. But any avid folktale fan who wants something unnerving and original, this won’t work that well for you. So ignore the creepy vibes promised by the blurb and simply pick this up as a folktale anthology.

The collection would also work well for middle-graders and teens who enjoy dark fairytales.

3.8 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each tale.

My thanks to Firefly Press and NetGalley for the DRC of “Strange Tales”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.