Bordertown was one of my favorite set of stories back when I was a teen. The writing was often a little clunky, and once I started going to night clubs and having adventures of my own the stories became much less exciting. I wouldn't really recommend the majority of it anymore--it's just too self-consciously trying to be hip. But I still have a soft spot for the concept of Bordertown, and a few of the stories have stuck with me."Welcome to Bordertown" by Ellen Kushner and Terri Windling. These t...

This volume comes the closest to recapturing the feeling of the original two books as anything that's been published since then. There are a couple of stories here that didn't work for me, but the rest delighted me enough to keep it at 5 stars. Holly Black Gets It.I was excited enough about this book being released that I preordered it. (Very rare, for me.) I got it in the mail... continued to be excited... and then it disappeared. I loooked and looked... couldn't find it anywhere. It just resur...

*This review pertains most specifically to the audiobook verstion of Welcome to Bordertown*I came late to the Bordertown books, discovering them as an adult, but once I did I collected them assiduously on Amazon and eBay and devoured them greedily. I was delighted when I learned that there would a new collection, and that Ellen Kushner, my favorite writer, would be one of the editors. The Bordertown series was the first of the "Urban Fantasy" genre, set in a world very close to our own contempor...

3.5 stars

Whew, this is going to be a long review as each entry gets its own blurb. *deep breath* Well, here goes...Ellen Kushner & Terri Windling – Welcome to BordertownThis was a sweet story about a girl who left for Bordertown and thirteen days later for her – but 13 years later for the human world – her younger brother gets a postcard she sent home and starts on a journey to find her. It is a story not only of his journey to find his older sister but to also find his place in the world. I quite liked

You know your anthology sucks when the best story in it gets 4 stars.Yes, that's right. Not a single story in the anthology got 5 stars. A couple came close, but non achieved the rating. And I'm not one of those people who only saves 5 stars for the very best books in existence; I give it out fairly often. So to say that not a single story in here got the rating is a really shitty reflection of the editing and writing. It's not the worst anthology I've read (21 Proms actually had a higher rating...

I'm going to get this out of the way: there was a part of me that worried that this volume would be terrible or disappointing, but I feel like it's a worthy successor to the Bordertown stories I particularly loved, like "Danceland" and Finder. The gimmick — that the way to the Border has been closed for 13 years, from the perspective of the world we know, while a mere 13 days passed on the Border — is played with just enough for humor and drama, not to the point of being cheesy.I'll be posting r...

Like any collection, this one is uneven. Please don't throw things at me, Border fanatics. I assure you that I love Bordertown as much as anyone. The unevenness can be divided roughly into two groups: good and bad. For a change of pace, I'm going to start with what was so very good about this anthology, in a disjointedly listing sort of way. Like so:Nalo Hopkinson and Catherynne Valente, turning out two ass-kickingly awesome stories, of the type which manage to feel epic and mythic despite their...

I had sort of a love-hate deal going with the original Bordertown stories; though I liked the idea of them, there was this rich privileged kids patina to the stories. The Bordertown runaways were special, they dressed in leather, they found magic, and no one ever seemed to have to get a down and dirty job in order to survive--they live on air and music, or if they work at the inn, it seemed no one ever has brutal hours or hurting feet like waitressing in this world. Enough of that. I think it's

For me, urban fantasy is fantasy set in, duh, urban areas, in cities. Frequently the location is as much a character as it a setting. The stories are infused with hints of faerie and myth, both European and Native American, and when you finish reading, you can almost glimpse the fantastical out of the corner of your eye.The Borderland anthologies were among the earliest urban fantasy, about the mythical Bordertown that existed on the cusp of this world and the Faerie Realm. Revisiting Bordertown...

A new tome in my favorite shared universe, ever! Woo! Bordertown is the same but the rest of the world sure isn't. The thirteen days that passed in town were really thirteen years to the rest of the world. But now the border is open again, and the people that considered themselves on the cutting edge of everything are forced to deal with a world that has moved on without them. But if there's anything they can do, it's adapt. Love the new life that was breathed into the series.

I am too old for Bordertown. I don't mean that in some "put away childish things" sense. I still find the aesthetic as fun as ever--hell, I've got purple hair and a closet half-full of leather and lace as I type. But I've internalized Cavafy too much. I no longer believe problems can be solved by flight to another city; I no longer find the narrative of people trying an interesting one. I want to read about people who build a better life where they are, people who find the magic in the every day...

If you have loved the Borderlands series since the beginning, then you know what I think.If you haven't, and this is your first time across the border?Then you're lucky. You'll get to meet Wolfboy, Orient, and Farrel Din, and Screaming Lord Neville. And you'll get to meet the new faces who made their way to the crazy town between the Human world and the Realm where the Truebloods come from.The stories vary from whimsical: Welcome to Bordertown to the romantic and heartbreaking A Tangle of Green

I was a teenager during the '80s heyday of shared world anthologies (hey, whatever happened to those?). I read most of them voraciously (Thieves' World, it's your turn to come back next), but one of my favorites was definitely the Borderland series. Not only were many of my favorite authors involved (Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Steven Brust), but the concept itself was fascinating. Elves. Rock and Roll. Unreliable magic. And the pairing of modern society with some of the oldest beliefs in f...

This was a pandemic Little Free Library find, and just the kind of light fiction I was in the mood for. Bordertown is a fictional community situated between the Fae Realm and "the World." This volume is stories published about 13 years after the first wave of Bordertown books, and the premise is that the Way between Bordertown and the World closed inexplicably for 13 years and re-opened just as inexplicably. The first story, by Ellen Kushner and Terri Windling, sets the scene, the 13-year hiatus...

I'm not sure this book works. The introduction of new computer technology to Bordertown seems off (did they really have to have a typical Cory Doctorow "teenage hero invents the internet and gets laid at the same time" story? Really truly?), and the "it's been thirteen days in Bordertown but thirteen years for the World" conceit seems invented to cover up the gap in books more than anything else, altho some of the writers use it very well. Most of the poetry reads like song lyrics without music,...

Maybe I would have liked this book more if ...... I'd read the original Bordertown anthologies way back when and had nostalgia on my side for this one.... I wasn't so fed up with urban fantasy.... most of the authors I was looking forward to reading had written actual stories instead of poems.... there were more consensus between the authors on what Bordertown is like.... the stories from the authors I like weren't so obviously just their standard fare with Borderland bits tacked on to fit the r...

Anthology. 3.43 stars average1. Welcome to Bordertown by Ellen Kushner and Terri Windling. I loved this story about a sister and brother who lose and find each other. So good! 5 stars.2. Shannon's Law by Cory Doctrow. Entrepreneurs try to get a connection between the Bordertown and Faery. I liked the story. 4 stars. 3. Cruel Sister by Patricia A. McKillip. I kind of got mixed up on which sister did what. 2 stars.4. A Voice Like a Hole by Catherynne M. Valente - I can't get what a voice like a ho...

Nice to see some utopian visions among all the dystopian ones that are filling up the bookshelves now. The poetry here didn't knock my socks off, but the stories are all at least Good, and of particular note are:Cory Doctorow's, for explaining so credibly why Faerie should be so decisively off limits to humans;Will Shetterly's, for being such a feelgood tale (Charles de Lint's closer for the same reason);Janni Lee Simner's, for giving the "Twilight" series such a chilly little...tweak;The "Fairy...

I was really excited to read this collection, because I wanted to see how Bordertown had changed with the introduction of texting and tweeting and Instagram and Google and Wikipedia. And in that sense, Welcome to Bordertown was a bit disappointing, but not really surprising. Of course you can't get a reliable internet connection on the Border. Of course a text might come through as snatches of poetry or in a language you don't speak. That's how tech works next to the Realm, after all. I should h...