A review by rayn0n
Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy by Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow

5.0

A really fun anthology that scratches a lot of Victorian itches - except for Maguire's piece. Maybe I'm biased against him as an author but read his spiritual successor to A Christmas Carol with a HUGE grain of salt. He was operating off a couple of interesting concepts but ge got really frickin wierd with the story canon (Fred suddenly was never married? Tim was 3 during the events of the original book instead of 6 or 7? They felt like really arbitrary needless changes) and it took a right turn into absurd about halfways through. Okay okay, but the other dozen stories were fantastic and really enjoyable, just skip Maguire's if you don't want to suffer through story whose thesis is that there's nothing Scrooge could've done to avoid damnation. Which, yah know. Completely negates Dickens' novel.