Sword and Sorceress IV

Bradley herself migh pooh-pooh the notion, but the number four was sacred in many American Indian cultures, and this fourth volume of the S & S anthology series provides the greatest number (and percentage) of personally (to me, I mean) enjoyable tales of any of those I've read to date. Several heroines from previous volumes appear here, as in Mercedes "Misty" Lackey's "A Tale of Heroes" (a new adventure of her swordsisters Tarma and Kethry); Diana L. Paxson's "Blood Dancer" (warrior-princess Shanna wanders into a city stricken by plague and must save a hospice from a blood-mad mob); and Dorothy J. Heydt's "The Noonday Witch" (former gladiatrix Cynthia finds herself the only person unaffected by a sleep-spell being used to cover an attempted assassination). Then there are the original entries, including Robin W. Bailey's "The Woodland of Zarad-Thra" (soldier and unwilling mother Cymbalin, lost in a blizzard, finds herself facing a thief, a demon, and its sorcerous master); "The Weeping Oak" by Charles deLint (a second-sighted tinker is asked to free a wizard from the tree that binds him); Dave Smeds's "Gullrider" (Serla, a trained guardian of fishermen and mistress of the sorcerously-modified giant gulls, must tame a wild one in order to destroy a ravening kraken); Paul Helm Murray's "Kayli's Fire" (a fire-mage and her sentient pet dragon give refuge to a wounded warrior and must face the sorcerer who tried to kill him); Jennifer Roberson's "Rite of Passage" (a short adventure of her warrior-partners Tiger (male Southron) and Del (female Northerner)); Stephen L. Burns's "Redeemer's Riddle" (a defeated soldier seeks the key to the defeat of the demonic conqueror who threatens her land and people); and several others, for a total of 18. Some of these stories are humorous, some have a fairy-tale or legendary feel, and some are plain classic fantasy, so there's probably something in the collection for everyone. If all anthologies were as good as this one, I wouldn't go so heavily by the editor's name in choosing them--I wouldn't have to.