Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories

I will be honest. This author has full command of the English language and his prose comes off as very dense, yet very beautiful. It is one of those books that you CANNOT skim or breeze through. All the stories command your complete attention and sometimes that may not be your intent. HOWEVER - the best short story I have read in a decade is included in this volume. It is called "The Better Boy". It takes a deep dive into growing older, raising tomatoes while waging war on tomatoes pests. There is also parts about alien science techniques, wearing your favorite pants for decades, and how some gestures of long-time love can be the smallest things. A true masterpiece that caused me to cry while I was smiling.

Blaylock is a genius. I prefer his novels (The Last Coin, Lord Kelvin's Machine, and (of course!) The Digging Leviathon) to his short fiction, but that's just me. I'm sure convincing arguments could be made the other way because his short fiction is brilliant. The Curiosity Shop is strange and wonderful, and the same can be said for most of the stories in this collection. My favorite authors are Philip K. Dick and James P. Blaylock. They spend about equal time at the top of the list.

Reviewed by M. Bobowski 13 Phantasms and Other Stories is rich in quiet humor and it invites us in, makes us comfortable. The edges are soft, like the lines between fantasy and reality, and each story is a world unto itself. In Paper Dragons a Chinese restaurant becomes the communications center for a traveling crypto-zoologist, getting on the wrong bus in Red Planet turns into the journey of a lifetime for Monty, and the sea seen through John Kendal's keyhole in Nets of Silver and Gold is not necessarily the same sea seen through his window. The real magic here lies not in fantastic events or unreal places, but in the ability to create people from only ink and paper. It is a feat on par with creating a dragon from copper wire and cotton stuffing, and Blaylock's characters in these stories, at least the men, are very human. ........... [...]

This book collects almost all of Blaylock's short fiction and includes an introduction by the author which is just as entertaining as any of his stories. The pieces included here were originally published in various magazines and anthologies and most of them have never been reprinted. Blaylock is one of the quirkiest and most original writers around and if you've never read anything by him this book is a good introduction. The stories in this collection were published over a period of 25 years, and you can see the progression of Blaylock's talent. The earlier pieces pale in comparison to the later ones, but they all bear the unmistakeable mark of Blaylock's genius for fantasy, and his belief that all the little details in our everyday lives can sometimes add up to more than the sum of their parts. Highlights include the World Fantasy Award winning stories "Paper Dragons" and "Thirteen Phantasms".