Denise Little, The Magic Shop Review

Overall Rating

The Magic Shop
Denise Little (editor)
Daw, Feb 2004, $6.99, 320 pp.
ISBN: 0756401739

The premise of this fifteen story collection is relatively simplistic: what would happen to a customer if the magic shop found in many cities sold real magic? The contributors, whom are a virtual who's who (though there is one new author for me), provided a wide range of tales with some classified as horror, others are fantasy and science fiction, and finally a few that cross the speculative plain. Even the tone vastly differs with some authors writing amusing fictions of getting what you ask for while others take a more somber pitch. Each tale is well written as if Denise Little used a magical editing device to raise the bar. Most interesting is that the simple concept is turned into complex effects as the purchaser should have paid close attention to the maxim "buyer beware" since no hazardous to your health warning label accompanied the goods. Readers will enjoy these fine new stories that cast a spell requiring a one sitting read. Aside to Ms. Little: is the magic store that ensorcelled you the one near NYU or the one in Times Square that hooked many of us boomers back in the 1960s-1970s (don't know if they are still there)?

Harriet Klausner