Another of the elemental series by two vastly different, yet conveniently married authors. It's hard to look at the together, so we'll look at them separately.

Dickinson is, as always, an exquisite writer whose language has a real poetry and whose stories always feel like spiderwebs - intricately spun and slighty insubstantial. The experience of reading them is a fascinating one and the distance that Dickinson somehow creates between reader and story always makes me feel like I'm peering through a microscope or binoculars in order to glimpse something so impossibly different, something only accessible through the poetry of his language. Which is lovely and lends itself to a range of styles, but is sometimes rather cold.

McKinley, I should note, is the exact opposite. She doesn't give the pinhole view into her characters' heads, she lifts you up and dumps you bodily into their mind, their worldview and their lies. If Dickinson reminds me of gossamer, McKinley reminds me of steel cables. Once you're in that story, you are IN it. I once commented that McKinely has many characters, but only one real style; fortunately, it's an excellent style and it provokes an almost visceral reaction to the characters in me.

I enjoyed both sets of stories, but McKinley has been one of my favorite authors since I was about eight years old, so I will concede that I loved hers more. But I recommend both writers unreservedly; though very different, they both are excellent examples of how to tell a story.

Did I mention that the stories themselves were some of the most fascinating and innovative I've read in fantasy in a long time. "First Flight" in particular, struck me because it was the first time I'd seen anyone do something new with the humans flying dragons thing..it didn't feel like a rehash of Pern even though it shared so many of the same elements. That's the mark of a good author - innovation in old ideas, and if you like it, you have to look at what she can do with fairy tales.