This sucker is difficult to rate. If it is intended as a fantasy for adults, one star. If it was intended for children, three stars. I'll stick with one for the following reasons.

Obviously this and the Newcastle editions were intended to be read by adults. I assume since Lin Carter supposedly considered this for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, he also considered it adult reading. It is not. The cover blurb on the book and everywhere else this Wildside edition is cited says: "Its significance in the development of fantasy literature was recognized by its republication as the seventeenth volume of the celebrated Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series in 1978." Let me start by saying it has no significance in the development of fantasy literature, period. The only reason this little gem isn't long forgotten as many similar items from the same era is is that it happens to be written by one Abraham Stoker future author of the justly not forgotten Dracula.

The eight tales all take place in a kind of dream land called "Under the Sunset," although the farther one goes in the stories, the more tenuous becomes the relationship to this fairy tale land.

Several of these do rise in image slightly above the level of Victorian naivety: The Shadow Builder, How 7 went Mad (a sort of Lewis Carroll kind of thing), and The Castle of the King.

This edition is a facsimile edition of the original 1882 edition with original illustrations but also includes illustrations from at least two later editions, one well into the 20th century. Since this print on demand trade paperback has no introduction, no bibliography or attribution other than the original author and illustrators, one is left to guess where the other illustrations came from.

Strictly for the Stoker completist.

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A collection of eight fantasy stories set in a land in what we would now call a parallel universe, an idyllic land of kings and castles, plagued by giants and deathly shadows, which bear hallmarks of some of Oscar Wilde's short stories and, contemporaneously, like some of Neil Gaiman's novels. Well written, and intriguing in places, but overall didn't really work for me. ( )