I should preface this review by stating short stories have to be pretty spectacular for me to really like them. So maybe I was just the wrong audience for a short story anthology - but on the other hand, I am the perfect audience because I love fairy tale retellings.

I had two main problems with this anthology: 1) the caliber of the stories, and 2) the disjointed nature of the book. There were a few stories I did enjoy while reading them, but overall none were very memorable. I honestly can't remember some of the stories from the beginning of the book.

All the stories in this book are billed as retellings of familiar tales. Which is true, yes, but which tales? The titles make me think fairy tales. So why then is there a full section that contained elements of Greek myths? And the random story about Nimue? Or the Bluebeard story that made me go WTF? Or the entire last section of the anthology which seemed like it was cobbled together to hold the three stories which really had no commonalities?

In addition to the common theme of the anthology not holding true, the feel of the different stories also varied to the point where they honestly shouldn't have been included in the same collection. There were tongue-in-cheek stories side-by-side with depressing and serious stories.

An okay collection, but there are much better anthologies of fairy tale retellings out there. ( )

Beyond Grimm is a collection of re-imagined fairy tales. Now, I would argue that this is very hard to do well. They've been done so many times that it's hard to say anything new in the context, though I love it when people do. Very few of these stories have anything new to say. Some of them are very charming. Some of them are really new fairy stories in their own right which I enjoyed a lot. Some of them are predictable. Some are based on mythology, not fairy tales, which is kind of a different thing but whatever. They also vary wildly in tone and content. There were some stories in here I really enjoyed, some I ended up skipping through. ( )

I've read a lot of books of retold fairy tales (full disclosure: I edited a reprint anthology that collected retold fairy tale stories) and I wish I had seen this book before I finished my anthology. My favorite thing about this book is that all the authors are female. There are great stories from Laura Anne Gilman, Judith Tarr, Brenda W. Clough, Sherwood Smith, and many others. The stories are potentially stronger towards the beginning of the anthology, but it's worth reading through to the end. Someone I know once told me that if he liked more than 50% of a magazine or an anthology he considered it a success. In this case, we're well beyond 50% so I have to categorize it as a success. ( )

Due to a hardware issue I lost this ebook before I finished it but what I did read was well written. It had some really good takes and twists on the classic stories. The quality between authors seemed to vary greatly but overall it was an enjoyable read. ( )

I am a huge fan of fairy tale retellings and was really looking forward to reading darker versions of the classic fairy tales. As always with short story anthologies, I loved some and disliked others. For Beyond Grimm: Tales Newly Twisted, I found myself enjoying most of the stories, however. As the title suggests, these stories are for those who enjoy more twisted, darker tales. It is even better that many are based off popular children's fairy tales.

Many of these authors are well established and I definitely enjoyed seeing more of their work. I requested this book because of Irene Radford, but I also loved reading stories from Sherwood Smith, Laura Anne Gilman, and Alma Alexander. "Hair Raising" made me want to read more of Pati Nagle, and "Ricky Cowlicky" was also a fun story by an author who was new to me.

I think that the first six stories are the strongest of the anthology, so the later ones were a bit of a disappointment for me. But I do think that there is something for everyone -- while I particularly enjoyed the twists on Rapunzel, Snow White, and Rumpelstiltskin, I think that fans of Arthurian legends will love "Nimue's Tale." I don't think that every single one of these stories will be favorites for one person, but anyone interested in fantasy will find at least one or two stories to love.

*I received a free copy from the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program in exchange for my honest review.* ( )