Reflection's Edge

Book Review: Time for Bedlam: A Collection of Cautionary Tales, edited by Ian Donnell Arbuckle

Reviewer: Romie Stott

Time for Bedlam: A Collection of Cautionary Tales contains 18 dark fairy tales by assorted authors. The stories alternate between simple retellings, new twists to old tales, and entirely original myths. Authors include James Cooper, K.S. Dearsley, James S. Dorr, and Anil Menon.

The title Time for Bedlam implies a conundrum: bedtime stories to keep you up at night. In large part, the book accomplishes its goal - not because it's scary (it isn't), but because it's so compulsively readable. Although Time for Bedlam takes a darker route than Disney, it rarely achieves the blackness of Grimm or Andersen. Instead, the overall tone is gently subversive, with the reader along as co-conspirator.

Bedlam's offerings are variable. Some stories are expanded retellings of tales like The Raven Princess ("A Solitary Sentence," K.S. Dearsley), Rikki-tiki-tavvi ("The Mongoose," Justin Gil), and The Valiant Little Tailor ("Bip Bop," Ian Donnell Arbuckle), with endings that go further than "happily ever after." Others twist their source material a little further, as with Joy Remy Marchland's "Over the River," which sets Red Riding Hood in a post-apocalyptic future, and James S. Dorr's "Cindy," which follows Cinderella's cigar-smoking fairy godmother through battles with Elves and non-environmentalists.

Surprisingly, some of Time for Bedlam's strongest offerings are two of its original stories. "The Dragon's Lesson," by Matthew Johnson, is worth Bedlam's cover price alone, and although Jason Andrew's "New Gods of the Lost Children" feels somewhat unfinished, its ideas are spellbinding. Other notable contributions include A.C. Wise's magnificent "Sugar Shock," a Roald Dahl-esqe retelling of Hansel and Gretel, and David Mitchell Turnbull's "The Homecoming," which turns Wee Willie Winkie into a horror story. Derek J. Goodman's "The Tinker" is excellent once it gets going, and figuring out its fairy tale origin is half the fun.

Overall, Time for Bedlam shows very few weak spots. JJ Beazley's "Fear" and "Through a Glass, Darkly" are skippable Lovecraft knockoffs, while Justin Gustani's "Let Us Prey," is built on overly simple wordplay and easy shots at fundamentalist Christianity. In addition, Philip Bedard's illustrations are uninspired, badly drawn, and choppily printed - a surprise given Kay's beautiful cover art and the overall high production value of the book. Finally, some stories assume a familiarity with Western-European fairy tales outside the Disney pantheon, and may be less accessible to non-Western audiences.

Ultimately, Time for Bedlam is a story collection worth owning, and worth revisiting. If you have the willpower to stop after one story, it makes for great bedtime reading.

Copies of Time for Bedlam can be purchased for different prices and with different delivery speeds through Project Pulp, Lulu.com, and Amazon.

If you liked this book, you may also enjoy:

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Annual Collections

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions, by Neil Gaiman

Ten Plagues, by Saltboy Publishing (forthcoming; currently seeking submissions)



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