Lacking Natural Simplicity

Sanctuary, by Lynn Abbey; Tor, 2003. This is the first of the books in the new Thieves' World series of collaborative anthologies; it's a novel that explains the recent history and sets up the current situation in the city offically known as Sanctuary but called Thieves' World by everybody. It picks up many years after the events of the last of the twelve books in the earlier series, and introduces a number of interesting new characters. I enjoyed the orignal series when it came out; it was perhaps the first intentional shared world anthology series, and proved an interesting experiment, although somewhat uneven in execution. It spawned a number of imitators; especially notable were the Liavek and Merovingen Nights. There were places toward the end of the series where Thieves' World dragged a lot, and it suffered from escalation problems, but overall it was very good. I was interested to see if it could be revieved successfully, and was pleased by this excellent bridging novel.(I actually read this a few weeks or a month ago, but forgot to write about it.)

Thieves' World: Turning Points, edited by Lynn Abbey; written by Lynn Abbey, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Andrew Offutt, Diana L. Paxson, Selina Rosen, Dennis L. McKiernan, Robin Wayne Bailey, Jody Lynn Nye, Jeff Grubb, Raymond E. Feist; Tor, 2002. This is the first of the collections in the new Theives' World series; it was a fun read, although somewhat uneven in excecution, and not as good as Sanctuary. I'm looking forward to the next anthology.