The Yellow Brick Road is a Twisty One... with Potholes, Bumps, & Thrill-Hills
As a general rule, I’m not big on grab bags. Those mystery collections of whatevers, thrown in a bag or box for one low price, have just never panned out for me. (Like, if I really needed four identical XXS aqua t-shirts decorated with a wolf scene and one XXXL maroon tee emblazoned with a box of cartoon french fries, all for only $7.95, I’d be set , but... yeah, not so much.) That thinking carries over to my attitude toward most anthologies, too. How many times have I shelled out a decent chunk of change for a tome of short stories penned by an assortment of authors... only to really like only one, or maybe two, of them? (More times than I care to admit, actually.) Still, sometimes it can’t be helped; either that’s the only way to read a special one-off by a favorite author, or else the whole thing just sounds like a can’t-miss, must-have... as in the case of Oz Reimagined (edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen), a compilation of fifteen stories from the minds of