...I've had it as long as I can remember, and have always loved it.
The art is gorgeous, and the story is fun.
It's nice to see a story with a witch in it who isn't that sterriotypical evil old hag. Plus, the small details about witches, mostly true!
I cannot highly recomend this book enough! It will defanetly entice the imagination.

I have loved this book since I was a child and I still love to read it. Woodruff's Art is Great, you could spend hours just staring at the illustrations. I especially recommend this book to Pagan parents who want to read their child a story that doesn't paint witches as the malevolent brides of satan that many tend to hold. This woudl be a great way to warm your child up to the realm of fairy and magic in general.

My sister recived this book from our uncle many years ago I'v read it millions of times and my dad use to read it to my sister, my brother, and I all the time. The pictures are amazing and great for any age. The actual story is different from any other but it really is a book that everyone should read. Feel free to e-mail me At KittenHPD@aol.com with any questions about the book I'd love to tell you about it.

In a word, brilliant. This is a book which makes you think about what is being written. The strangeness of the stories is balanced by the visions you can imagine when reading. The blood coming out from all her pores is so weird yet beautiful. I love this book.

Having read "The Pillow Friend" feverishly from cover to cover, I'm still not sure if Agnes Grey suffers from delusions, or if she's lucky enough to be able to really have her wishes come true "as long as she accepts the consequences."

Agnes is a very likeable character whose life is not fairy-tale perfect. Lisa Tuttle, whose works I've been reading since I was an adolescent, paints vivid, realistic identities when she creates people.

How very ... odd ... that amazon.com advertises buckwheat pillows, those pillows for a good night's rest, on the page describing a book of dreams wrapped in nightmares like egg rolls!

The story folds and unfolds like a piece of fabric, plot flowing smoothly from beginning to end. The patterns are slightly disturbing, and I'm still not sure whether it was madness or magic bringing gifts to Agnes. However, this tale is an incredibly enjoyable read, and it makes me want to continue my quest to find more Lisa Tuttle books.

Having just read the other reviews here at Amazon, I'm suprised because they don't show the book at all as I saw it. It's very poetic. Very sweet. Very real-feeling. The "horror" element is slight. It's much more a novel about love, and close relationships than it is a fantasy. As such many many of the scenes and emotions described are straight from real life. And Lisa Tuttle has a delightful way of expressing them so poetically yet so clearly that you find yourself saying "Oh my gosh, yes that's exactly how that situation feels! How suprising that not only have other people felt the exact same way as me... and that an author could explain it so much better than I ever could!" The pick-up scenes, conversations between men and women about sex and relationships, relationships between parents and children, and very bright children and their beloved books. These are all written better in this novel than I have read them in years. This is a great novel of real life much more than a "horror" or a "fantasy" and you will not be able to put the book down until you've finished it!

LOST FUTURES takes on the fascinating concept of alternate realities: the theory that at the point of any given choice, reality splits and continues on for each outcome. In this book, a young woman becomes obsessed with the possibility of crossing over to a better life, where her brother did not die, where she made something more of her life. Thankfully the absurdity of quantum theory is abandoned early on, but after a series of several "awakenings", one begins to look for some kind of direction, and there isn't any. There is an ending of sorts, but it comes suddenly. A mild disappointment, but still worth reading.

I read this book several years ago, and have never forgotten it. It was a truly unique piece of "horror" fiction, though I think that it really extends far beyond the boundaries of classic horror. It deals with the idea that at any moment, you make a decision which precludes other ones, and places you on a certain path in life...but what if you could live all the possible lives that are/were available to you...A difficult to explain premise, but hopefully you will see that this is no ordinary book.

An intriguing novel, where a woman helplessly passes from one reality to alternate ones without knowing why. Parallel worlds or madness? is the question,and never is it fully answer--thankfully. The book is haunting long after it's put down and makes you question your own existence. Part of a sadly exinct line from Dell Horror.

It seems unfair (or perhaps just ignorant) to criticize a book based on its author's other works, but Windhaven's faults are made all the more apparent because thanks to "A Song of Ice and Fire" we know what George R.R. Martin is capable of. If Windhaven were simply different because of style, approach, or content, it wouldn't be so easily comparable to his latest works. As it is, the same elements are there: a unique world, sympathetic characters, attractive yet conflicting philosophies. But unlike in "A Song of Ice and Fire," it's not taken far enough, and the reader never inhabits the story in the same powerful way.

The world of "Windhaven" is engaging; a mostly oceanic globe dotted with island archipelagos. The seas connecting these scattered homes are perilous, and ship travel chancy and slow. The bulk of inter-island contact is made via Flyers; an elite group of men and women trained to ride the constant winds on wings made from the remnants of the spaceship which first landed there. Flyers in Windhaven are nobility of sorts, with the precious wings handed down to the firstborn of each generation. The rest of the population is "land-bound," with a Landsman leader for each island, but mostly appearing to be merchant and peasant classes.

Maris is one of these peasants; a fisherfolk daughter. Although she is land-bound she worships the flyers and eventually gets the use of a pair of wings. As it happens she is a brilliant flyer, no happier than when in the sky. However, the surrogate father who lent her wings eventually has a trueborn son, and plans to strip Maris of both wings and title of Flyer, as tradition mandates.

Here begins the argument that takes one form or another in each of the book's three sections; should wings and flyer's privilege be inherited or earned? Maris's stepbrother has no interest or ability in flying, and Maris has both. Why should she or any other land-bound be denied the wings simply because of her birth? The first section, "Storms," describes her struggle to break tradition and become a flyer, the second section, "One-Wing," delves further into the flyer/land-bound conflict with a controversial land-bound flyer (Val), and the third examines flyer and land-bound rights in "The Fall."

The stories are lightly interesting, but are overly simplistic. Maris's argument to become a flyer is far too easily accepted in such a supposedly tradition-bound society. Val is distasteful but has "childhood trauma" reasons for being so, so is rendered far less potent. And in "The Fall," the weakest of the three, land-bound and flyer politics are muddled, people's actions and reactions unclear. Without giving away the story, a group of flyers gathers over a tainted city, circling in black, never seeming to rest. It's supposed to be a disconcerting image, meant to rattle the city's ruler and get him to yield to their terms, but it's never clear why it should. The flyers do not attack, do not say anything; they do nothing but fly. If the Landsman were to wait long enough, one would think the flyers would eventually have to go home; it wouldn't make sense that they would stay away from their duties for so little purpose indefinitely.

This is the main problem of "Windhaven"; a lack of power. We know people are experiencing life-altering issues, but they're presented so simply that they have little strength to move us. The conflicts between the different aspects of society (flyers, land-bound, Landsmen) would be interesting but are never truly explored. They're only mentioned in order to manufacture conflict between flyers. Martin's latest books brilliantly examine different sides of the story with the effect of tearing the reader in two, not being able to say what is right or wrong. "Windhaven" just glances in the direction of such conflict, choosing a simpler, more pat resolution.

It's always interesting to read an author's earlier works and watch the writing change over the years. A major change is dialog; Martin's years in television and movies have drastically improved his character's speech since "Windhaven." One thing that hasn't changed is his ability to open his world to us. The flying sequences are bright, while the land and seascapes come easily to life. If you don't look too deep, "Windhaven" can be a pleasant glide over a colorful map. It just isn't as interesting when you land.

Every time I walk into a book store, I scan the shelves of new releases for the name George R. R. Martin, so I was pleasantly surprised when my wife pointed this book out to me. While the style of the book is nothing like current the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, I had a hard time putting the book down. If you want to read a good story, I would recommend this book. If you want to read an action packed and suspensful fantasy, then you may want to pass this one up.

Don't buy this book expecting the Song of Fire and Ice. This is a much simpler story or collection of stories depending on your point of view. The story revolves around the life of Maris a land-bound who wishes to join the fliers (society's elite), and it is broken up into three sections at different stages of her life. As with his other books, Martin lays out the issues and lets the reader decide if the heroine's actions are for better or for worse. Much as with real life, the answer is not always clear. I thought the main point of this story was the idea that an individual's action have reprecussions. You can't just change one thing and expect everything to stay the same.

The characters in this book are simple, but developed enough in the time you read about them to develop an attachement to them. I thought the characters also acted realistically in many different situations.

I have read already a negative review of this book and I had to laugh. Just in general, can we stop comparing every fantasy novel to Tolken please! Yes, we all know how good Tolken was. And, yes The Lord of the Rings will probably sit atop the fantasy book pile for the rest of eternity as king, but let's give it a rest.

This book is a good, short, simple, light fantasy story. If you have not read any of Martin's Song of Fire and Ice, I would highly, highly recommend it.

Some good stories, some truly bad, but nothing really stands out. There's nothing really to say more than that, since it's an anthology--read the ones you like, skip the others. Some of the good ones--"White Lady's Grave" and the one about the Church and the dying businessman (can't remember title). The others were either okay or completely a waste of time, but having just read "The Earth Strikes Back", even the worst ones looked okay. I'm not sure if you'd want to spend your money on this--it's not that good, so why not borrow it from a library?

I don't read too many anthologies. Certainly, this one will only inspire a moderate amount of enthusiasm for me to go buy more.

It's published by White Wolf, which also is responsible for highly successful and intricately detailed RPGs such as Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. (One of the weaker stories in the collection is by Steward von Allmen, who appears to be a key White Wolf founder.) I believe I picked this book up at GenCon; it's now out of print.

The anthology starts off very unpromisingly, with an embarrassing little number from beloved sci-fi/fantasy/horror fan Forrest J. Ackerman. This is the lowest point of the book, but luckily it rebounds from there. Ben Bova offers a story that has a perfect "Twilight Zone" twist, and Michael Moorcock tosses in an excursion to his Eternal Champion milieu in a tale that has a bit of an "English Patient" flavor to it. Ian McDonald in "The Time Garden" gives us an enchanting and lyrical exploration along the border of Faerie in a story that is reminiscent of the works of Robert Holdstock. (I believe, in fact, this may be why the basic Amazon review shown above claims that Holdstock is a contributor to the anthology, when in fact he is not.)

Jeremy Dyson's "City Deep" is another macabre tale with a dark cinematic flair such as would be found in one of the TV anthology shows. Two other stories are almost poetically elegant yet starkly simple: Charles de Lint's "Heartfires", about wandering Native American spirits losing their way in the present-day U.S., and Stephen Gallagher's "God's Bright Little Engine", with its beautiful and haunting ending. The story provided by Storm Constantine, "Blue Flame of a Candle", while not entirely successful, is nonetheless packed with intricate detail and manages to create a rich history with merely a few suggestions.

Other stories are much less powerful. The joint effort by Kathe Koja and Barry Malzberg is frankly unreadable, while that of Larry Bond and Chris Carlson is at best workmanlike and much more suited for a military-themed collection. Other stories are plain silly or sadly bland. The one by William F. Buckley (!) can only be considered an interesting experiment. Ian Watson's "The Amber Room" never comes together, and Christopher Fowler's "Tales of Britannica Castle" reads like a pointless pastiche of "Gormenghast".

While there is indeed good material to be found here, the lesser works really drag down the overall level of quality. A few of them should just have been jettisoned to save the rest.

Still, this is a suitable sampler for some authors who are rarely seen, and it definitely shows that some, such as Gallagher and McDonald, are worth following.