Tanya Huff: February Thaw

February Thaw is a collection of short contemporary fantasy from Tanya Huff. Contemporary fantasy - and its wildly successful subgenre, urban fantasy - is everywhere these days, but Huff was one of the early popularisers of the genre, back when most fantasy was epic and pseudo-medieval and heavily influenced by The Lord of the Rings. Oh, there had always been contemporary fantasy floating around - C. S. Lewis and H. G. Wells wrote some contemporary fantasies, and there was a air amount written for children, such as Mary Norton’s The Borrowers. But it wasn’t really until a few authors like Susan Cooper, Emma Bull, Peter S. Beagle, and a few other authors - definitely including Huff - started writing large amounts of contemporary fiction that the genre came into its own.

In this collection, Huff spins tales about many of the creatures that populate traditional fantasy - elves, dragons, wizards, elementals - placing them in modern settings, reminding us that the imagination can take root anywhere, in any time. From a look at the lives of the Olympian gods in today’s world, to the education of a new wizard, to a spiritual adventure in which the symbolism of the Tarot comes to life, these seven stories blend the sense of wonder that all fantasy evokes with a modern sensibility and often a large helping of humour.