I was a teenager during the '80s heyday of shared world anthologies (hey, whatever happened to those?). I read most of them voraciously (Thieves' World, it's your turn to come back next), but one of my favorites was definitely the Borderland series. Not only were many of my favorite authors involved (Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Steven Brust), but the concept itself was fascinating. Elves. Rock and Roll. Unreliable magic. And the pairing of modern society with some of the oldest beliefs in folklore still resonates in urban fantasy today. But perhaps most appealing for me was the fact that most of the characters in stories were misfits, runaways from both the human and the elven side of the Border just trying to find a place they belonged. These weren't stories for the prom queens and class presidents, but for the rest of us--the dreamers and outcasts. Anyone who longed for a taste of magic in their life could find a home in Bordertown, if only in their mind.

The Bordertown series, if I'm not mistaken, spawned 4 anthologies and 3 novels during the '80s and '90s; the last installment, The Essential Bordertown came out in 1998. Then for years there were no more Borderland anthologies, and Kim was a sadder girl. But in 2010, Terri Windling announced there would be a new Borderland anthology, co-edited by Ellen Kushner, one of the founders of Borderland, and Holly Black, an excellent writer of dark faerie tales for young adults. I attended a signing of Black's last year, and we shared a bit of fangirl squealing over how excited the return of Borderland made us.

So could this anthology live up to all the hype?

In a word, yes. Welcome to Bordertown is all I imagined it would be and more. The contributors include those who founded Bordertown, such as Terri Windling and Ellen Kushner, Charles de Lint, and Steven Brust, as well as many of the rising stars of YA fantasy, such as Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, Christopher Barzak, and Janni Lee Simner, many of whom grew up loving the Bordertown as much as I did. And Neil Gaiman! And Jane Yolen! Honestly, you'd be hard-pressed to find as many authors of this much talent in any other anthology. The back of the book includes blurbs from the authors telling how much the series meant to them and how honored they were to be contributing--not just the newer authors, like Janni Lee Simner, but also the venerable Jane Yolen , with 300 publications under her belt! It's a nice touch, and to me exemplifies why Borderland succeeds: it's truly a labor of love.

Reviewing an anthology is always difficult, particularly one with multiple authors and many stories. Instead of evaluating each contribution individually (which might keep me here till tomorrow), I'd rather approach the anthology holistically. It's an approach that works better for a shared world anthology that in one that is merely thematically linked, and works especially well for Welcome to Bordertown due to events that have transpired since the previous anthology. You see, that 13 year gap between books? It wasn't merely a gap between books, but a period during which the Borderland itself was inaccessible from the human world. For 13 years, no one from the mortal world could get to Bordertown, but in Bordertown it was only 13 days. I loved this premise, which "hangs a lampshade" on the gap between anthologies and also fits in well with traditional faerie myth. And the individual authors of the anthologies used the premise in diverse ways. For some, it was a source of humor, as the newcomers to Bordertown remark on the dated appearance of the citizens already there. For others, the changing technology between 1997 and 2010 became a problem to overcome. And still others wrought poignancy out of Bordertown's 13 year absence, as those who went there hunting for lost loved ones found their family roles changed.

Although initially thrilled to hear about Borderland's return, I'll admit that I was worried that in the 13 year gap, and with new authors joining the old, the series would change with this new anthology. Of course it has changed, because our society has changed, but this isn't a bad thing. Race has always been a big theme in the Borderland series; there are Trueblood (elf) gangs and human ones fighting it out on the streets; there are halfling children who don't fit in the mortal world but can't be brought over to the Trueblood Realm either. However, Welcome to Bordertown seems to deal more with real world race relations than the previous anthologies have, with a more ethnically diverse human cast and the Border between Elfhaeme and the mortal world sometimes standing in for the border between Mexico and the US. Welcome to Bordertown also expands on its number of LGBT characters, who feature prominently in stories by Tim Pratt, Christopher Barzak, and Nalo Hopkinson, among others. I adored Pratt's protagonist, want Screaming Lord Neville to get his own story, and think that the increasingly diverse characters who populate Bordertown can only improve the series as a whole. We all want to find our place in the world, I think, and we all want to find someone to love.