BONUS: Each selection includes extensive commentary by author George R. R. Martin.
©2003 George R. R. Martin; (P)2007 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
"Fans, genre historians, and aspiring writers alike will find this shelf-bending retrospective as impressive as it is intriguing." (Publishers Weekly)
"Disappointed."
I'm a huge Martin fan!! But this collection was very disappointing; maybe I'm not a short story person, or maybe I expected stories with the impact of Songs of Fire & Ice. Many of these shorts were written early in his career, so his style is different than in his later work. Skin Trade is the best offering here, and I'd already read it. Also, a few of these are pieces pulled from a series, and therefore obscure.
"Skip this one"
This book only contains two stories worth note, The Skin Trade and The Hedge Knight. The first part of the book is Martin's contribution to the Wild Card series. With only having Martin's part of this multi authored work there are huge holes in the stories so bad that I really had a hard time hanging in there. Skip this one and look for The Skin Trade and The Hedge Knight separately.