The third collection of Fables, the Sandman spin-off about fairy-tale characters exiled in New York, contains four stories. The longest, "Storybook Love," is the most satisfying, but the others have their fairy-tale-like (i.e., grisly) charms. Revealing that the Jack of beanstalk fame and the Jack of the eponymous tall tales are identical, "Bag o' Bones" spins a Civil War yarn in which Jack detains the Grim Reaper, so that no one can die. In "a two-part caper" (all that's given in the way of a title), the Fables community puts Briar Rose, aka the Sleeping Beauty, back on slumberous hold to prevent exposure by a scandal-rag journalist. In "Barleycorn Bride," Bigby Wolf relays some of the Fables' early history in America to explain why 18-year-old Lilliputian boys try to steal magic barleycorns from a jar at the Fables' Manhattan headquarters. The long story concerns a plot to seize Fables leadership by Bluebeard and Goldilocks; it includes some Fables mainstays' apparent demises and begs for future development. Deucedly cleverly written, yeomanly drawn.
