Short story collections are not my favourite thing. This one has a couple gems that are worth the purchase price (Ginn Hale's novella "Feral Machines" and Erin McKay's "Crossing the Distance"). The rest of the stories range from pretty good to fairly terrible, just like most collections. ( )

Something of a mixed bag but all the stories are readable and enjoyable.
Everything is very sweet to the point of tasting like diabetes, but hay, someytimes that's all your after.

The Ginn Hale novella at the end was fab. ( )

I think Amberwitch ran out of space, because she didn't mention the final two stories in this anthology - my favorites! I agree with her than "The Lost Gentleman" was the weakest story and I didn't care for "Monument", but the others are all good tales.

"Crossing the Distance" by Erin McKay is a strong fantasy about telepathic pairs who are groomed to serve their country, never realizing their duties will cause them to be physically separated forever.

The final (and best story, in my opinion) by Ginn Hale is an intricate science fiction piece. In order to save a planet from being plumbed for its natural resources, a scientist must maintain his colony-- and survive the native flora and fauna, the companies trying to sabotage his efforts, and an insane rogue fellow-scientist. When he can't get people to help him, he buys three "Feral Machines", hoping that together they can make a difference.

Hale is an excellent story teller and I would have bought this book for this story alone, but several of the other stories make this a very worthwhile purchase. ( )

A mostly good collection of gay fantasy and science fiction stories, with a few notable exceptions.

"Moons of Blood and Amber" by Gene Mederos is set in a conventional medieval world where a prince and his consort is fighting for his inheritance (outwitting, outfighting and outbreeding his competitor for the throne) while the story of how they met is told in flashbacks. The present day plot never comes alive, or becomes interesting. The story would have benefited by focusing solely on the story of the original meeting, where there is some actual worldbuilding going on, and which is more interestingly told, with a much stronger plot.

"Monument" by Steven Adamson is a teenage angsting romance with a largely unintegrated ghost aspect. It reads most like an intellectual attempt at using a ghost town to create a symbolism heavy romance.

The anthology contains two stories by Astrid Amara; the first one "Lord Ronan's shoes" is a regency style fairy tale where the hardhearted master is transformed to a kind and emotional man by a pair of magic books. Like a typical fairy tale it seems a bit simplistic, and highly symbolic, but an interesting story, with a happy ending. Her second contribution "remember" is more subtle. About a lord in Victorian London whose pending marriage is depending upon him finding the marriage rings of his bethrothals family. His inheritance is dependent on him marrying, so when he is unable to remember the evenings spent with an elusive man while trying to create memories that will last him in his marriage, he is vexed. The worldbuilding id rich and detailed, and the plot engaging.

"Los Conversos" by Jesse Sandoval is magical realism - full of beautiful, lush imagery and longing for belinging. Two outcasts, an Egyptian and a Jew, forced to convert to Christianity, have lived together for years, becoming lovers.

"The Lost Gentleman" by Mark Allan Gunnells is the collections weakest story. It is a sugarsweet romance between a man and a ghost, where the appeal of either is hard to discern, and the simplistic plot hardly worth being called a plot.

"The Coming of the Fourth Dawn" by Jeremiah Job Lecine is a classical medieval fantasy very reminiscent of the stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser- just with a more explicit relatioship between the male characters. Two mercenaries working as bodyguards eskorting a group of pilgrims to an old temple in a haunted forest ends up fighting otherworldly monsters.

"Fag Hag" by Lawrence Schimel is another fairy tale story about one of the great gay cliches - the eponymous Fag Hag. This one is a love philtre brewing witch, who is paid in labour for brewing a love potion to the "Fag" in question. Brief and not too interesting. ( )