Because of its diverse bouquet of erotic undercurrents, BTL: Fantasy is especially adept with wry, bittersweet fantasies - not the swords-and-sorcery type, but touching tales with a modern-supernatural slant. There are all sorts of uplifting motifs here - getting over midlife crises (Antieau's "Desire"), revisiting childhood places ( Thrower's "The Home Town Boy"), dealing with the deaths of friends (Shepherd's "Gary, in the Shadows") and loved ones (Silverthrorne's "The Sound of Angels"), release and spiritual freedom (What's "Beside the Well"), turning back the clock on painful memories (Verona's "Mahu"), and so on.

As far as the subgenres represented in this volume, you'll find very few traditional hack-and-slash stories ("The Stars Are Tears," "Magicked Tricks," and "In Mysterious Ways" being the only three, and they're all comedic). Especially numerous are gritty-dark-urban-modern fantasies along the lines of Don Bassingthwaite's "In Memory of," a tale of two vengeful dragon-brothers vying for fragile human lovers in a city setting. Also numerous are fringe stories that don't quite belong to any single genre because they have so few fictional elements - Matter's "Water Snakes" is an example.

Unfortunately, the settings aren't a very original lot: many stories are set in generic urban environments; there are a couple bare-bones Oriental stories; even the purely imaginary settings (such as the one in Sherman and Kushner's "The Fall of Kings") didn't strike me as especially original.

The writing, however, is uniformly good, if totally unexceptional, fitting well with the characters that behave interestingly but almost never transcend their two-dimensionality. The sexual elements hardly ever seem over the top (though Sheppard's "There Are Things Hidden from the Eyes of the Everyday" is just too much), even if most stories do seem identical from this perspective.

Together with its science fiction counterpart, I consider BTL: Fantasy a quintessential resource for alternative genre fiction.

Sigh. There are so few fantasy novels and stories with interesting gay and lesbian characters (especially lesbian). In a perfect world, this volume of short stories might only be mediocre, but because it's one of the only anthologies of its kind, it's downright wonderful!

There's a wide variety of stories here; my only complaint is that there are really no "classic" fantasies, by which is mean epic, Tolkienesque, etc. This volume was followed by science fiction and horror volumes, and frankly, I think that several of the stories in "Bending the Landscape: Fantasy" should have been included in either sci-fi or horror. There were too many stories which took place in the present day and merely had supernatural elements; some of these were quite good (especially "Water Snakes" by Holly Wade Matter), but they weren't what I expected from a collection labeled "Fantasy."

One great aspect of the collection is the diversity of writers: there are gay men writing about gay men characters, lesbians on lesbians, lesbians on gay men, and straight men and women writing about both gay men and lesbians. It just goes to show that any author can play with gender to create rich, interesting characters and plots.

My personal favorite in the collection was Tanya Huff's "In Mysterious Ways." This and her other stories about the theif Terizan are also collected in "Stealing Magic," another difficult to find item. But if you're looking for a light, fun story, you just can't beat Tanya Huff. "The Fall of the Kings" by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman" also stands out. The authors have recently lengthened it into a novel by the same name. It's a male-male love story set against a backdrop of a Renaissance-like university. "Beside the Well" by Leslie What (which is illustrated on the cover) was another favorite. It is set in ancient China and has a very mythological feel to it. The protagonist takes a stand against her evil mother-in-law and horrible husband by passionately allying herself with the spirit of her husband's first wife. "In Memory Of" by Don Bassingthwaite is my final favorite. It moves easily between the present and past, chronicalling the loves and jealosies of two strangely long-lived brothers. To say anything more would spoil the great suprise ending.

So, if you're gay, lesbian, bi, trans, or just a straight person looking for something different and you ever see this book for a reasonable price, don't hesitate to buy. It is by far one of the most original fantasy anthologies I've read. I just hope that we'll someday see more explorations of diverse sexualities in fantasy literature.

As a writer and a long-time fan of fantasy literature, I was thrilled to see this collection. Overall, the quality is good. This is a solid, entertaining read. But more, it is a ray of hope for an under- and often mis-represented group of people in genre literature. Hopefully, with the publication of this collection, and it's companion science fiction anthology, we will be seeing more gay and lesbian representation in the "mainstream" markets.

Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, is the first of a three-part series of "original gay and lesbian writing" edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel (not very coincidentally, a participant in Outworlders, a local Atlanta GLBTQ sci fi / fantasy fan group and the parent group to a book group I belong to.) After choosing Storm Constantine's The Sign for the Sacred as our group's first fantasy selection, we turned to Bending as a book that would cover science fiction but also appeal to a variety of tastes. Also playing into the selection was the fact that the book had been awarded a number of extremely prestigious awards and Stephen Pagel would possibly come to our meeting to discuss it (which he did!)

When I started on Bending, I really didn't quite know what to expect; most of my affection for science fiction comes not from books but from movies and television, so I really didn't know how much of it I would enjoy. I soon discovered that my wariness was unfounded, for not only did I enjoy the science fiction, but the designation "science fiction" didn't really cover what I was reading -- I found a lot of what I considered "fantasy" as well. I also discovered that Griffith and Pagel made some truly excellent story selections.

Bending features stories which, so Pagel told us himself, cover the full spectrum of science fiction -- everything from futuristic private eye stories to time travel escapades to stories of alien worlds to explorations of cyber consciousness and gender identity. Clearly, this was not a book simply thrown together or with the lowest common denominator in mind. Instead, it's a book in which writers of all sexual orientations explore situations that explore one of science fiction's enduring themes, "the Alien, the Not-Self, the Other," with the "other" a lesbian or gay man (interpreted, so the book's introduction admits, "liberally.")

There were a lot of stories in Bending that I loved and several which actually reminded me strongly of Storm's stories. For example, "The City in Morning" by Carrie Richardson reads like a chapter from a lost Storm Constantine novel. "On Vacation" is a subtly hilarious tale of aliens living on earth a la Men In Black. Far and away my favorite story, which I must have reread a dozen time the day I first read it, was the beautiful, elegant and sweetly heart-rending "Silent Passion" by Kathleen O'Malley. Set in A.C. Crispin's StarBridge universe, to which O'Malley has contributed two books), the story is one I summed up to a friend as featuring "giant gay, signing, alien crane-creatures" and their interaction with gay human couple, whose relationship turns a new corner when the narrator is finally able to move beyond the pain of human intolerance. It's a beautiful, life - and love-affirming story which I doubt I will ever forget and which I plan to lead me on to O'Malley's two StarBridge novels, which, so Pagel tells me, feature these same amazing crane-aliens.

Knowing there are two more Bending anthologies (fantasy and horror), I am sure I have many more great tales ahead of me.

There was only one story in here that I didn't like, though I don't remember the title. The rest of the stories were all accessible, easy to read, and very interesting. "Time Gypsy", about a scientist who travels back in time to the 1950's, was one of the best, along with "Dance at the Edge", which was a little more far-out, but with the same depth of concept and character. None of the stories in this anthology is lacking: they are all mature, and deal with their collective theme in a nuanced, enlightened manner. The first story, "Sex, Guns, and Baptists", and Shariann Lewitt's "A Real Girl" are also standouts.

Bonus: read Lewitt's bio in the end of the book. She always seems to have fun writing "About the Author" segments.

A seemingly simple setup: combine two science fiction templates: an alien landscape - outer space, another planet, the fifties; and an Other - an alien, a foreigner, a renegade, a stranger in a strange land; now, the twist - the Other must be homosexual. How much can be written based on this premise? Volumes.

Start with the brilliant "Sex, Guns, and Baptists" by Keith Hartman, a wicked story of a world gone fundamentalist and a gay detective hired by a jealous wife to find out her husband's sexual orientation. Continue on in the same vein to Bassingthwaite's "Who Plays with Sin", a cyberpunk yarn as good as if not better than anything Gibson has ever written. Plunge into Klages' "Time Gypsy" and discover that the mindset of the fifties is just as alien as that of the previous stories. Examine the adage of "looks don't matter" in Wendy Rathbone's masterful "The Beautiful People." Nancy Kress contributes a thought-provoking tale of survival - at the cost of total isolation, in her "State of Nature." The cost that the artificial intelligence in Shariann Lewitt's (her "Rebel Sutra" is at the top of my reading list as I write this) "A Real Girl" must pay for her humanity is mind-boggling. The viewpoint character in Bamberg's "Love's Last Farewell" has already paid the ultimate price - he is the last gay man on Earth. Tiedemann's "Surfaces" dissects the popular tendency to partition humans into characteristics - and assign blame and praise to them instead of the person underneath. Steele's "The Flying Triangle" and Sperry's "On Vacation" take a more relaxed approach and depict a more accepting - or at least redeemable - humanity.

Out of the twenty-one stories in this volume, more than half deliver much more than promised, and none are really disappointing. In a few cases the authors choke on a message that is too large and fail to communicate it well, but these are rare. Overall, the original subject matter lends a new degree of richness, of credence, of power to the well-worn genre. Each character is so much more an expression of the author's mind, better fleshed-out and rounded because of the innovative undertones. An excellent, eye-opening anthology.

WOW! This novel hit me on a number of levels. Griffith knows how to draw the reader in and then POW! deliver the 'ol one/two sucker punch.

Aud is a delightful character--multifaceted and real. Girffith develops the book in such a way that I can see the cabin surrounded by trees, feel the breeze, and smell the dirt while in the next instance I can feel the grit of New York City, hear the blaring noise, and feel the sun glaring off the asphalt--all within the space of a page.

Although the premise of a hip know-it-all type like Tammy being sucked into a mindless slave may be hard for some to believe, it struck a real nerve with me. I faltered a little on the way Aud disabled the dirty rotten scoundrel, as details were sketchy, but for such a minor oversight, who cares.... The rest was brilliant!

This book, on so many levels, is extemely well written and absorbing. It touches so many feelings from grief to brutality, yet expounds on each so that you won't feel cheated by any of the characters or emotions that will roil through you as you suck this novel down.

Now, I guess I'll have to go back and read some of Giffith's earlier works. This is one talented lady!

Wow! It's been worth the wait for this one. Aud is a fierce, complex character who is growing and changing--a complicated process that Griffith handles beautifully and believably at every turn. STAY is a remarkable story of grief, reconstruction, love, and the joy in being alive that even the greatest loss cannot smother entirely. I wasn't expecting this book after THE BLUE PLACE, but now that I've read it I can't imagine Aud doing anything differently. Emotion, quiet moments, excitement, violence and its consequences, hard choices--it's all here in STAY. A brilliant book.

I have followed Nicola Griffith since her earliest books (Ammonite and Slow River) and her short stories. I've always admired the beauty of her writing and the humanity of her characters, and Stay is a remarkable addition to her body of work.

Stay continues the story of Aud Torvingen (the hero of The Blue Place) who has shut herself away in a cabin in the woods to mourn the death of her lover. Aud is grief-stricken and full of guilt because she believes she is responsible for Julia's death, and it seems she is determined to stay that way.

Griffith has always made full use of environmental and physical details (Slow River has been noted for its use of water and light as metaphors, and in The Blue Place Aud is constantly aware of her own body moving in the world and the sensations and textures of the things around her). In Stay, the entire forest ecology becomes a metaphor for Aud's state of withdrawal and grief ("The birds were quiet, the sun streamed down, and for a moment the valley felt like a place out of time, secret and silent and still, where no one intruded and nothing ever happened. Then I saw that the gilding on the trees up the mountain wasn't just sun but the first tints of autumn which would seep downhill until all was copper and russet and gold and, not long after that, bare.")

Change is coming to the land and to Aud. An old friend convinces her to leave her refuge and find his missing fiancée. Aud wants to stay in the woods, but her lover made her promise to stay in the world, to stay connected in spite of her rage and her pain.

This is the metaphor that structures and enriches the book: Aud learning that to 'stay,' she must change and become something else. In order to keep her promise to Julia, she has to grow beyond the person that Julia knew and leave Julia behind. Griffith is wonderful at weaving many layers of image and meaning into a narrative that moves quickly but always keeps us in Aud's head and heart as she navigates her way to New York and back again. I was impressed by the small, precise touches that Griffith uses to show us that Aud is really on the edge, not tracking well, and vulnerable: as one example, she reaches the city and opens her suitcase to find she's packed "three pairs of socks, two books, my phone, and a can of half-frozen concentrated orange juice."

I was also impressed by the development of Aud's relationship with Tammy, the missing fiancée. They start out disliking and distrusting each other, and then begin to understand each other better as they spend time together on the mountain, healing. Again, the layers of metaphor abound: "When dirt is disturbed, it becomes unpredictable: perhaps when turned and tilled it grows fertile and lush; perhaps erosion sets in and the whole turns to sand. Some soil is never meant to be turned; it's best left frozen and hard-packed. Sometimes it can be hard to tell until you try."

Griffith has been widely praised for The Blue Place, and with Stay she makes Aud more complex, more compelling, and just as fascinating as ever. The writing is lush and lyrical whether Griffith is talking about violence or healing, and Aud's journey through grief is convincing. Stay took me through a spectrum of emotions on a journey that I won't soon forget. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of literary work that doesn't pull punches or simplify the human heart.

I'm not an avid Sci-Fi reader, but I absolutely loved this book. Griffith's story is character driven and is not overwhelmed by the sci-fi.

The story's focus is on Lore's internal struggle to sort out her identity, and it is artfully wrapped in Sci-fi, but if you want to read about androids, computers that become self-aware, and hard core sci-fi, this is not a book for you.

If you want compelling characters, click the Add to Cart button and buy this book.

"Slow River" is one of those books that I read again and again, wearing my copy to a dog-eared mess, giving other copies to friends, keeping in an easily accessible place so I can re-read a favorite passage or look up a memorable phrase.

This book captivated me on so many levels that I'm hard put to say what I like best about it. Griffith's prose, like the "slow river" she describes in the opening chapter, is smooth and languid on the surface, but has hidden depths that slowly rise as the story continues. The structure of the story is excellent; the use of different tenses and points of view (Lore is always the viewpoint character, but sometimes first-person, sometimes third-person) is smooth and never confusing. Griffith's plot construction is first rate, allowing the characters to breathe and grow.

The story itself is equally tantilizing. The glimpses we get of Lore's family are few, but telling; one senses that she is used to living a life of precision masked by glamour. When she loses these things, she loses her identity.

Griffith's use of symbolism is frequent but never heavy-handed or overstated; it would be easy for the PIDA (a type of personal ID), for example, to become just another tired cliche. The symbols merely serve to underline important things about the characters, who come to the forefront, each an individual.

In fact, it's hard for me to cite anything bad about this book. I suppose I could think of something if I tried, but Griffith has that rare knack of enveloping the reader in her story so completely that every time I read it, I forget about analyzing it and just sit back and enjoy the book.

Not normally a science fiction reader I felt compelled to give this book a shot after reading Nicola's book The Blue Place. Slow River is a very well written book that tells an incredible story. I felt that Lore had become a part of me and I could not put the book down. The descriptions of the places and people she met in her life made me feel as if I were there. I would highly recommend this book. I will continue to purchase books written by Nicola Griffith and currently have her books Ammonite and Stay in my to read pile.

Nicola Griffith, in her first novel, Ammonite, makes the claim that change is the death that requires courage. Each character in her story finds that death, the required change, in an individual challenge, and sources the courage from a unique strength. Very real, very human dilemmas placed in the storyteller's rhythm that draws you deeper into her story. Ms. Griffith's science is instructive. She has stayed within the boundaries created by theoretical probabilities, extrapolating the present into the future - weaving scientific explanation and the processes of our human spirit into an impelling story. Her vision for the potential of what our society names "alternative methods" in the healing professions is believable and powerful. A review on the book jacket claims that Ms. Griffith has "a very interesting take on gender." The book is potent in its ability to convey that in our essence we are gender-more as well as gender-less. Environmental circumstances in her story create a female population, but the human questions, conditions, and challenges remain constant. The attitudes and actions of her characters contain qualities of what we currently identify as feminine or masculine. Ms. Griffith translates for the reader the inner balancing of each character's feminine/masculine energies, changing the gender concept into something else. Readers who enjoy a book which takes today into the future, relates science in ways which teach, and characters that explore the depths of human character will find value in this book. It is a book you experience as well as read. Ammonite stays with you after you have finished the last page. At first, you wish it had been longer and given more information. Then you start to appreciate its simplicity and uncluttered-ness. You want to read it again, unhurried now, because you know the stopping point of the story. Ms. Griffith is a viajera. If you wish to know what that is - read the book.

The author's focus on the roles people take for themselves in society, and how they deal with how well or ill those roles fit, is what makes this book so special. Ms. Griffith makes you think about yourself and all the people you interact with, while telling a tale that is impossible to put down. The only thing I disliked about this story was that it had to end!

this was the first Niccola Griffith novel I read, and even though I love her later work, this novel is still my favorite. It artfully blends clearly detailed and vibrant descriptions of the planet and its different cultures with a truly unique perspective on the science of reproduction, viruses, and evolution, and then adds interesting main characters who are thrust into a new world and must change their both their mindsets and their bodies to survive. A true masterpiece.

Griffith's third novel falls disappointingly short of the standard she set with Ammonite and Slow River. Ostensibly a novel of suspense, The Blue Place fails to create the essential tension upon which its success hinges. Rather, it ambles somewhat nebulously and never gels.

While I enjoyed Ammonite quite a bit, Slow River got me really excited about Griffith. In that, her second novel, she pulled together the elements of a skillfully realized character, a gripping plot, and a thoughtful and imaginative vision of the future. I became invested in the lead character's life and found her inner struggles thoroughly believable and compelling. Slow River had its own mysteries and secrets, and Griffith revealed them with perfect pacing.

Upon reflection, I am tempted to blame The Blue Place's failure on Griffith's editor. At times, Griffith's talented voice comes through and it seems like the novel is poised to take off at last. But, regrettably, the moment always passes. The book suffers from just the sorts of problems editors routinely face: too many tangents, structural and organizational weaknesses, repetitiveness, and the sloppiness of having American characters use British expressions and phrasing from time to time.

I further suspect that, owing to the success of Slow River, this latest book was rushed to press before either Griffith or her editor had had the opportunity to give it the work it needed.

All in all, I still count myself a Griffith fan, but this newest one's a dud.

I'm mostly a science fiction reader, though I also love a good literary mystery. I first discovered Nicola Griffith when she won the Nebula Award last year. It turns out that every book she touches wins one or another award. Her anthologies as well as her novels have been multiple award-winners. I recommend them all.

Griffith's SF is very traditional relative to the genre (though it deals with non-traditional themes). In contrast, The Blue Place is quite genre-bending. Its mystery is not very mysterious; its thrills seem more flash than fire. And yet it has plenty of style, and plenty of substance. I like it a lot, and I recommend it to you, too.

Aud Torvingen is the heart and soul of the Blue Place. Her attention and genius is all external, which means her point of view offers up a rich stream of information about her world (which is a big part of the pleasure of the book). Her experience of her interiority is either blocked or attenuated. Her relationship with violence is constantly startling, and the true love she experiences in this book takes her completely by surprise. It's these interior blind spots that drive the suspense in the novel for me. I found myself completely carried away by the startling contrasts between Aud's hyper-competance and her closedness.

Write the next novel quickly, Nicola! I can hardly wait to find out what happens to poor Aud.

Once you suspend your disbelief with respect to a 29 year old woman from Denmark being a retired Atlanta police lieutenant, this "novel of suspense" is a great read. The descriptions of people and particular places are captivating in their detail and assault on the senses. The main character is likeable but challenging. The plotline direct but with a few curves. The use of language is what really captures the reader as in a Pat Conroy novel. This could be a great series but stands alone as a novel of feeling and intellect. Unfortunately my library does not carry other novels by Nicolla Griffith or I would be reading them as you read this. Totally recommended. Ms Griffith even mangfes to finish the book with dignity and deftness, a challenge which so few writers meet. If you are interested in self defense, Norway, relationships or just a great read, this novel is for you.

Some of the stories here are excellent, the best in my opinion being "Coyote Love". Mark McLaughlin, Barbara Hambly and Mark Tiedemann also contribute strong stories. Generally, the level is professional, although there are a few clunkers.

These stories mostly go beyond "minority literature" and should appeal to readers of speculative fiction and short stories in general.