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.

Blood Walk is a compilation of Lee Killough's two Garreth Mikaelian novels Blood Hunt and Bloodlinks. The writing is straight to the point, no frills, the characters interesting, and the action just strong enough to carry the whole thing along. Not a bad airplane read. The references to various 80's-related paraphernalia made it an interesting ride into nostalgia land, though were I the editor of this edition, I would probably have had the author try to update the technology just a little bit. If you're looking for a quick no-nonsense Laurell K. Hamilton read, this is a great book for you, and a great alternative to the Anita Blake books. If you're looking for something deeper and more prosaic, stick to Anne Rice or the other up-and-coming gothic authors.

This is a damn good vampire novel, but it's also a damn good police procedural. My husband's a cop and I'm a reporter, so I know the police beat pretty well. I can tell you Killough did a good job capturing the feeling of a small town police force, as well as the mechanics of cop politics in general.

From the standpoint of a vampire fan, I really enjoyed the portrayal of Garth and his struggles with his changed existance. In fact, I think Killough does the best job with that transformation I've ever read this side of Anne Rice. However, Garth is a much more admirable character than Rice's vampires, as human as he is superhuman.

Overall, finding a good vampire novel can be tricky, but Killough's book is so good I've read it a dozen times. And that says something, since the majority of vampire novels I buy I can't even finish because the writing style or characterization or plotting drives me nuts. But this book worked right down to the ground.

Do yourself a favor and buy it.

I read this book when it first came out, and was delighted when the sequel came along. I'd reccomend these books to anybody who enjoys the 'vampire-detective' genre. A subset of the vampire genre, which for me which started with these books, and remains my favourite theme in this area.

I'd love to read some more books with Gareth in them. My only dissapointment with these books was that there hasn't been more in the series.

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.

Absolute Magnitude is one of the best hard science fiction magazines out there. Here is an anthology of some of their best fiction since 1993 (when the magazine was called Harsh Mistress). These stories will probably appeal only to hard science fiction fans. Others may find some of them too weird. Also, you won't find any fantasy or horror in here - just modern science fiction at its purest form. The anthology includes many Hugo-award winners, such as Terry Bisson and Allan Steele, and noteworthy stories "Sortie" and "The Prize". Generally, if you're new to SF, I wouldn't recommend this book. Some of the stories here have a style that's an acquired taste. Still, this book is a good way to check out what hard science fiction is like today.

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.