Although Brave Boy World: A Transman Anthology is billed as a collection of tales that "explore what it means to be a man, even when one was born female," I think that does it a disservice. This is really an anthology about gender, both male and female, with some valuable insights into both branches of the transgender experience. Michael Takeda has really done a fantastic job of gathering such a deep, diverse collection.

According to His Substance by K.C. Ball was a great opener, a story about suicide, parallel worlds, and gaining perspective, while Spoiling Veena by Keyan Bowes was a sweet story about love, acceptance, and the gender of designer children. It was Fluidity by Eric Del Carlo, though, that really convinced me there was something interesting going on here, inverting our expectations and exploring a world of natural gender transition where the social outcasts are those who do not want to cycle to the next gender.

After a story that just confused me and forced me to move on, the always amazing Brit Mandelo swooped in with Liner Notes For the Crash, a gorgeous story that's less about gender and more about the queer experience, set within the context of music and social rebellion. Boy Rescue by Ace Lo got back to gender with a cute story about a robot who chooses to masculinize himself, which I see as a sort of companion piece to Robinson Faces the Music by Ryan Kelley, which uses aliens rather than robots to explore gender expectations.

Like many anthologies, I felt this had a soft middle with some stories that just did not work for me, but I felt like it got back on track with The Three Ways of the Sword Man by Jaap Boekstein and LGB(T) by Maverick Smith, two stories that use sword-and-sorcery and superheroes to explore gender, sexuality, and relationships. In fact, LGB(T) was one of my favorite stories in the collection, and the final selections that follow it are all strong, well-written pieces with a lot to say. Often strange and confusing, as the best science fiction often is, but they blend big ideas with intimate emotions very well.

Brave Boy World: A Transman Anthology is well worth a read, not just for transgender readers, but for genre fans who are interested in exploring the very construct of gender.

Although, as with all short story collections, the quality varied among stories, on the whole I found this collection to be a really engaging and fantastic read; I enjoyed more stories than not, and some of them were absolutely fantastic and made me want to read a whole book by the author. I also think that this collection is really cool because even within the realm of LGBTQ+ fiction, trans characters are rarely given the spotlight in such a direct and honest way; many of the stories are written by trans authors, and it's evident in the way that the main character of every story being trans is an integral part of their character, but it isn't the entire focus of the story. Granted, as a cis queer woman I can't speak to how well the trans experience was represented, but as a reader I was very impressed.

I really enjoyed almost all of the stories in this anthology, but if I had to choose favorites, I'd say that my top three (in no particular order) were "Liner Notes for the Crash," "Sindali," and "Coyote Dog Bitten."

According to His Substance-K.C. Ball 3.5/5 stars
This is the kind of story where you feel like there's a whole lot more going on in the background that the author chooses not to tell you. I was impressed by the writing in that it really felt like being thrown into this world and it did make me curious about the characters, but parts of it were a tad bit confusing and a little strange (for example, the hinted future romance between one of the characters and an alternate universe version of himself). Not my favorite story, but I enjoyed it.

Spoiling Veena-Keyan Bowes 2/5 stars
I feel like this had a lot of potential, and I was intrigued by the setting and the idea of "design-your-own" children, but somehow it just didn't click for me. It also didn't sit right with me that the story is told from the perspective of Vikrum's mother, and she misgenders her son for the vast majority of the story (and he's also deadnamed in the title). If the story were from Vikrum's perspective, I feel like it would've been a lot more interesting.

Fluidity-Eric Del Carlo 4/5
This was one of the stories where I would totally read a full book about this character. It's set in a world where everyone's biological sex (and for most people, their gender as well) cycle every...few months? I forget the details. It's an interesting paradigm to explore, and kind of reminiscent of Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. It definitely feels like it lacks resolution, but I feel like this story packs a lot of punch for a short story.

My Brother, The Horsehead-Rafael S. W. 2/5
This story was so, so confusing. It's written in a first person, non-narrative framework that jumps around in time in a setting that's kinda like our current world but not exactly. It took me til the end of the story to figure out that it's implied that his brother is dead (I think? I'm still not 100% sure) and not just...off at college, or something. And I still am very confused about the horsehead thing. Honestly, this could be me missing something because I read this one on an airplane, but although there are a few really well written bits, I just did not get it at all.

Liner Notes For the Crash-Brit Mandelo 5/5
After I read this story, I had to put this book down for the night, because no other story could follow this one and live up to it. It literally made me cry because it captured so perfectly the feel of punk music, of being young, of being lost and adrift and dissatisfied with the government and your life and your place in the world but not being able to do anything about it but hold the people and things you love close and love them fiercely. The relationships between the characters (polyamory! queer people in a functional polyamorous relationship! aka all that I ever want in a book) was beautifully written and emotionally intimate and honestly, this story alone is enough to make me give the entire anthology five stars. I can't even fully express how much I loved this story.

Boy Rescue-Ace Lo 3/5
Honestly, I do think that my opinion of this story was slightly impacted by the fact that it immediately follows what was probably my favorite story in this anthology. It's a good story, cute and self-contained and an interesting spin on things since the main character is an android. It's nice, but it didn't really grab my attention like some of the others.

Sindali-Deven Balsam 5/5
I read in the author description that this short story is going to be the basis for a full-length book and I am absolutely positively thrilled. This was easily another one of my favorite stories. If the highlight of "Liner Notes for the Crash" was the relationships, the highlight of "Sindali" is the worldbuilding. It's not necessarily a completely novel world, but the way it is described makes it vivid and real without feeling like you're getting beat over the head with more worldbuilding than plot. For some reason, I'm a sucker for main characters who build things, and the description of the titular Sindali is absolutely beautiful. I'm not quite articulating exactly what's great about this short story, but it most definitely was great, and I'm looking forward to the full-length book in the future!

Deadhead Chemistry-J. Daniel Stone 1/5
This story is an absolute mess. The plot is confusing, the characterization is sloppy and told more than shown, and it left me feeling annoyed that I'd wasted my time on it. I usually try not to bring the author's identity into things, but this author is a cis gay man, and it really reads differently than the stories by trans authors, as in it seems like he doesn't really understand what he's writing about. The main character is misgendered by his best friend and the author constantly, and the "plot" (which is barely there and makes no sense) seems like a vehicle for the author to talk about a fear of being genderless, which is apparently what he thinks that being trans is like. A disappointing story in an otherwise solid anthology.

Choice Cuts-Edd Vick 3/5
Dark and too short to really fully develop, this story had the potential to be interesting but failed to develop it enough to really keep my interest.

Robinson Faces the Music-Ryan Kelley 2.5/5
This one was hard to rate because I didn't really like it on the whole, but I can objectively appreciate that the author has a very clear and consistent writing style and the main character's voice came through very clearly. The problem is, I didn't like the main character, and I don't believe you're supposed to. In fact, the whole thing reads like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, only everyone is entirely unlikeable. It's also unclear whether the main character is intended to actually be a trans man, or just be considered gender non-conforming by the undefined standards of the aliens in the story. I think for some people, it would be an enjoyable read, but I'm still a bit perplexed about how to feel about it.

The Three Ways of the Sword Man-Jaap Boekstein 3.5/5
An interesting mix between a fantasy and sci-fi vibe, well written but somehow not entirely satisfying. If it were longer and I had a chance to get a better feel for the main character, my feeling might be more unanimously positive but as it is, it felt a little rushed. It also does kinda conflate gender with biological sex, and misgenders the main character before his body is transformed to match his gender identity. I can understand that the author maybe wrote it that way to be...less confusing, I suppose, but I still feel iffy about it.

LGB(T)-Maverick Smith 4/5
Short and sweet, but incredibly charming. I'm not a huge fan of the superhero genre, but I think this was a really interesting take on it, and it addressed the transphobia in the LGB part of the LGBT community, which is a super big issue that I'm glad was brought up. I also really loved the relationship between the main character and his partner/wife (technically ex-wife, but only ex because of practicality). It's an already established relationship, so instead of passion and love at first sight stuff, we get a relationship that is founded on mutual respect and support and has weathered tough times together, and I live for that stuff. Plus, LGBTQ characters in media are often given unhealthy relationships and/or unhappy endings, so I live for LGBTQ character in healthy, stable, relationships.

Flipside-Nicole Jinks-Frederick 5/5
So, so good. This was exactly the kind of sci-fi that I enjoy, and it packed a lot of plot into a small package. It took me 2-3 reads to really figure out exactly what was going on, but I didn't mind; this is another one where I would love a full book to expand on the world and characters developed here. The one thing that I would say was a little confusing is that although one of the 2 main characters is a trans man, the POV character is a (as far as I could tell from context) cis woman. Which isn't a problem, I just note it because pretty much all of the other POV characters in the anthology are trans men, so I assumed that this POV character was as well and didn't figure out differently until the end of my first readthrough.

The Next Great Race-Jes Rausch 5/5
I feel like I'm being too positive with two 5/5s in a row, but both stories really deserve it. This story is an interesting twist on the Iditarod race in a sci-fi futuristic setting. The main characters are engaging and have a really lovely rapport with each other (and one of them's ace, which is also awesome! Ace/aro representation is something we really don't get enough of, so I'm excited whenever I get it). I also feel like this story strikes a balance between wanting more (the ending is open enough that you could definitely read a book about what happens next) and feeling self-contained enough that even without more, you feel satisfied.

Coyote Dog Bitten-Dave Riser 5/5
This section of the book was apparently jam packed with winners, because coming off of two other great stories I didn't expect that it could get better, but this story absolutely blew me away. The characterization is fantastic, the setting is vivid, the tone is emotionally raw and jarring, and it's just. So Freaking Good. I was amazed to find out that this appears to be this author's first published work, because this more than any other story really got under my skin and stuck there. I realize that I'm not giving a concrete description, but it's hard to describe-it's a futuristic, kind of apocalyptic setting, there is a desert and a space ship and a ghost, and I feel like there are things that I don't quite get because they weren't fully explained (what exactly is the difference between a coyote and a jackal? How did they get there at all? What are the logistics of Ghost Girl?) but it doesn't even matter to me because the experience of reading the story was so emotionally fulfilling and the omissions just made you feel more immersed because it felt like watching a slice of the characters' lives instead of having a story explained to you. I'm really not doing a good job explaining this or doing it justice, but I would say that the solution to that is to read it.

The Tree Planters-Everett Maroon 3/5
Again, this story suffers from coming right after one of my favorite stories in the anthology. It's definitely got potential, and the world that it's set in is one that I would read more about, but it's too short to really get a feel for the world or the characters, and there really isn't much of a plot besides the main character musing about his situation and his identity (and I think it hints at the end that the main character might be genderfluid or agender or something like that? The pronouns switch from he to she at the very end and it reads like it's intentional and not intended as misgendering because it's the protag thinking about himself, but it's a bit abrupt and confusing). Basically, has potential but feels unfinished.

If You Can-Bo Balder 2/5
This story is supposed to be an add-on to Bo Balder's full length novel, The Wan, and it throws a lot of lore at you really fast. And it's not just normal lore, it's weird, weird lore. Like, the main character is a shape-shifting blob person who learns things by eating pieces of other members of his species. Like, that kind of weird. I feel like this deserves some kudos because it's very original and very out of the box, but I found the plot and lore unsettling and the whole story was laced with a pervasive feeling of isolation, which was the intention, I think, but I still didn't like it. Not necessarily bad, just not my cup of tea at all.

Trans Mare Cognitum-Michael Takeda 4/5
A little more straightforward than the rest of the stories. It's got a sci-fi setting, but it's a love story at its core, with some conflict to break it up. It was written well and I appreciated the main relationship; I thought it was nice that it was between two older men, because protags are usually pretty young, and it was nice to see a relationship develop between two mature men, one of whom had children. It was quite good, it just didn't evoke the same kind of raw emotional reaction that some of the other stories did.

Fire Fills the Belly-Noa Josef Sperber 4.5/5
This story was impressive in how it was written in a very lyrical, very quiet way. There is no great conflict or plot; we're simply dropped into Raphael's life and get to see a little bit of his present, his past, and maybe his future. There's a lot of introspection, which I usually get a little impatient with, but the introspection plays really well against the backdrop of the world the author built and the intriguing character of Raphael's neighbor Adison. Also, I found out after reading this that the author is only 16 and already writes this well, and I'm even more impressed now.

Edge of Everything-M.Raoulee 5/5
This story ends the anthology with a bang. It's an interesting spin on a typical kind of sci-fi world, where you can literally drive to the edge of the world. Unsurprisingly, it's hard to write about what that's like, and I did get a bit confused about what exactly happened, but that didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the story because the writing was good, the feeling was there even if I wasn't sure about the logistics, and the development of the relationship of the two main characters was...I can't think of the right word to describe it, but it was the kind of relationship that made me want to watch intently, but I found myself holding my breath because I had the feeling that breathing too hard would upset things. Tender, I suppose is the word I'm looking for. The writing was tender, and the ending was a melancholic kind of hope that struck a perfect chord for the end of the anthology.

This amazing collection of short stories delved into the depths of imagination with sci-fi fantasy, while deconstructing gender in an engaging manner, by centring the trans experience.

This was a very interesting anthology. I was kind of worried when I realized that all the stories were sci-fi - somehow I thought it was a sci-fi & fantasy anthology and I always gravitate more towards the fantasy side of things - but using exclusively sci-fi settings as a backdrop to tell trans stories is actually a really good idea because you have so many options. This anthology had such a wide range of stories. There were stories that were specifically about being trans and stories where the protagonist just happened to be trans. There were stories set in worlds similar to our own and stories set on worlds where most people are trans, and a few where most people are genderfluid. There were even a few stories with trans robots. They were all very unique stories and I would definitely recommend this anthology to people who are looking for more trans representation in books.