As an anthology, the works are of course of varying styles and quality. For the most part the stories were excellent and of very high quality, but there were a few stories with blatant errors or typos that I was surprised got past editing. I hope they are caught before final release, as I was reading an ARC. But I definitely found a few authors who's work I'll look out for in the future.

As for the content of the stories, there were some standard swords-and-sworcery fantasy tales which I get kind of bored by, but some real gems. I am glad Benaway, in her role as editor, took a broad view of what counts as "fantasy" when accepting submissions.

And mainly I'm just glad this book exists. I'm glad there are publishing spaces for authors who are trans, and I'm glad I get to read their stories.

There's lots of things to recommend this book. First and foremost, it gives a voice to people who are historically underrepresented in media and publishing, and that can only be a good thing. Some of the stories here are great - I loved 'The Vixen, with Death Pursuing'.

However, I have no idea who proof-read this, but some of it was borderline unreadable - Gwynception's story is so full of errors and typos that I had to skip most of it.

I think a lot of this is down to the smallness of the press, and therein lies the problem; marginalised people often have to rely on small presses because big publishers won't take risks on marginalised writers (even though readers have shown time and time again that it's not really a risk) and those presses don't always have the resources available to edit the books as much as they need.

I'd still recommend this book and I enjoyed more of the stories than not, but it definitely suffers from a lack of cohesive quality.

I tried all the available recommend apps for this sort of book, and none worked with this download. So I was unable to read this book to review it. It's sounds amazing, so in time I'll buy it.

A brilliant collection of short stories. Each one unique, yet coming together to form a cohesive set. Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys fantasy short stories, It's nice to see the LGBTQIA community represented so well. Highly recommend.

Some of the short stories were well written and very interesting, while others were a bit poorly executed. What drew me to the fantasy short story collection to begin with was highlighting trans women/trans femmes voices.

This was a great idea for an anthology. As with any anthology there are some stories that are better than others. If you like short story collections you’ll enjoy this one.

As is typical of anthologies, some stories are weaker than others, and often the strongest are at the end. Overall though, very heartwarming stories of queer experience in fantasy settings.

This was a great idea for an anthology, but unfortunately I just had trouble getting into most of the stories. As always there are some stories that are better than others, but with 11 stories packed into a 150 page book I didn't always feel like there was enough page space to fit enough exposition and character development to really make me feel attached to any particular protagonist. I would not call any of the stories bad though, and if you are a big fan of short stories then I think you will definitely like this. The stories are mostly high fantasy, but there are a few realistic fantasy / historical fiction stories thrown in as well so I'm sure at least one will stand out for most readers.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. But sadly I cant read it on my kindle. Have tried to convert it but without any succes.

So sorry!

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This own-voices short story anthology was well-intentioned but ultimately it tried to do too much.
I think the collection would have benefited from the caveat of having all the submissions being set in one world as the expositional nature of some stories added to my low rating.

One story that I particularly enjoyed was 'Forest's Edge' By Audrey Vest. But, unfortunately, the others lacked the narrative hook needed to keep me engaged.