So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction by Steve Berman

So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction Reviews

• 
  Just_ann_now

  I really enjoyed this collection. Some of the stories were quite original while others were contemporary takes on the Thomas the Rhymer/Tam Lin legends. Holly Black's "Coat of Stars" was a standout - how have I never read any Holly Black? Laurie Marks' "How the Ocean Loved Margie" was creepy and disturbing in a very good way, while Christopher Barzak's "Isis in Darkness" had a deliciously Bordertown feel to it. (And I see that he'll have a story in the upcoming Welcome to Bordertown book - hooray!)
  
  The thing I love about anthologies is how they provide tasty samples of wonderful writers' works for me to try. I definitely hit the jackpot here!
• 
  Susan

  What I learned from this book: editing as a profession is truly going straight to hell. reek=/=wreak. You absolutely DO NOT "reek havoc". And I wish that were the only mistake the editor didn't catch.
  
  Anyway, the stories were also mostly pointless or dull or predictable, given the nature of the anthology. I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to run into any good short stories this year.
• 
  Fey

  This is a fantastic collection of short stories, a little bit of a mix of mostly fantasy and urban fantasy and fairytale. And each of them contain a gay or lesbian relationship, but all are done to varying degrees. No two stories are similar.
  
  There were so many really good stories packed into this anthology, and it would be really hard to comment on them all, so I shall restrain myself to mentioning just a few favourites.
  
  "The Coat of Stars" by Holly Black
  Rafael is a costume designer for stage productions, when he goes home to visit family he is remembering a long lost love from his boyhood: Lyle, who believed in fairies, and died tragically young. Then Rafael wonders if Lyle might never have died at all, but been taken by the fairy. This story blended modern day into fairytale so wonderfully, I loved everything about it. I will be looking for more novels by Holly Black in the future.
  
  "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland" by Sarah Monette
  Violet is a young woman who catches the attention of the fairy Queen Nix, and becomes her lover. The story is broken up by a look at three letters that Nix wrote to her human lover. I'm extremely in love with Sarah Monettes writing, and I was so thrilled to find that she'd written lesbian characters, as in fantasy thats a rarity. And Sarah Monette writes so uniquely and beautifully, no review does it justice. I really hope she writes a full length fantasy with lesbian characters in the future!
  
  "How the Ocean loved Magie" by Laurie J Marks
  Another beautiful UF/fairytale in which a young woman pregnant by donor finds herself inexplicably drawn to the seashore and a far away island, and there becomes the lover of a beautiful mysterious woman with deep black eyes and a love for the ocean. To say more would spoil the mystery.. This was a very moving tale, beautiful and romantic and quite heartbreaking. This is another Author I have to investigate now.
  
  Those were my favourite three of the entire book. But honourable mentions go to "The Price of Glamour" by Steve Berman and "Ever so much more than Twenty" by Joshua Luis.
  
  The only one I found I didn't quite like was "Mr Grimm's fairy tale" by Eric Andrews, and in part because I wasn't sure at all what was supposed to be Queer about it (used the homosexual sense), I couldn't for the life of me spot a hint of gay relationship.. perhaps I'm missing something..? It seemed a little bit out of place tacked onto the end of anotherwise amazing collection of stories.
  
  All in all VERY highly recommended for lovers of Fantasy and fairytales with lgbt themes. And I'm very pleased I found a whole bunch of new authors to check out!
• 
  Elfscribe

  Excellent collection of short stories all dealing with gay or lesbian characters and the realm of fairy. This is a particularly apt combination, not only for the play on the term "fairy" but because of the association of gay as being outside boundaries, much as the faery world is.
  
  The approaches to the topic were creative and varied, mostly dealing with modern day humans encountering strangeness in various ways. I was particularly delighted by The Wand's Boy by Richard Bowes about a mortal world bordered by Faery in which the main character is descended from both a faery and a mortal. I wanted to read a whole novel in that world.
  
  Also Delia Sherman's The Faerie Cony-Catcher featured a wonderful lusty young man out to seek his fortune who wins a bride from the Faery Queen and takes her home only to discover that things aren't what they appear. The Elizabethan style language in the Cony-Catcher is the principal delight. "How now, my friend, you look wondrous down i' the mouth. What want you? Wine? Company? -- all with such meaning look, such a waving of her skirts and a hoisting of her breasts that Nick's yard, fain to salute her, flew its colors in his cheeks." And I loved her clever, eager for experience Nick.
  
  Well written, imaginative, the collection will not disappoint those who enjoy fantasy and gay themes.
  
• 
  Sana Burton

  Not perfect, but definitely good.
  
  I was wavering between 3 and 4 stars but ended up going high based on my love for faeries, queerness, and short stories. On a technical level, the formatting of this book on Kindle was kind of weird, likely due to its age, since I don't think it was originally intended as an ebook. There was a lot of variation in the stories included, in tone, setting, and interpretation of what "faerie" means, and a nice balance between cute queer romance and fae mystery and creepiness, even if one of two stories inevitably didn't grab me as much as the others.
  
  Favourite stories: "A Bird of Ice", "From Asphalt to Emeralds and Moonlight", "The Coat of Stars", "Year of the Fox".
• 
  Catherine

  Really, really enjoyed this anthology (and not just because I'm a contributor to it :-). There are some great stories to be found in here, by an impressive list of writers including Holly Black, Melissa Scott, Lynne Jamneck, Christopher Barzak and others
  A new edition will be released in a couple of months from Prime Books.
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  Stephanie

  There's a huge variety in quality among these stories. I recommend the stories by Ruby deBrazier, Sarah Monette, Holly Black, Christopher Barzak, Delia Sherman, Sean Meriwether, Melissa Scott, and Joshua Lewis.
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  Rick

  Steve Berman is quickly becoming my go-to-guy for anthologies of short fiction. This collection focuses on faerie fiction and runs between pure escapist fairy-tale to romantic fantasy to romance to urban-magic to dark fantasy to horror. Some of the selections are better than others, of course, but they are all excellent contributions of contemporary fiction.
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  Christine

  It's been a long time...I shouldn't have left you...
  
  I got this from the library back in...oh wow...2008/2009 and I bought it on Kindle last month.
  
  I needed the time. There was a lot of pain, a lot of hate (not against the LGBTQ community but some of the adult-themes in this book)
  
  If anyone's going to Faeriecon in 2020 will you let me know? I'd love to go!
  
  
• 
  Alice Anne

  22 Stories Including:
  
  "Year of the Fox" by Eugie Foster
  
  "A Bird of Ice" by Craig Laurance Gidney
  
  "Isis in Darkness" by Christopher Barzak
  
  "Detox" by Elspeth Potter
  
  "The Kings of Oak and Holly" by Kenneth D. Woods
  
  "How the Ocean Loved Margie" by Laurie J. Marks
• 
  Brandon

  Collected short stories that weave elements of homosexuality into tales of enchantment. There is little to shock within these pages, the inclusion of sexuality is in many cases extraneous.
• 
  Sylvia

  I especially liked the stories by Melissa Scott and Joshua Lewis
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  Jennifer

  
  SlashReaders: So in this case the back of the book really doesn't tell you much about what is inside it. However, I suppose it can't be easy to write the back of a book for an anthology of short stories. I don't normally enjoy reading short stories, mostly I've decided: because, they are short. I prefer something longer, something I can sink into for long periods of time. A world and characters let my mind revolve around for days or weeks in some cases.
  
  In this case, I found that my mind began to revolve around the fey, and the faerie though. So it served the same purpose. I've always loved fairy tales. A few of the stories in this anthology made no sense what so ever to me. However, for the most part it is a wonderful collection of short stories. My only complaint would be that I wish there were more dealing with other cultures. As expected there are a great many dealing with the fey. A few revolving around Japanese mythology which was nice but that was one of the only ones that really stood out as being different. There is a wide range of cultures and folklore out there, it would be interesting to see some branching out. Though I suppose there is always hope for that should another one come out.
  
  In looking back at this review. I just wanted to say that I have been a fan of Steve Berman's anthologies ever since reading this one. :)
• 
  amymarie

  It took me 6 years to finish reading this anthology - literally. I would start the book and soon thereafter abandon it, before trying again months later. Bearing that in mind, there were a few good short stories (The Coat of Stars, Ever So Much More Than Twenty, Mr. Grimm's Fairy Tale, and a couple others) The rest? Not so much.
  
  I have to mention A Bird of Ice in particular. While the premise of this story was interesting and at first seemed so promising, it was painful to read. The gratuitous grammatical errors, typos, fragments, and incongruous statements detracted greatly from the plot line. The only way I was able to get through it was to write a significant amount of edits and comments in the margins. I found myself asking if this story was ever edited at all. Perhaps the biggest issue is that the author seemed to have a considerable lack of understanding of Buddhism thereby undermining the story at its core.
• 
  Cass

  A lot of fairy/fae fiction tends to be very mysterious. A lot of LGBT fiction tends to be very tragic. This anthology has someone combined them both. At first, I couldn't figure out if this really, really annoyed me, or if it was actually a good thing because I was curled into a ball, sobbing. I still haven't quite figured it out.
  
  However, this anthology has a really large range of stories; there's got to be something for everyone. There's stories set in the modern world, in the fairy world, in the past and maybe in the future too. There's stories about the sidhe, fairies of the high court, brownies and the Holly and Oak kings. I didn't like all of the stories, but as an anthology, I adored the mix and the juxtaposition of the different ones next to each other.
• 
  Monika

  It's difficult rating a collection of stories by so many authors. I would have awarded 'The Kings of Oak and Holly' (Kenneth D. Woods) and 'Ever so much more than Twenty' (Joshua Lewis) ***** and 'The Coat of Stars' (Holly Black) deserves ****.
• 
  Crystal Wilson

  I think this is an interesting collection of stories and I really enjoy the queer take on the fantastical. I enjoyed ome of these stories very much and some of them left something to be desired. Overall though, I really did like the collection.
• 
  Cole

  Some awesomeness, some disappointments. See my full review at
  http://booksaremyhomeboys.blogspot.com/
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  Sarah

  I mostly just read the stories about women :-) and they were moderately enjoyable.
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  Oreotalpa

  Very, very mixed bag--stories range from transcendent to so terrible it's amazing they made it into print.
• 
  Sarah

  
  
  I mostly only read the stories about women, but I enjoyed them alright!
• 
  Karen

  Got this solely for the Cassandra Clare story, which was pretty cute.
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  Dreamersemporium

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