Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (Bending the Landscape)

Rating:
Summary: Coming Into Our Own
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Coming Into Our Own
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Mind-bending fantasy
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Writing
Review: I just finished this book. The nice part is that you can read one or two stories in a relatively short time. The bad part is that you keep saying "just one more and I'll hit the sack". As with all good books, you lose a little sleep. The stories are from the current and the past, our world and fantasy worlds. The characters and situations fall into the standard categories but with the twist of being fantasy along with many surprise endings.

Rating:
Summary: worth seeking out
Review: 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.