outinprint.net

Buy it now at Giovanni's Room or at Amazon through The Dreamwalker Group.

I’ve been away from the fantasy/spec-fic genre too long.

I don’t know how that happened but in my absence, queer fiction has seen fit to evolve its own voice in that genre. I’d always thought we were terrific subjects for fantasy lit and I guess if I’d started my writing career sooner, I could have gotten in on the ground floor but hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Don’t worry. I’ll catch up.

I’ve been reading a lot of it lately for this website and in addition to Steve Berman’s terrific Icarus Magazine and Tom Cardamone’s Pumpkin Teeth, Meredith Schwartz’s great collection of queer urban fantasy, Alleys and Doorways has now come to my attention. This volume is a must for fans of the genre.

As with any short story collection, there are one or two that don’t quite suit my taste, but Schwartz’s batting average is excellent. The anthology starts off strong with Rose Fox’s understated story about an elf and eternal life in a city park, “Everlasting” and continues that streak with Valerie Z. Lewis’ stark, post-apocalyptic “The Steel Anniversary.” Lewis is the only author to use that setting, however. The other stories take place in realities closer to our own—reality being an elastic concept, that is.

B.A. Tortuga’s tale of a tattooist and his subject, “The Truth of Skin and Ink” could have taken place in any city, for example, while Steve Berman’s Lovecraftian “Path of Corruption” has firm roots in New Orleans, a city that seems to inspire stories about degredation and alternative beings luring victims into dark alleys with darker motives. M. Decker’s “Side Effects” and A.J. Grant’s “Underneath” are both great dragon stories, the former playing it for laughs and the latter bringing a latter-day knight to slay said reptile. 

My favorite here, though, is JoSelle Vanderhooft’s delightfully warped “Were,” a sly, tongue-in-cheek tale about two sci-fi geeks whose attraction to each other trumps the fact that one is a werewolf and the other is a were . . . um, bunny? I love how Vanderhooft stands the whole transformation thing on its head:

            Dr. Jekyll writhes in shadows as he turns into Mr. Hyde; Larry Talbot

            shifts from man to monster, his eyes glassed half with horror, half with

            sorrow. But there was no tragic dignity in my transformation. I was

            looking at the Easter Bunny . . . I looked like the bastard child of Tiny

            Tim and Bargain Bob’s All-Occasion Costume: buck teeth, big paws,

            pink fur—pink!—and a fucking cotton tail up my ass crack.

In short, a terrific story from a great collection of queer fantasy. There’s something here for everyone, from chilling to comic. And even a tale or two to make you think.

Which is what good fantasy should do. 

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler