lezreadalot's review against another edition

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4.0

Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Sea Troll's Daughter" was excellent! Really engaging, really moving, really fun. I adored Kai Ashante Wilson's "Kaiju maximus ®" as I will probably adore everything he writes, but I'm a bit confused. Where was the queerness? Did I blink and miss it? "The Lily and the Horn" needed a reread for me to really get into it, but I enjoyed it a lot.

The rest of the anthology was good. Not really what I expected from something called "Queers Destroy Fantasy!" I would have appreciated less subtext and more text from several of the stories. But they were all enjoyable in some way. And I really appreciated Ellen Kushner's essay!

More or less worth the read. 3.5 stars.


Merged review:

But as we engineer the superhuman corpus, again I say, let us not neglect the heart!

Read this a few years ago as part of a collection; the reread was enjoyable and illuminating. I love what Kai Ashante Wilson does with words and lyricism, I love that he uses images and metaphors that are personal, and black ("If you’ve ever sucked and chewed on sugarcane, then you have the right image." I have!), I love the metatextuality in his work, I love the little nods he gives to video games. Reading the little interview he did after, I wasn't expecting to hear that some inspiration came from Bioware games, but thinking about it, I'm not very surprised!

Love the thought of a heroic gene, and that image of the hero, having to hold herself apart from her family, and yet depending on them so completely to complete her mission. Really good!

invisibleninjacat's review

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5.0

An excellent collection that introduced me to a couple of authors I definitely, definitely want to read more from. And all the stories had queer themes! Fabulous in more ways than one.

8bitlapras's review

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3.0

Fiction
The Lily and the Horn by Catherynne M. Valente: 4.5/5
Kaiju Maximus®: “So Various, So Beautiful, So New” by Kai Ashante Wilson: 3/5
The Lady's Maid by Carlea Holl-Jensen: 3/5
The Duchess & the Ghost by Richard Bowes: 4/5
The Padishah Begum's Reflections by Shweta Narayan: 3.5/5
Down the Path of the Sun by Nicola Griffith: 4/5
The Ledge by Austin Bunn: 3/5
The Sea Troll's Daughter by Caitlín R. Kiernan: 5/5

Non-fiction
The Sleepover Manifesto by merrit kopas: 5/5
False Starts by Keguro Macharia: 3/5
Retrofuturism and Agendered Fashion: What Will We Wear? by Ekaterina Sedia: 4/5
Eggplant and Unicorns by Mary Anne Mohanraj: 4/5
Girls on Boys on Boys by Ellen Kushner: 1.5/5

Average rating: 3.65/5. Bumping it down to an even 3/5 because the extremely liberal idea of "queer" littered throughout some of the non-fiction and interviews gave me acid reflux and a lot of the LGBTness in a lot of the stories was subtext which isn't what I'm looking for in an issue of something called "Queers Destroy Fantasy".

undertheteacup's review

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4.0

I wish there had been more stories and less nonfiction - but that's really more of a compliment than a criticism because of the handful of short stories/reprints there were only two I really did not enjoy. The rest were each phenomenal in their own way, and I think the magazine accomplished a two-fold purpose: not only did I get to read lovely queer fantasy, but now I am curious about all these different authors and am keeping an eye out for their other work.

In short, this issue was (very nearly) everything I could have wanted and looked forward to!

youfelinedevil's review

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5.0

Wow, this prose!! I have never read, seen, or heard of a superhero story quite like this.
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