qalminator's review against another edition

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4.0

Enjoyable collection, overall. For there being 110 stories total, there were surprisingly few that I did not enjoy. The rest ranged from interesting to awesome.

While I usually try to review every story separately, it seemed impractical here. Likewise, I'm not going to try to mark off all the shelves the various stories fit under, beyond the basic SFF.

Disclaimer: I have a story in here (under a different name)

anna_hepworth's review against another edition

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3.0

ebook obtained through one of the 'free for a week' promotions

My issue with a book of flash fiction is that it is necessarily bitty. I appreciate that there is a theme, although 'Impact' seems to have disproportionately been used in negative physical ways, involving war and fighting.

My issue with this book of explicitly queer fiction is that the level of sophistication in how that part of a character's identity is woven into a story varied greatly. Across the many stories, it ranged from 'queerness as adjective' (where the only thing that made it queer is labelling a character) through some rather heavy handed 'identity through relationship' (queerness defined by the binary genders of the partners) to some really really beautifully rendered elements of identity.

Such a themed anthology does lend itself to more romance and relationships than many spec-fic anthologies, and that was a plus for me -- I do love a bit of that side of things in my reading.

Overall, this is an enjoyable set of stories across a broad definition of spec-fic. Best read one or two stories at a time, in stolen moments.
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