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ibazel 's review for:
All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages
by Saundra Mitchell
I found this collection to be very uneven, and think it could have benefited from more editorial oversight to make it more cohesive. I found it jarring to go back and forth between historical fiction and historical-based fantasy, and thought that many of the fantasy stories were trying to do more worldbuilding than they had space for in a short story, at the expense of developing characters and plot. In addition, the vast majority of stories in this collection are set in America or western Europe in the last 300 years, which was disappointing in an anthology subtitled "throughout the ages".
Out of the fantasy stories my favorites were by Anna-Marie McLemore and Tehlor Kay Mejia; both did a good job of limiting the scope of plot to something appropriate for a short story, and both drew their fantasy elements from the culture and time period they were set in. Out of the historical fiction stories my favorite was Malinda Lo's, which created a very strong sense of place and time, and ended on a satisfyingly open note.
Out of the fantasy stories my favorites were by Anna-Marie McLemore and Tehlor Kay Mejia; both did a good job of limiting the scope of plot to something appropriate for a short story, and both drew their fantasy elements from the culture and time period they were set in. Out of the historical fiction stories my favorite was Malinda Lo's, which created a very strong sense of place and time, and ended on a satisfyingly open note.