trigger warnings
<spoiler>PTSD
transphobia
violence
kidnapping
child abuse</spoiler>

A smith venturing in the dark wood to save her child, a woman wanting to transition and accepting a job to get the potions needed. A battle mage who is despised and hunted because she was born with a penis, a person holding a speech against vampirism.

This collection includes eleven short stories with queer protagonists, trans people who still get a plot. This is what I wanted: There is more to a trans persons story than transitioning. It will always be a part of our lives, but not all.

From these stories, I liked all apart from one, and one other attempted to use German which doesn't read to me as an German native speaker as executed as intended.
The anthology reminds me of my halloween playlist: It makes me happy because each and every song has some kind of connection to monsters, magic and mishief. Next song, still one I like to a topic I adore.
In the same vein, each and every story feautures characters that happen to be queer, just as it should be. Of course you've got a special set of problems if you're queer that differ from those other people experience, but often when encountering trans or homosexual characters they're reduced to this one aspect of their entire existence, which is exhausting and infuriating.

We have a broad spectrum of settings. Classic high fantasy, then medieval with fairies, we have urban fantasy, one story is set in America in the Great Depression. One leans toward sci fi and multiverse, talking about planets and different worlds. There is a shape shifter, a medium, a mecenary. A mixed bag of goods, so as long as you're into magic, you will find something that appeals to you.

I'll make sure to look up the authors and see what else they've done, and I hope that people who don't neccessarily look out for stories with queer characters will give it a go, to normalize our stories in the mainstream narrative.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As an anthology, the works are of course of varying styles and quality. For the most part the stories were excellent and of very high quality, but there were a few stories with blatant errors or typos that I was surprised got past editing. I hope they are caught before final release, as I was reading an ARC. But I definitely found a few authors who's work I'll look out for in the future.

As for the content of the stories, there were some standard swords-and-sworcery fantasy tales which I get kind of bored by, but some real gems. I am glad Benaway, in her role as editor, took a broad view of what counts as "fantasy" when accepting submissions.

And mainly I'm just glad this book exists. I'm glad there are publishing spaces for authors who are trans, and I'm glad I get to read their stories.

There's lots of things to recommend this book. First and foremost, it gives a voice to people who are historically underrepresented in media and publishing, and that can only be a good thing. Some of the stories here are great - I loved 'The Vixen, with Death Pursuing'.

However, I have no idea who proof-read this, but some of it was borderline unreadable - Gwynception's story is so full of errors and typos that I had to skip most of it.

I think a lot of this is down to the smallness of the press, and therein lies the problem; marginalised people often have to rely on small presses because big publishers won't take risks on marginalised writers (even though readers have shown time and time again that it's not really a risk) and those presses don't always have the resources available to edit the books as much as they need.

I'd still recommend this book and I enjoyed more of the stories than not, but it definitely suffers from a lack of cohesive quality.

I tried all the available recommend apps for this sort of book, and none worked with this download. So I was unable to read this book to review it. It's sounds amazing, so in time I'll buy it.

A brilliant collection of short stories. Each one unique, yet coming together to form a cohesive set. Highly recommend for anyone who enjoys fantasy short stories, It's nice to see the LGBTQIA community represented so well. Highly recommend.

Some of the short stories were well written and very interesting, while others were a bit poorly executed. What drew me to the fantasy short story collection to begin with was highlighting trans women/trans femmes voices.

This was a great idea for an anthology. As with any anthology there are some stories that are better than others. If you like short story collections you’ll enjoy this one.

I quite enjoyed this anthology, but some of the stories just weren't that amazingly executed. The very first story had a great idea, but didn't execute it well, and tried to fit far to much worldbuilding into a v ery small space. The result was a dry read that does not serve as a good introduction to this anthology. The idea was great, the quality just could've been better. Maybe a narrower focus would've helped.

Unfortunately, I liked the idea of this anthology more than I liked the execution. The quality of the stories varied quite widely; a few were so inventive and immersive that I was hanging on to every word and was disappointed when I reached the end (especially Dreamborn), while I ended up just skimming a few others because I wasn't engaged at all.

I think maybe my main trouble with this was that the theme was very broad and so the stories sometimes felt disjointed. I think narrowing the theme a bit might have helped, either by limiting it to a particular type of fantasy or by focusing in on the maiden/mother/crone triptych and having a third of the stories focus on each of those archetypes.

I was also distracted in several stories by punctuation and homonym errors, although I expect those will be corrected in the final version.

As is typical of anthologies, some stories are weaker than others, and often the strongest are at the end. Overall though, very heartwarming stories of queer experience in fantasy settings.

I was given a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The anthology was quite uneven when it came to the stories in it. Some – like Forest's Edge – were absolutely and utterly stunning and made me wish for a full-length novel in that story's world. Some – like Perisher – made me want to skim what I was reading and skip entire paragraphs because I simply did not enjoy them. i shall remain was a peculiar read, something I greatly enjoyed even though it was, at times, odd. Oh, and Dreamborn! It was right there at the top of my faves list with Forest's Edge.

Solid four stars, despite a few weaker stories. An excellent collection of (mostly) good stories, written by trans women/trans feminine people, about trans women/trans feminine people.

This was a great idea for an anthology, but unfortunately I just had trouble getting into most of the stories. As always there are some stories that are better than others, but with 11 stories packed into a 150 page book I didn't always feel like there was enough page space to fit enough exposition and character development to really make me feel attached to any particular protagonist. I would not call any of the stories bad though, and if you are a big fan of short stories then I think you will definitely like this. The stories are mostly high fantasy, but there are a few realistic fantasy / historical fiction stories thrown in as well so I'm sure at least one will stand out for most readers.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. But sadly I cant read it on my kindle. Have tried to convert it but without any succes.

So sorry!

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This own-voices short story anthology was well-intentioned but ultimately it tried to do too much.
I think the collection would have benefited from the caveat of having all the submissions being set in one world as the expositional nature of some stories added to my low rating.

One story that I particularly enjoyed was 'Forest's Edge' By Audrey Vest. But, unfortunately, the others lacked the narrative hook needed to keep me engaged.