BOOK BLURB:
The latest edition of Wilde Stories, once more edited by Steve Berman ~ a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for the last volume ~ promises readers a range of imaginative gay-themed fiction culled from the prior year. These are tales that range from the chilling (Lee Thomas' "I'm Your Violence") to the surreal (Sven Davisson's "Dim Star Descried") to the fantastical ("Firooz and His Brother" by Alex Jeffers). Many of the authors included have won awards for their fiction, and their stories seek to press new boundaries of loneliness, loss and love, between men and monster (and those men who happen to be monsters).

BOOK REVIEW:
Every single piece in the collection has a very distinct voice, and together they range across a wide spectrum of moods, styles, and settings.

I might not always agree with some of the editor's selections, but I can't fault his ability to create a satisfying whole. The balance through the collection is flawless, starting with "Bluff" which may be short, but is also richly textured and exactly long enough to hit its stride and then deliver a genuinely chilling twist, and ending with "The Behold of the Eye," which is a more substantial but equally superlative tale.

That may sound like exaggeration, but if you were to read down my annotated contents page you'd see a range of numbers between one and five, and then a heart and exclamation point against this title. There's a lot of strong writing in this collection, but Hal Duncan is my discovery of the volume ~ the author whose works I had to go out and start hunting down immediately. It's not just an excellent and powerful story, it's also spot on to my tastes, and had me completely entranced.

There were a handful of stories between these two gems that are much less to my tastes, though. I was amused to notice that the two stories picked from the Madder Love anthology, which I reviewed earlier this year, were ones that I'd really enjoyed, and one that did nothing for me then or now, for all that I can appreciate the craft that makes Echo so unsettling. Such are the vagaries of personal taste!

The other Madder Love reprint, "Dim Star Descried," richly repaid re-reading, and offers a lyrical, dizzying blurring of realities, and was well placed as a bridge between the sweet, fairytale tone of "Firooz and his Brother" and the beautiful, matter of fact, well-researched historical reality of "Bloomsbury Nudes," a rooting in reality that offsets the story's eerie elements to great effect.

Back in the present, "I'm your Violence" is similarly realistic, this time amplifying grim horror, as a cop deals ~ or doesn't deal ~ with the horror that walks at large amongst humans.

"In the Night Street Baths" offers an impressively nuanced, detailed, and solid fantasy world, drawing on the Arabian Nights tradition, but delving into the cracked, damaged underpinnings of the city to weave a powerful story, whilst "Behind the Curtain" twists tales of that classic creature of the Gothic, the vampire, one that manages to wring genuine horror from the myth once more.

Wilde Stories promises the reader the year's best gay speculative fiction, and delivers a very impressive selection indeed.

(Originally reviewed for Rainbow Reviews - http://www.rainbow-reviews.com/?p=2006) ( )