Some writers can write “It was a clear blue sky.” Other writers can look at that same sky and carve a description out of fire and music. Steve Berman is one of those writers.The characters in the individual stories in "Red Caps" don’t just jump off the page; they dance. And as they dance around you, they spin their tale they pull back the curtain on a world you didn’t know existed. Quite simply reading this book is a transcendent experience. I expect great things from Mr. Berman.

I nice little collection of GLBT+ stories, most falling under boy&boy but a few others feature other combinations as well. Personally the strength of each tale is hit or miss individually but over all a solid collection. Worth reading if you like fairy tale aspects mixed in with modern day teens.

Some of the stories were a bit difuse. I like Berman's writing, but sonehow, this book didn't do it for me.

Do you know what I love about Steve Berman's young adult stories? His characters always come across as young adults, neither too young nor too old. And, whether his short stories are strictly contemporary, speculative fiction or fairy tales, the core of the queer themes have weight and meaning, and there's always a sense of fun to be found in them -- creepy, adventurous, romantic, weird, fun. Their endings vary from the happy to the memorable, to the twisty weird, but as a whole they usually hav...

*More of a 3.6 stars rating, but I'm rounding it off.Berman's short stories incorporate out the ordinary situations happening in rural towns, beach houses, and suburbs in the various characters' worlds. Don't let their mossy pine forests, pavements, or fluorescent lights around you begin to fool you. The readers may spot glimpses of the Leeds Devil, sorcerers, ginger bread boys, vampires, fey, and other spectral beings. Here the reader will question whether the white swan was a cursed princess o...

DNF after the gingerbread man story, though I tried to skim through some of the others. Most of what I read didn't really feel like fairytales, just contemp lit with a light, light dusting of something magical. After gingerbread, I was done. I don't mind sad fairytales, some of the best are, but I do mind being told I'm going to be reading fairytales and what I actually get is another variation of the same tiresome, depressing Literature I've read a thousand times. Because what, it's not real or...

My favorite story was "The Harvestbuck." So many different horror elements playing smoothly together! I would love to see this turned into a longer work. Poor Brent.My second favorite was "Only Lost Boys are Found." Love those liminal elements and complicated sibling relationships.I liked most of the other stories, except the one with the musical numbers. Was it supposed to be Glee or something? I haven't seen Glee.That story, "Gommorahs of the Deep," and a couple others ("Persimmon, Teeth, Boys...

Am I the only one here feeling incredibly swayed by that blurb? That blurb is too tempting. Now to locate the book and buy it....(UPDATE)So I finally got it. I really enjoyed a lot of the stories but I found a couple to be incredibly dispiriting. Even that would have been fine but I felt the fey element was kind of watered down and we never got to meet these mysterious Red Cap band! But it was good writing and the art was intriguing aswell. Some of it was overly simple and more line with basic t...

This collection of queer fairytales started with a bang, adhering to the principle of starting a collection with your strongest stories. I loved the opening trio of stories in this anthology, with their strong writing, creepy theme (in Harvestbuck) and great characterization. Unfortunately, as I got further in, I found some of the stories to be less compelling, and somewhat repetitive (there were two or three stories, for instance, where the protagonist gains new insights from coming into contac...

Review written for Love Bytes.I’m going to have to admit that I was SO CONFUSED by this book. I honestly couldn’t give you an adequate description of the majority of the stories here; some were recognizable like a reimagining of the Swan Princess, which was one of the better ones in the book, but others I read and then sat there wondering what it was I’d just finished. I can say that the stories were all well written and that the overall theme was that each story had some twist dealing with the

My review of this appears on the Strange Horizons website: http://www.strangehorizons.com/review...And individual story reviews are appearing daily at: http://365shortstories.livejournal.co...

The stylistic tendency towards ambiguous endings didn't entirely work for me (it often left me feeling too unsatisfied) but there were still some definite highlights among the stories. The final two stories, "Worse Than Alligators" and "Only Lost Boys Are Found" were probably my favourites, for entirely different reasons—one was creepy as fuck, and the other gave me the satisfaction I was looking for. And of course I adore the LGBT protagonists throughout; I wish I'd had this book to read when I...

Steve Berman's collection of loosely connected gay fantasy stories is excellent, full of sublime writing and imaginative stories. While I enjoyed his novel "Vintage," I felt that it was a bit hampered by the restrictions of the YA format. Not so here. With these stories Berman lets loose, and within them touches on the same themes of alienated gay teens he explored in "Vintage," but with a much more satisfyingly complex air. Though they are all fantasy, the stories are diverse, with some playing...

2014 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention (5* from at least 1 judge)

Here is a teenage boy’s description of his friend’s Stepfather from Hell in “The Harvestbuck,” a story in Steve Berman’s single-author collection:“As I make a sharp turn, the wheels kicking up bone-white sand, the headlights wash over a figure standing among the trees.Rick’s ranger uniform is filthy and unbuttoned. He’s tied sticks to his head. They can’t be real antlers. He’s grinning at me. “Heard you like black boys, Sean. Come back soon for Brent—he’ll be a right Jack of Spades when we’re do...

I loved this book and the grittiness of the settings and characters. Check out my full review at http://bookalicious.org/2014/04/revie...

Everyone remembers Grimm’s Fairy Tales–or at least sanitized versions of the stories in that book. Steve Berman must have read them as well. Though his collection of YA stories (many previously anthologized), Red Caps, isn’t quite as disturbing as Grimm’s, it certainly doesn’t stint on realism even when disguised as fantasy. But that makes these tales all the more worth telling…it’s the last story, “Only Lost Boys are Found,” that best summarizes this collection. Elements of spec-fic are wrapped...

As the book was an American edition, I LOVED the size of the book and the wonderfully floppy pages. Luckily enough for me, the inside of the book was just as beautiful as the outside. From the first page, I fell in love with Berman's writing and the way he created such fantastic scenes and characters. Unusually for a YA book, Berman's short stories featured such an amazingly diverse range of characters- different sexual orientations, races, religions and genders. This was so refreshing as I'm so...

This was...interesting. Some of the stories were creepy. Some of them were touching. And some were kinda meh.

This is an interesting and entertaining collection of loosely-related alternative-queer fantasy stories (or, as the book calls them, "New Fairy Tales"). Some of the stories are better than others, naturally, but the collection as a whole is rad - a sort of modern pop-culture-meets-Grimm's Fairy Tales. Simultaneously creepy and cool. The illustrations are fantastic. Unfortunately, something went awry in the proofing stage - there are a large number of surface/copy errors that become distracting.....