This book has fewer stories than the first and second installments, but as Tidhar said in the introduction, he was able to include some longer stories this time. The book is a bit longer, and women dominate with twelve stories to five written by men (isn't that a change for Speculative Fiction!). For some reason when I finished the book I had the feeling that I hadn't enjoyed it as much as I had the second one, which I loved. But as I was editing this review I saw that I did like quite a few of

Nice variety of world science fiction. Liked some better than others, but that is typical of anthologies. This collection was enjoyable.

This was a nicely balanced collection, with all but one of the stories being good. Slightly more horror themed stories than in previous volumes and the longer inclusions were well chosen.

This is not only the third in the series, but also the third collection of World Speculative Fiction I've read in the series.Thus far this is my favorite collection in the series. Favorite stories include:A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight by Xia Jia (China)Act of Faith by Fadzlishah Johanabas (Malaysia)Jungle Fever by Ika Koeck (Malaysia) perhaps my favoriteThree Little Children by Ange (France)Regressions by Swapna Kishore (India)Dancing on the Red Planet by Berit Ellingsen (Korean-Norwegian)Alth...

A worthy entry in the series, but I enjoyed the previous two more.Impressions:https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

A lot has changed in genre fiction since the appearance of the first volume of The Apex Book of World SF in 2009. A discussion about a more inclusive genre in terms of culture, gender and sexual orientation has been raging for quite a while now and progress on this front is clearly being made. Where Tidhar probably had to work very hard to get access to enough material to fill the first volume, nowadays more and more material is being published by writers form outside the English speaking wo...

The nitty-gritty: A tasty buffet of choice stories from all over the world, some stronger than others, but all of them great examples of diversity and imagination.Before she became a ghost, Xiao Qian tells me, she had lived a very full life. She had been married twice, gave birth to seven children, and raised them all.And then her children got sick, one after another. In order to raise the money to pay the doctors, Xiao Qian sold herself off in pieces: teeth, eyes, breasts, heart, liver, lungs,

I’ve always agreed with the argument that our fiction needs more characters from demographics besides straight white American male. Done poorly, writers concentrate so much on the diverse demographics that they forget to create a complex and compelling character, which creates pushback to the idea and fails to entertain, besides. Done well, the writer concentrates on the humanity of a unique character. It entertains, and everyone can feel the humanity of the Other with far less vitriol.These vol...

Anthologies usually gather stories with different kind of writing style. This is good and bad the same time. Good, because I can read stories written with different authentic voices. It's an experience like going to another country with unique culture. Bad, because some of the authors' voices I find so strange that sometimes I give up on the story. It was so with this anthology too.I liked several stories. The City of Silence was interesting to read, it allowed me a glimpse into the spirit of th...

This is Apex Publishing's third volume of stories by writers from around the world. Stories by Chinese authors are being read more and more widely in the West, and this volume reflects that. Chinese author Ma Boyong's story would have made George Orwell proud if he had written it. Stories based on traditional Chinese folklore about ghosts are often fun. One of the ones in this book asked questions like: Would the ghosts in a city form a community? Would they have ghost police? Stories from other...

Despite the title, this is not a SF anthology, as you’ll find fantasy and horror stories as well. From the sixteen stories, all but a couple (Sriduangkaew’s and Jia’s ) were new to me. And although not every story grabbed me, there were only two of them that I didn’t like at all, not bad at all for an anthology as diverse as this one. But I’d rather highlight those stories I did like.The opening story, “Courtship in the Country of Machine Gods”, by Campbell Award finalist Benjanun Sriduangkaew,

My appreciation for short fiction has been growing pretty steadily lately, and a lot of that is down to the work being published by Apex. Whether in their monthly magazine or in these anthologies, I’ve yet to find a real dud anywhere. In some cases, I’ve even found stories that I’ve fallen in love with. One of them was in this book. Below the cut, I’ll highlight a few stories from this anthology that have stood out in my mind.The first of them is in fact the first story in this collection – “Cou...

Review CopyThe Apex Book of World SF 3 is a solid collection of sixteen stories from around the world. These are writers and stories I would have never been exposed to outside of this format and that would have been a shame as there are some exceptional stories in this volume. All of the stories are held to a higher literary standard than what I usually read, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy them. For example, the first tale, "Courtship In the Country of Machine--Gods," by Benjanun Sriduangk...

* Just a friendly heads up I received a free digital copy of this anthology from Apex in exchange for a fair and honest review.*Overall this is a solid collection of science fiction short and novelette stories. As Tidhar says in the introduction, there are a few longer stories than in the previous anthologies, and while that doesn't mean that I liked (or preferred) one length over the other, I did notice that the balance and flow of the anthology of a whole felt a little cumbersome at times. A g...

In summary: while there are a couple of duds, there are more than enough jewels, and I definitely recommend this collection. As the title says, this is a collection of SF short stories from around the world. There is a mix of cultures and writing styles, and 'SF' is defined rather loosely - overall it is a carefully chosen collection with a number of interesting takes on humanity and our relationship with our world, each other, and our technology and creations. I enjoyed all the stories to a deg...

As a showcase of diverse authors from around the world, this short story anthology succeeds in spades. In fact, its diversity is the single unifying thread. But the coherence of the stories was a mixed bag. Some really communicated across cultural divides; others were more esoteric, making me feel I'd lost something in the translation. With no perceptible theme to critique, I've chosen to offer my thoughts on a per story basis."Courtship in the Country of Machine–Gods" left me cold with its conf...

In theory, the theme of this anthology was international science-fiction, meaning that the authors of these stories came from all over the world and that every story was supposed to have a sci-fi twist. The first part of the theme is accurate. There are stories from all over the globe in this anthology and that simple fact gave the collection an interesting flavor and lead me to be more forgiving of grammatical errors than I normally am (not that there were many errors. Most of the stories were

As we pass the halfway mark of the year, we find the first of the new 'best of' anthologies flooding the market. Currently I have 4 monster tomes that I've been reading through, jumping around between favorite authors and intriguing titles. I'm not one to read an anthology from cover-to-cover, but I try to give the bulk of the stories a fair shot.First up was Space Opera from Rich Horton; The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year #8 from Jonathan Strahan; and The Very Best of Fantasy & Sc...

This is the second Apex anthology I’ve read in 2014, thanks to LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program; the first was The Book of Apex: Volume 4 of Apex Magazine. The set-up for both collections is similar: a gorgeous cover and a powerful gathering of recent science fiction, fantasy and horror stories. The one big difference, as you might guess, is that the majority of the contributors to The Apex Book of World SF 3 don’t live in the U.S. They hail from more than a dozen countries ranging from Eur...

"The Apex Book of World SF 3"... *sigh*Before I start off on the review I just want to say that one thing I love about short stories is that they leave me with questions. Some people would be driven nuts to be left with endless amounts of questions, but I find it as an opportunity to let my mind go wild. I love asking myself, "What if..." and make up answers from there. It's like putting together a puzzle- you have the picture, the pieces, now all that's left is to solve the trickiness and piece...