Story I liked best: "We're Here, We're Here". (which of course has nothing to do with the fact that there's a boy band in my novel)Story I haaaaated: "Exile's End". Haaaaaated.Stories that gave me All The Feels: "The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods", "Sinew and Steel and What They Told", "Little Free Library".Story that creeped me out, but in a good way: "Wait For Night".Story of a great caper: "How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobucar".Story I wish was longer: "Beyond the Dragon's Gate".These have...

There was one story that I loved by Carolyn Ives Gilman called "Exile's End". It was a science fiction version of a story dealing with conflict over the ownership of an artifact. The conflict was between a museum and a people thought to be extinct. It could easily have been about an indigenous artifact on planet Earth, but Gilman heightened the conflict with an alien cultural imperative that increased the story's complexity.I read eight stories in this anthology including Gilman's. I thought fou...

Didn't really love any, didn't hate any. One or other felt like they should have been read in their own serialized context. Some authors are quite good at showing their "voice", making this, as is usual of Tor.com's best of collections, a nice way to not only read good short fiction but also to get to know different authors that might interest you.My particular favourites would be Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer - a quick whimsical fantasy - and Solution by Brian Evenson - a beautifully wri...

Another wonderful collection from Tor.com with new stories from Rich Larson, Charlie Jane Anders, Stephen Graham Jones and Lavie Tidhar. Didn't love every story, but that is what you get from such a large collection such as this. Loved my favourite authors (like Anders and SGJ) but the delight is always with the authors that are new to you and you find your TBR grow as you now need to find more of their works, for me this was C. L. Polk and Naomi Kritzer.

I always look forward to this end of year collection, and this one is bigger than ever! It's a great collection of shorter fiction. Some stories didn't grab me, and there are about a handful I didn't finish. But some standout favorites include St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid by Alyssa Winans, If You Take My Meaning by Charlie Jane Anders, The Ones Who Look by Esther Goh, Yellow and the Perception of Reality by Maureen McHugh, Exile's End by Carolyn Ives Gilman (I think this was my favorit...

I find this almost impossible to read. When I pick up an anthology, I look at the authors-someone new? An old favorite? A new author that’s all the buzz? The table of contents does not list the authors! You have to go to each “about the author” note following each story’s title, then navigate back to the story beginning. I was so excited to see this new anthology, but it left me wishing for a Gardner Dozois and George Martin “best of”.

There's a bit of everything in this book, from the very good (Exile's End, a beautiful, touchy story masterfully written), the very band (we're here we're here, a fanfiction with no scifi elements, basically) and the average. All in all, the average is average, so 3 stars would be appropriate for me.

Average rating 2.9 stars! There are a few really standout stories in this collection, but the majority are pretty forgettable. Mini-reviews of each short story below!How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobucar- Rich Larson-Cool cyberpunk Barcelona heist story. Tightly constructed, clever world-building, fun classic heist-style twists. 4/5Girlfriend's Guide to Gods- Maria Dahvana Headley-Yes, we get it, greek myths are misogynist. This isn't quite the hot take you think it is. The attempts at self...

Tor collections are usually all win for me. This time there were more than a couple of stories that just did not grab me. On top of that, there seems to have been a theme running through a lot of these stories, a theme of rape/sexual assault/abuse. And while the theme and the exploration of the topic are important, having to read story after story about people suffering in that one specific way from that one specific sort of trauma got too much too fast. I think that is in part why so many stori...

Es la primera vez que leo una de estas antologías de lo mejor de Tor.com, esta vez del 2020. El principal atractivo que tiene es quizá la posibilidad de descubrir nuevos autores del fantástico (a veces incluso fuera del ámbito anglosajón) y echar un vistazo a sus otros trabajos, a pesar de que leer el libro se me hizo una tarea un tanto cuesta arriba; como suele ocurrir con las antologías, el nivel de los cuentos es algo desigual, y mientras que algunos de ellos han terminado por ser increíbles

Rich Larson How Quini The Squid Misplaced his KlobucarMaria Dahvana Headley The Girlfriend's Guide to GodsC.L. Polk St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. BrigidCharlie Jane Anders if You Take My MeaningCarrie Vaughn Sinew and Steel and What They ToldNaomi Kritzer Little Free LibraryFran Wilde An Explorer's Cartography of Already Settled LandsZin E. Rocklyn The Night SunS. Qiouyi Lu Anything Resembling LoveYoon Ha Lee Beyond the Dragon's GateMelissa Marr Of Roses and KingsK.M. Szpara We're Here, We're

There were some great stories here, and some utterly forgettable ones. On the whole, I enjoyed it.

Like many collections, a mixed bag. Too high a percentage of fantasy/horror/literary-artsy stories for me. Predictably, my favorites were mostly from authors I already like: Charlie Jane Anders, Maureen McHugh, Naomi Kritzer, Carrie Vaughn, Sarah Pinsker, Lavie Tidhar. And I'd read several of those previously.

There were a few good stories: Stephen Graham Jones, G.V.Anderson and Lavie Tidhar. Overall this collection was not to my liking.

I'll count it "read," though I didn't finish the last story, where the author apparently drew words from a bag and wrote them down. The Max Gladstone I enjoyed; a number of others, I didn't. They sort of evened out.(Why are so many of these anthologies so poorly put together? No internal table of contents, so it's impossible to quickly go back to the beginning of a story or to skip it and go to the next. Last collection I read had the same problem. At least with Tor I can fix it, but shouldn't s...

Some Good, Lots of Meh!This massive tome contained several dazzling stories, full of wit and twist, pathos and pace. But they were outnumbered by a large number of mediocre works that were strong on agenda and weak on storytelling.However, it's those strong tales that one would remember and re-read.

The titles included(view spoiler)[How Quini The Squid Misplaced his Klobucar by Rich Larson The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods by Maria Dahvana Headley St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid by C.L. Polk If You Take My Meaning by Charlie Jane Anders Sinew and Steel and What They Told by Carrie VaughnLittle Free Library by Naomi KritzerAn Explorer's Cartography of Already Settled Lands by Fran Wilde The Night Sun by Zin E. Rocklyn Anything Resembling Love by S. Qiouyi Lu Beyond the Dragon's Gate by Y...

It is a bit difficult to review an anthology. The stories are different. Overall I really liked it. Some stories (Sinew and Steel and What They Told by Carrie Vaughn; Little Free Library by Naomi Kritzer; Beyond the Dragon's Gate by Yoon Ha Lee; and of course The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex by Tamsyn Muir) were so intriguing and captivating that I would have liked to read a whole novel about those characters and those settings. Others were uncomfortable and thought-provoking, and I was glad t...

Took me all year, but was so worth it.

Hats off to Tor.com for making a selection of its fiction available to download for free. Of course, it's free on their website throughout the year, but it's great to have it available as a summary volume at year's end, for those of us who like to read anthologies.Tor.com always features a mix of established authors and newcomers, which is refreshing. There are strong stories by Rich Larson, C.L. Polk, Carrie Vaughan, Mary Rickert, Lavie Tidhar, Sarah Pinsker, Maureen McHugh, and many others. A