Denric Valdoria, the seventh of Roca and Eldrinson's children, has come to the planet of Sandstorm with the plan of opening a school. Aware of the privileges his status gives him, he has a need to give something back to society, rather than take up an academic position in a high level university somewhere. The story opens with him running, desperately, with demons chasing him. He has accidently strayed into the city of Never-Haven where everything is curved and to draw a straight line is to draw...

It was well-written, but a lot of it just wasn't my mileage.

I only read the one story that I got the book for: The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman. I was expecting a fantasy treatise of warning into reading Susan’s femininity as her own demise. What I got was a too-short summary of what may have happened to Susan after all the dealings in Narnia, followed by a crude vision of Aslan and Jadis as instruments of lewdness and evil. Gaiman missed the point of what Susan represents in the Narnia stories. This makes me sad to write, as Gaiman is one of my favor...

Some excellent stories that improve the further into the book you get ending with Gene Wolfe's excellent story that would be a perfect origin for a Zelazny Amberite beginning his journey to discover the City of Amber on Mount Kolvir.

A very uneven fantasy anthology with a really cool cover. There are some truly awful fantasy anthologies out there, so if this is the only fantasy anthology your library has or that you can get your hands on, you'll find something worthwhile in there but you may have to dig for it. The fantasy ranges from sword and sorcery stuff to modern vampire slaying and sentient steam-shovels having sex. There are a couple of ghost stories that I wouldn't think of as fantasy but I did enjoy reading them. My...

I didn't realize how much variety fell under the category of fantasy fiction. I haven't read too much like this before; usually when I think of fantasy I think of knights and dragons and Lord of the Rings, even though I've never read anything like that; but overall I enjoyed it. It was a little difficult at times to wrap my head around some of the stories when I'd just finished ones that were completely different. I recommend people read a book called "Zombies vs. Unicorns," it's also a book of

This is a big volume which looks like it will furnish lunch reading for month. It has stories by some of my favorite authors, some of whom don't normally write in this genre. Very excited.IntroductionThe Sorcerer's Apprentice by Robert Silverberg was OK. Well drawn world & characters, good enough plot, but it never really grabbed me for some reason. 3 starsPerpetua by Kit Reed just never made enough sense for me to like it. I guess it was some sort of metaphor, but I'm not sure for what & don't

3.8. Not all of these authors write in this particular genre, so don't judge the author solely on the works found in here. There's a story or more for everyone, just as most will not love every story here. Several made me laugh, a few made me cringe, but in the whole I enjoyed this.

I read Neil Gaiman's short story "The Problem of Susan" (pp. 395–402). It has some sexually explicit parts—definitely not for kids. I read the graphic novel version recently.Gaiman alternates perspectives, moving back and forth between the professor and Greta several times. The story is bookended with dreams: beginning with the professor's dream and concluding with Greta's dream (Greta seems to be Susan for some reason). Some of the content comes from a knowledge of children's literature (Victor...

Really excellent collection of fantasy short stories written in 2004, though at heart I hate short-story collections...Because when a story is brilliant, I always am disappointed when it ends, I wish it was a novel!

Sadly, I found few stories in this collection to be "extreme visions". I do have to take into account the fact that this is from 2004, but still, I expected much more to inspire than what was here. To date, by far the best collection of compelling fantasy I've read is The Secret History of Fantasy ed. by Beagle.Anyway, these four I found worthwhile...Perpetua by Kit ReedRelations by Nina Kiriki HoffmanJupiter's Skull by Jeffrey FordSleepover by Al SarrantonioAnd now, onto the next collection...

It's a bunch of short stories from a variety of authors. Overall, I thought there was too much sex in it... it's annoying when at least once every story something happens in that general direction. And the one by Neil Gaimen was plain offensive... *shudders* Though he did raise an interesting question in the beginning about why Susan should've been left behind in the last Narnia book, and what might have happened to her afterwards. Most of the stories I don't recommend, because even though I got...

This was very much an extreme collection pushing the limits of Fantasy...killer toddler fights is one just example of "that's going to haunt me".

Like Sarrantonio's equally disappointing 999, Flights is this editor's attempt to emulate Harlan Ellison's landmark Dangerous Visions anthologies. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about those as well; while there were great stories, there were also many that were incoherent or incomprehensible. So I guess they are similar in that way. But I have to wonder at the byline of "extreme fantasy." I'm not sure what that actually means, but I'm certain that most of these stories aren't it. Many of the...

Watchfire by Raymond E. Feist & Janny Wurts

The short story is a fantastic piece of literature. Rather than expounding on minute, unnecessary details, the short story author must get across his tale in only a few short pages. This tome of fantasy fiction brings in well-known and well-respected names of the genre, allowing them to truly shine. Robert Silverberg looks at the emotional and physical power struggle between a sorcerer and her apprentice. Kit Reed shows us a miniaturized family surviving the apocalypse and living inside a crocod...

Book of short stories. Meh Some good stuff but a lot of meh. Just not for me, not a knock on the authors.

The only reason why this got 2 stars instead of 1 is because there were 4 stories that were actually interesting and enjoyable. Otherwise, every single one was either a complete waste of my time or it made no sense and I was left sitting in perplexed silence wondering what the hell did I just read and why did I even bother. I have never been so disappointed in a collection of short stories before. This one just failed.

I gave the book 3 stars but that really is an average of all the stories in the book. I personally am a swords and magic type of fantasy lover which isn't the main focus of this book (which I'm sure contributed to the lower rating than most reviewers). There were also quite a few stories that had sex as a main focus of the plot. However, there were some stories that I liked quite a bit as well. If you like the type of fantasy where weird symbolic things happen then this would be a good book to r...

This is an excellent book of short stories. One of the best fantasy anthologies of the decade, in my humble opinion. With the exception of maybe one or two stories which wound up as mere exercise in idea, most of these are wildly imaginative and extremely well written. Most especially Golden City Far by Gene Wolfe, which if you are a Wolfe fan in an instant must read.