Lace and Blade 2

by Deborah J. Ross, Elisabeth Waters, Sherwood Smith, et al.

Book Overview

LACE AND BLADE, an original anthology of elegant romantic fantasy, edited by Deborah J. Ross, appears on Valentine's Day...In the spirit of classic period swashbucklers, Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1494778246
• ISBN13: 9781494778248
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

quite a good collection with a few gems

I bought mostly this for the stories by Sherwood Smith, Madeleine E. Robins, and Tanith Lee, three favorite writers of mine, and unsurprisingly, those three stories were my favorites. I especially loved Smith's "Miss Austen's Castle Tour", in which Jane Austen meets Dracula, which I don't think many other writers could pull off to my satisfaction. A surprise standout was "Rent Girl", by Traci N. Castleberry (whom I've never heard of before), which is the story of cross-dressing Orossy, who feels more comfortable dressed as a girl but is trying to deny this in order to please his lover, Feisal, and Feisal's powerful father. It's a fascinating and sympathetic inquiry into gender roles, and I'll be looking for more by Castleberry. I generally liked the rest of the stories, with the one exception of the lead-off story, Rosemary Hawley Jarman's "More in Sorrow", which I thought was thinly characterized and very overwritten. Overall, I'd say that like the first anthology in this series, _Lace and Blade 2_ is a good, solid anthology and a good read if you like your fantasy with more than a touch of romance.