I appreciated the opportunity to tackle a collection where every story and fourteen of the authors were brand new to me. Having said that, overall this left me somewhat disappointed. It felt like a hodge-podge of moderately effective light diversions mixed in with a handful of more ambitious stories that in the end didn't particularly work for me. My favorites were "The Faithful" by Kage Baker (a delicious gimmick story), "Nine-fingered Maria" by Hilary Moon Murphy (a nostalgic "magic comes at a price" story), and "Nucleon" by David D. Levine (a quasi-pastoral curiosity shop tale). ( )