Lace and Blade 2

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.