Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

I'm just going to put it out there. Every time I come across an anthology that I really like, it turns out to be edited by Ellen Datlow. She is incapable of putting her stamp on a lousy book. Yes, there was a co-editor on this book, but I give Ellen most of the credit. She has edited over 100 books of various genres and many dozens of authors and she knows what she's doing. You may not now what an editor does, but they have an enormous impact on the stories selected and the quality of their writing. I bow to Ellen Datlow.

Most erotica is rather sloppily written, on the theory that the people who are interested in it are not, in fact, interested in literary value, but in sexual arousal; the authors and editors of this book understand, delightfully, that there are those of us out here who enjoy an arousing story who are sufficiently literate as to be completely distracted from our arousal by poor writing, and they have written a wonderful anthology of extremely arousing stories with plot, characterization, and coherent language. If that's what you want, this is the book for you!

Definitely a worthwhile book to read if you enjoy both SF/fantasy and erotica. I thought the stories were well written and posed some interesting scenarios. I think the editors did an excellent job putting together this collection of sexy stories. My favorite story was "The Eye of the Storm" by Kelley Eskridge and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future. In many ways I felt that this was the most original story in the book and I find myself going back to reread it often.

I stumbled across this book by chance, and I'm SO glady I did. It's extraordinary, sensual, and a completely wonderful read from start to finish. There's not a bad story in the book, and all of them are of the highest literary quality -- so much so that it's a shame this was published as "fantasy" and may not reach a wider mainstream audience. Whether you love fine literary fantasy or fine mainstream literature of an Angela Carter or Joyce Carol Oates calibre (Oates actually has a great new tale in the book), I can't recommend this one highly enough.

This is a gorgeous--magical--erotic--highly literary collection -- as one would expect from Ms. Datlow and Ms. Windling. I've never read anything like it before -- and I ended the book wanting more (I hope there's a sequel). The fascinating introduction by Terri Windling about eroticism and mythology is worth the price of the book alone -- but add stories by Ellen Kushner, Joyce Carol Oates and other luminaries and this becomes a book to treasure. I was almost put off by the cover --for some strange reason there are dead-looking women on the cover and I thought this was yet another sex-and-blood horror collection-- but when I saw the names of the editors I knew I was in good hands. Some of the stories are dark, but not so dark as Horror fiction, more like Angela Carter's dark fantasy. And other stories are as bright as day -- like Delia Sherman's scrumptiously bawdy Elizabethan fairy tale for instance. So ignore the cover -- or paste a romantically sexy picture of your own over it -- and enjoy this wonderful WONDERFUL book! Datlow and Windling have done it again.