Erotic Fantastic: The Best of Circlet Press 1992-2002

It's hard to find a good erotic anthology with "mixed" couples: in this book, there are m/f (hetero), m/m (gay), f/f(lesbian) and just plain unclear-gender-bending stories. In total, 23 stories here, for about 340 pages of text. The book also includes a good mix-in of quite well-written BDSM stories, that also come in different "flavors". In short, this is truly good and on average quite well-written "pansexual" erotica, aimed at open-minded readers who do not care about particular "gender", and care more about passion and erotic elements. If you typically prefer only one type of "flavor", then I'd advise looking elsewhere. Also, a number of stories may be too "weird" (it's "erotic fantastic", so fantasy or sci-fi is often an element..) or disturbing to some readers. This book is so diverse, all stories with some sort of plot or message, I'd not classify it a "porn", even of a soft variety (after all, I initially borrowed it from a public library... I liked it enough I purchased my own copy). I personally prefer to read BDSM m/m stories most, and my favorite in this book is a short story by Lauren P. Burka (The Specialist). I liked this author that much (as well as a few other authors from this book, such as Raven Kaldera) that I searched for any other published work by them. "The Specialist" is a very well-written sci-fi, with exciting, realistic and very memorable BDSM scenes. Of course, the anthology also includes some stories that I didn't like, but pretty much any anthology would. But the stories I was either OK about or liked outweigh those I skipped. A few stories are indeed somewhat disturbing, and as the previous review noted, "For the Mortals Among Us" is among them. But a good thing about an anthology is that any given story is quite short, and this particular story took only about 15-20 pages (which I just skipped). All in all, it's a good purchase if you like anthologies with short stories featuring diverse erotica, in all flavors, especially with most of them having fantasy or sci-fi settings.