When I first heard about this anthology, I was super excited. While I’ve been able to find quite a few trans/non-binary books and authors, I’m always on the lookout for more, and this anthology seemed like the perfect way to find a bunch of new authors at once!

Unfortunately, this anthology didn’t entirely work for me. While there were definitely a few stand-out stories, the large majority didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I always run into this issue with anthologies, where I’ll find a few good stories, but also quite a few that don’t end up working for me. This one had less of a balance of usual, where there were more stories I felt myself not connecting with than ones I did connect with. I do still generally like the concept, though, and will undoubtedly be checking out the individual novels of some of the authors!

I think overall, there was just a bit too much going on. A lot of the stories required a lot of world-building to fully understand them, and while I normally love that, it doesn’t work so well in an anthology. When there are so many short stories that each rely on a lot of build-up in a row, it feels more like you’re jumping from world to world without ever fully getting the chance to dive in. It felt like most of my reading time was spent understanding whatever new world I was in, and not truly understanding the characters or story itself.

I also thought that for a book about ‘trans magic’, meant to be highlighting both non-binary and trans voices, it felt like the stories were largely about non-binary characters. Now, I’m non-binary myself, so I do love seeing this much representation, but it also felt like the anthology didn’t spend a lot of time on other trans identities. Now, I know one anthology isn’t going to be able to check all the boxes, but I feel like a different title or tagline might’ve made sense.

Overall, while I did generally enjoy this anthology and found some more authors to check out, it just didn’t entirely work for me as an individual book.