This collection made less of an impact for me than I expected, although I did flat out cry reading the first story. I’m not sure that these stories were objectively less exciting than those in the Oath anthology, but I think I’ve definitely been exposed to more (very well done) queer sff stories than queer superhero stories, so maybe that is why I was personally more excited by the superhero anthology. The stories were also decidedly less fluffy, and while the characters’ sexuality or gender was usually not the cause of their suffering they still often had a rough time of it in their sff setting. And there was a story with two-spirit characters that seemed to have taken inspiration from Indigenous traditions, but wasn’t own voices as far as I could tell, which felt like probably a miss to me. Overall a quick and predominantly enjoyable read, just didn’t live up to my high expectations to be completely swept away.

My favorites were Luminosity, a love story between two women, one an astronaut and the other with some kind of telekinetic powers used to power space flight; Duty and Honor, a story about a polyamorous relationship between three astronauts; and The Monster Queen, a textless story about a princess in a kingdom where monsters are hated and feared.