The World Aparts anthologies have become a tradition I look forward to every year (even if I don’t always review them as soon as they’re released). I look forward to what the authors I’ve been following for three years now will offer this time, and to discovering new authors. This year’s edition does include stories by authors who are new to me as well as Rosiee Thor and Seanan McGuire. This time, the setting is mountains, heights, skies—in previous years we got ground in Distant Gardens and water in Farther Reefs, which I also—obviously—recommend.

As I already wrote when I reviewed the previous Worlds Apart books, what I like most is going from one world to another. Such short stories don’t have the luxury of devoting too many pages to worldbuilding and yet most of them manage to sweep the reader right up into their own reality. I don’t need hundreds of pages of details, it’s usually the atmosphere that guides me towards imagining the surroundings. I feel, rather than see, and I love not knowing everything, I love the mystery, the uncertainty, the need to overcome the disorientation. A real change of scenes, and here, I got eleven of them, each with its own universe and atmosphere.

I enjoyed all the stories, my favourites being Into the Churn by N.L. Bates, Mountain Streams by L.R. Gould, and Featherton’s Claw by Sara Codair.

Read Lofty Mountains: Eleven Stories of Cloudy Peaks, Airship Adventure, and Sapphic Experiences:

Bookshop.org

amazon

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