A great anthology of short stories combining horror with erotica and trans identity. While some stories definitely dive deeper into the field of horror and others lean more towards erotica, most are quite good at striking an intriguing balance between the two.
There are quite a lot of things I really, really enjoyed about this anthology, besides my favorite short stories of course. I really like that this anthology features a variety of trans identities, trans women, trans men and nonbinary, as well as a variety of transitional stages, genital configurations and character’s feelings about their bodies. In particular I enjoyed that there is a story featuring a trans man, who had gotten surgical phalloplasty, something I still rarely see in trans erotica, especially queer trans erotica, despite reading quite a lot of it. I also enjoy the wide variety of horror subgenres featured here, from witchy rituals, swamp gods, southern gothic, zombies, sentient penises and more there’s something here for everybody.
My favorite stories were Transymbiosis, The Light Behind the Black Chrysalis, The Angel out of Space, Margaret, Juice, How to Cheat: For Dummies, The Creature and Born from Earth.
All in all, this is certainly an anthology I’m very glad to have read and I’m especially excited that I have found some new authors to check out!
I also have uploaded a more in depth review where I talk about the short stories as well as cws and the included representation on storygraph here.