Masked and Swords & Dark Magic Love

A second review for Swords & Dark Magic has popped up in Locus magazine (July 2010 issue), this one by  Rich Horton.  He  calls the book, "a collection devoted to the 'New  Swords and Sorcery,' which is to say, more or less, the old Swords and Sorcery  with extra cynicism. Granting  of course that cynicism was hardly absent from  Sword and Sorcery, this book  does seem more of our time. And it’s solid from beginning to end." Getting particular attention is Gene Wolfe's "Bloodsport," which Horton calls "quite powerful."

Meanwhile, io9 has called Masked out in a post on the "coolest new books of July." They say, "The conventions of the golden age are really the focus here, but that's not to say the contributions are flat or old-fashioned. Stephen Baxter approaches the genre with hard science, while Marjorie M. Liu plays with cliche to entertaining effect. Come prepared for self-awareness and metafictional flourishes."