"Worshipping Small Gods" by Richard Parks
"Kristen with Caprice" by Alan Smale
"Does He Take Blood?" by Karen Traviss
"The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill" by Sandra McDonald
"Down with the Lizards and the Bees" by Tim Pratt
"The Briscian Saint" by Kage Baker
"Seamstress" by Sarah Prineas
"Turnings" by Laura Anne Gilman

Richard Parks examines the idea of religion in "Worshipping Small Gods." Not quite what the title sounds like, this is a tale of having faith and using that faith to allow a person to find what they are looking for wherever they look. In this case, a nameless Buddhist Saint tries to carry out a mission from the Buddha Shaka which impinges on the life of a minor mountain god, Makoto. Although at first it appears to be the story of two intransigent personalities, it becomes clear that Parks is doing something with more meaning at the end of the story.

Alan Smale details the aftermath of a divorce in "Kristin with Caprice," in which Paul visits his ex in order to pick up the things he has left behind. Kristin has successfully gotten over Paul, although as he returns to retrieve boxes from her house, it becomes clear that there is something strange about her manner of dealing with the divorce. Although the story contains interesting elements, it doesn't entirely work, mostly because Smale only hints at the mechanism behind the tale.

British author Tom Holt has often used the idea of a nursing home for the gods as a point of humor. Karen Traviss adopts the same idea in "Does He Take Blood?;" however her take is more serious than Holt's as she looks at the early days in a nursing home for Ba'al Teekan Makak. Traviss uses the unique situation she has set up to examine the question of dignity in life and by using non-humans to tell her story, she allows the reader to approach the question without all the emotional baggage normally attached to the issue.

Sandra McDonald explores the self-perpetuating concepts of gender roles in "The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill," about a haunted area of town which is self-segregated into girls' and boys' groups. The simple division is threatened with the appearance of Matthew, a boy who insists he should be a girl. McDonald does a good job in looking at how children perceive gender segregation and perpetuate it, even when they don't mean to.

Tim Pratt's "Down with the Lizards and the Bees" is one of the strongest stories in this issue of Realms of Fantasy, a reworking of the story of Orpheus in the underworld, this time with two travelers going to retrieve their lost loves. B, the protagonist and narrator, is looking for his lover, lost six years earlier to drugs, while Jay is looking for his girlfriend who died following a bee sting. The story is told in a matter of fact manner which shouldn't work, but does, as Jay and B both face choices once they arrive in the underworld.

Kage Baker tells the story of three mercenaries in "The Briscian Saint." The first, Mallet, only believes in what he can see, the second, Spoke, believes in the supernatural, and the third, Smith, is open to the possibilities each man espouses. The story is a well balanced look at the forces which made the modern world, with Smith functioning as the meeting place of rationality and belief.

"Seamstress" is an alternative take on fairy tales by Sarah Prineas. Rather than focusing on the protagonist of the fairy tales, Prineas examines the sweat shop existence of those who are forced to make the props needed by fairy godmothers to fulfill the fantasies of the downtrodden, always neglecting those who are downtrodden in their own backyard. The story is well told and makes the reader think about fairy tales in a different way, while also being an allegory for the sweat shops which still flourish in so many Third World countries to support the way of living in the West.

Laura Anne Gilman provides an interesting look at life in "Turnings." During most of civilization, life was a series of repeated days; from birth to death nothing changed on the macrolevel. In "Turnings" Gilman successfully presents the cyclic traditions of such a society. However, while nothing major changes, on the personal level enormous changes could take place in the twinkling of an eye, and it is these changes, set against the unchanging society, that "Turnings" successfully examines.