"Singing, Innocence & Experience" by Sonya Taaffe
"Tiny Bells" by Bruce Holland Rogers
"Stalking the Leopard" by Tanith Lee
"On Windhover Down" by Liz Williams
"Country Life" by Karen D. Fishler
"The Archer" by Ian Donald Keeling
"Charle the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely" by David D. Levine

The advice for the lovelorn issue of Realms of Fantasy opens with "Singing, Innocence & Experience," by Sonya Taaffe. Requiring the reader to turn the magazine sideways, this story is about a woman who has never been in a longterm relationship until she discovers a unicorn in her city. Taffe looks at her loneliness and the results. Unicorns occasionally appear in contemporary fantasy, but they do seem to be an overlooked entity and Taffe's unicorn is very atypical of the breed by any account.

Bruce Holland Rogers relates a story of neighborliness and tolerance and differences in "Tiny Bells." He focuses on a small village in an empire. Although the villagers in the next valley have strange practices, they are similar enough to the villagers he focuses on that there is no cause for strife between them, until an outside force focuses their attention on their differences instead of their similarities. In a short amount of space, Rogers manages to include a lot to think about.

"Stalking the Leopard," by Tanith Lee is an update of an ancient legend, set in a world in which nothing ever seems to change and beauty can be found almost everywhere. Into this setting comes change and a mysterious man who garbs Avly's attention when she sees him at the scene of an extremely rare accident. Lee follows Avly and Avly follows the stranger, her obsession with discovering his identity growing with every dead end. Le builds both tension and atmosphere throughout this tale until the result, stoic in its revelation, is attained.

Liz Williams presents an England which has a different religious agenda in "On Windhover Down." The story is presented in a very matter of fact manner which hides the true nature of the religion. While the situation is interesting and Williams includes a certain number of red herrings, the reader never really connects with any of the characters.

Restoration France is not a period which is often used in fiction, the last days of the monarch, the revolution, and the Napoleonic period being flashier, but Karen D. Fishler's "Country Life" puts the fin de siècle feel of the period to good use in her story of a royal tax collector on a mission to a distant and recalcitrant village. Although the reader thinks he knows what is happening, Fishler provides the right number of twists in the plot so the ending comes as a welcome surprise.

Ian Donald Keeling provides a look at ancient mythology in the modern world in "The Archer," and entry in the lovelorn issue. Denise Legamos is a woman who has never drawn the attention of men for no reason she or her friends can understand. Her loneliness is almost tangible as man after man rejects her. Eventually a chance encounter bring her some satisfaction. From that point on, much of the story is telegraphed, although not entirely. Furthermore, Keeling handles his subject and characters well, giving the reader a focus about which to care.

"The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" in the late 50s and early 60s included a cast of characters and a narrator who were very much aware of their presence in a cartoon. David D. Levine creates comic book character Charles the Purple Giraffe in "Charles the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely" and allows him the same type of self-awareness. Unlike Bullwinkle, however, Charles is the only one in his world aware of the reader, with a resulting existential crisis. Although the story would appear to have humor, it really doesn't beyond the humor of the absurd. Given the plays of Samuel Beckett, perhaps the humor of the absurd is the only kind of humor which can really encapsulate existential quandaries.