Okay, I'm going to preface this review with a couple of things:
1. I love about half of the authors represented in this book.
2. I write erotic fiction.

That said, I found very little actual eroticism in this book which, quite frankly, makes me very sad. There was (in my opinion) a lot of beautifully crafted prose but most of the stories left me wanting way more than I was given. In most cases the sexual and erotic references are vague or – and I’m a very open minded (kinky) person – are so completely out there that I could not even figure out what parts of the story the writer found sexually intriguing and for me that’s a big chunk of what was missing in this book. It consistently seemed to me that the writers, with few exceptions, didn’t actually have any real interest in what they were writing. There was certainly a lot of possibility for good erotic literature but none of it was carried through to its fullest potential.

Okay, I could ramble on about it for a while if I let myself so—

Good things: Most of the stories are well crafted. The addition of some very notable authors (Anne Rice, Clive Barker etc.) certainly helps on that front. There’s also a lot of variation which means that there’s bound to be at least one thing that any given erotica reader will find, at the very least, interesting.

Not so good things: Despite the variations in content, there’s not a whole lot of variation on length. Most of the stories are long-ish; about 20 pages on average. Again there are exceptions to this (a 5 or 8 page story here and there) but with the general lack of erotic content this can be very, very frustrating. Short stories need to grab your attention immediately and most of these don’t. You have to read a few pages sometimes.

All in all it is a book that I appreciate having on my shelf but it’s mostly a language reference for me at this point instead of something that my partner and I would take to bed and have fun with.

This book is still just kind of "meh" for me. There really isn't a whole lot more I could say about it that isn't in my original review.