We start with an icky poem by Jane Yolen; then a groanworthy Mercedes Lackey story "The Cup and the Cauldron" -- it stars girls and yes, has more Christian-pagan stuff if you're as sick of that as I am; an incoherent Andre Norton story "That Which Overfloweth"; Marion Zimmer Bradley's equally groanworthy feminist-Goddess-server "Chalice of Tears." We hit something far better in Diana L. Paxson's "Feast of the Fisher King," which is both well-written and entertaining, as well as being in play format; also Brad Strickland's enjoyable elf-fantasy-Arthurian story "Gift of Gilthiliad."

Then it's back into "groan" territory with Ilona Ouspenskaya's gypsy tale "Curse of the Romany," where you wonder what-the-heck-does-this-have-to-do-with-it? James S. Dorr's "Dagda" is pretty; Gene Wolfe's odd "Sailor who Sailed After the Sun" is another where you wonder what the relevance is; Lee Hoffman's indifferently-written western-fantasy "Water" takes a long time to get to the point, as does Alan Dean Foster's "What You See..." and Richard Gilliam's "Storyville, Tennessee" and Jeremiah Phipps' "Hell-Bent for Leather" (are you seeing a pattern of irrelevance here?)

Lisa Lepovetsky pens another icky poem; Orson Scott Card's "Atlantis" stretches indefinitely; Dean Wesley Smith's "Invisible Bars" is pretty amusing; Janny Wurts bores and annoys with "That Way Lies Camelot"; Kristine Katherine Rusch's "Hitchhiking across an Ancient Sea" is a pale, pale short story; Lawrence Watt-Evans's story has a good idea, but is poorly written; Lionel Fenn's "The Awful Truth in Arthur's Barrow" is just plain bizarre, as is Brian M. Thompson's "Reunion." Margo Skinner redeems the poetry angle with "Quest Now"; Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry" is enchanting; Bruce D. Arthurs is weird again in "Falling to the Edge of the End of the World", same with Rick Wilber's "Greggie's Cup."

As you can see, this mixed bag tends toward the dull, irrelevant, pretentious and just poorly written. Half the stories seem to have the Grail thrown in (if it's there at all) just as an afterthought. Except for Margo Skinner's poem, the poetry all stinks; only a few of the stories retain the beauty and prose that one espects to see in an Arthurian story. When I buy a book classified as Arthurian fiction, I WANT Arthurian fiction; I do not want stories about pregnant gypsies, fantasy westerns, or genies.