It must be said at the outset that I really do not like sword-and-sorcery as a genre, and so it’s really unfair for me to even attempt to rate a book like this one, which is largely sword-and-sorcerery. Not all the stories are sword-and-sorcery, of course—"Black Heart and White Heart" by H. Rider Haggard (which I loathe anyway) is gun-and-sorcerery, for example. By and large, however, these stories come very close to that particular unmentionable form or are firmly within it. The one exception is Suzy McKee Charnas' "Unicorn Tapestry", which (and not coincidentally) is the one story in the anthology which I really liked.

And, of course, there’s nothing here by Asimov except the introduction. The result is a volume which I would give worlds never to have to read again, although I imagine that fans of the "high" variety of fantasy would probably enjoy it. I just can’t be the judge of that.