Some of these are better than others, ("The Bird Catcher" and "The Levantine Experiment" are the ones that stay with me as particularly good, though both are horror stories more than anything, which isn't usually my cup of tea,) though none stood out as really awful. A few were overly familiar, perhaps. The collection seems to lean more in the direction of , evocative atmosphere and character pieces than more plot/concept based stories, despite the nominal 'SF' in the title (I guess the S is for Speculative rather than Science.) The geographic spread I found to be largely background color - not to say that it wasn't interesting or appreciated - more than some glimpse into foreign cultures or traditions of writing. In that sense I think the collection represents to some extent how how globally unified genre writing actually is, (many of the stories were actually written in English) or possibly how far reaching and inclusive the dialog is, if you want to be charitable ;-)
