When I was younger I had a lot of imaginary friends. In Kindergarten I imagined that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (plus April) were my friends on the playground, calling me for help whenever they were in the area. Then it became the Ghost Busters and later when we moved to a new town I imagined that I had a girl friend named Jacie. My younger sister, for years upon years, had an imaginary friend named Maria--we still tease her about Maria because she insists she was real. I think its a normal childhood thing to have an imaginary friend, just like talking to your dolls or pretending to play War with your friends.

Of the 13 stories in this volume I think I only really enjoyed 3 of them: 'A Good Day for Dragons' by Rick Hautala, 'Stands a God Within the Shadows' by Anne Bishop and 'Walking Shadows' by Juliet E. McKenna. Hautala's, though I guessed the twist fairly quickly, was just a cute story. Dragons, Pirates and choices when growing up--what's not to love? Bishop's is, as I've come to expect from her fiction, twisty and dark with small rays of sunshine poking out. I was genuinely surprised at who the imaginary friend turned out to be and the end, while sad, is speaks highly of the main character.

McKenna's was another sad story of choices when growing up that I would have enjoyed so much more if there hadn't been a niggling editorial lapse. In first 2/3rds of the story a character's name is Rasun--he's never actually seen, only spoken of by various characters as a 'lesson learned move on' sort of thing, but still he's important at the end. So I couldn't understand why, in the last third, his name suddenly becomes 'Rusan'. Not just once, which I tend to overlook, but at least four different times! It ruined the story for me a bit because I had to consciously remember who that was supposed to be. As for the story itself--the twist at the end is intriguing and I wouldn't mind reading more in that universe.

The rest of the stories fell rather flat for me, or just bored me. There's really no other way to explain it. Marco has an introduction that made me excited--he explains that for a college paper he was going to academically discuss Imaginary Friends influence, but couldn't find enough academic material to draw from (apparently no one does studies of this nature?). Years later the idea kept niggling at him until he finally decided to call upon fantasy writers to explore the idea and the ramifications. Some of the authors I think took it a lot looser than he meant while others I think didn't grasp why imaginary friends are important.

I would say to read this if you happen upon it at the library or a friend lends it to you, I'm not entirely certain its worth its cover price. ( )

This was a fairly good selection of short stories with an interesting theme to tie them all together. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book for me was seeing how each author put a different spin on the imaginary friends idea and made it his/her own. Some stories contain the traditional idea of an imaginary friend, some twist it totally around, while still others go on an entirely different track altogether. Stories that stood out the most for me were: A Good Day for Dragons by Rick Hautala, Best Friends Forever by Tim Waggoner, and The Big Exit by Bill Fawcett. Overall, the stories included in this collection are decent, but it's not as strong as "Army of the Fantastic" also edited by John Marco (who I might add also writes a very strong introduction in this book explaining the idea behind the theme of the book.) ( )

I liked some of these stories a lot and thought some of them were just ok; I didn't actively dislike any of them. The writing is consistantly good through all the stories and authors. The unique takes on the idea of the imaginary friend was, for the most part, fascinating. I don't remember ever having an imaginary friend when I was young; it may be that a person who does will see this book in a different way, although very few of the stories have what one traditionally thinks of as a child's imaginary playmate. ( )

Most short story collections are mix of good and bad, but this one was 40% mediocre and 50% just terrible writing. The last 10% was the idea of the collection itself and the one story I enjoyed. Which wasn't about imaginary friends at all. ( )

I really only liked Anne Bishop's story in this anthology, "Stands a God Within the Shadows." I thought Bishop's story was both a very interesting take on the what-constitutes-imaginary? theme, which pretty much threads the entire anthology, and a very clever reimagining on more familiar story tropes. Four stars for that story.

A couple other stories were cute, but they weren't great: maybe three stars for these. I enjoyed Jean Rabe's "Neither," but, as the story followed closely after Rick Hautala's "A Good Day for Dragons" and both stories had the same twist ending, "Neither" fell a little flat (which is a pity, as I thought Rabe wrote a better take on the twist and should therefore have been placed before Hautala's story within the anthology). I also found Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Say Hello to My Little Friend" kind of fun, but Rusch's protagonist was pretty one-note and the story itself didn't really go anywhere. (For a much better and far more interesting take on a bartender tale, track down Tanya Huff's "I Knew a Guy Once." It's in both the anthology Space Inc. and Huff's story collection Finding Magic.)

None of the other ten stories held my interest and generally failed to attract it. Two stars for the overall anthology. ( )