The August 2009 issue of Realms of Fantasy has been reviewed by Gardner Dozois in the October 2009 issue of Locus. I believe this is the first time Dozois has reviewed RoF since becoming a reviewer for Locus. Here is the review in its entirety:
"As one magazine dies (he is referring to Talebones here), another, already counted among the fallen and deeply mourned, returns to life, as new publisher Tir Na Nog Press, headed up Warren Lapine, brings out the first issue of their revivified Realms of Fantasy magazine, dated August 2009. The new incarnation of Realms of Fantasy is a whisker smaller than the previous version, and not quite as slickly produced, but it’s still a good-looking magazine, quite handsome in fact. More importantly, it’s still being edited by longtime editor Shawna McCarthy, who has edited the magazine since its very beginnings, which ought to guarantee a continuity of quality and literary tone and of types of story chosen – and so it seems to be, since there’s nothing here in the new incarnation that would have been shockingly out-of-place in any issue of the old Realms. Best story in the issue is Tanith Lee’s chilling "Our Lady in Scarlet," in which a young student magician trapped in a plague-ridden city and in a quarantined boarded-up inn must use off his fledgling skills to fight off a sinister deity taking shape across the hall who is trying to absorb him – with mixed success. Ian Creasey’s "Digging for Paradise" is also good, a story balanced between science fiction and fantasy, with a bit of the flavor of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, a powerful wizard travels to the far-future, to the final days of Earth, to recover magical talismans he buried ages before. Dennis Danver’s "Healing Benjamin" has an intriguing initial set-up, with a boy bringing his cat back from the dead, but goes off-track when the cat suddenly begins to talk, one complication too many."
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