The first story, The Way of the Maps, by Costi Gurgu, it’s also the reader’s introduction into Radharc’s mysteries. Under the pretext of a journalistic investigation meant to find the Petre Bucur’s maps of Radharc, the three journalists make several trips in Radharc, following the standard procedure, entering through Petrator, where St. Peter admits the worthy. Being about the search for Petre Bucur (mysteriously dissapeared) and his maps, the story is a policier, treated in the relaxed-friendly-humor kind, a la Raymond Chandler.
Costi Gurgu’s Bucuresti is one of the waters, the wide avenues turned to rivers, there also being a sea at the end of Lipscani. Spy fishes float through air, the Royal Court is repainted, thriving with life, the place where are the gates of passage from one world to the another—all this written with a great care for detail. A very, very good story; a new world, functional, real characters, their realionships, adventures. Beautiful writing. Perfect to open the anthology.
The Cultural Observer, Radharc by Michael Haulica, 2006