Original place of publication: Katherine Dacey describes "Bianca" as a "lovely, unabashedly Romantic story" and as "a meditation on artistic inspiration".

[8] Lissa Pattillo describes the anthology as "a mature collection of stories that aims to provoke thought and feeling and succeeds endearingly".

[10] Joe McCulloch feels that the title story is "more interested in evoking sensations of exquisite heartache and romantic frustration than delineating psychological realism or building suspense".

[11] Nicole Rudick feels that "The theme of spiritual crisis runs throughout Hagio's stories—from the mundane ('Angel') to the surreal ('Hanshin: Half-God') to the phantasmagoric ('A Drunken Dream')".

[13] Noah Berlatsky disliked the first four stories,[14] suggesting that Hagio's characterisations are poor, and that a fantasy or science fiction setting can help to distract from this.