REVIEW: “A Fine Balance” by Charlotte Ashley

Review of Charlotte Ashley, “A Fine Balance”, Podcastle: 517 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

In an early-modern secondary world setting that gave me an Ottoman Empire feel, the social and political balance between two ethnic groups is maintained in part by an elaborate system of ritual dueling and economic forfeiture. But the power differentials that underlie the superficially “fair” system come to a head when one side is willing to cheat to claim permanent advantage. The story is told from the point of view of an apprentice duelist who witnesses and participates in the crucial confrontations.

I really enjoyed the worldbuilding in this story and how the listener’s understanding of the social conflicts and function of the dueling rituals builds gradually to support the main conflict. The one flaw for me was that the play-by-play of some of the duels themselves got tedious, but I know this is a feature that people with more direct familiarity with martial arts may instead find a plus.

I particularly enjoyed how women were given pride of place in the narrative without needing to erase the underlying patriarchal nature of the cultural setting.

Originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction

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REVIEW: 10th Anniversary Special by multiple authors

Review of multiple authors, 10th Anniversary Special, Podcastle: 516 — Listen Online . Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

To celebrate their 10th anniversary of publication, Podcastle ran a poll to choose people’s five favorite episodes and then re-broadcast them. I won’t be doing individual reviews of these stories, but you might want to check out why people chose these from the entire set of 500+ options:

516a: “Without Faith, WIthout Law, Without Joy” by Saladin Ahmed – A retelling of an Arthurian tale from the point of view of one of the many Saracen characters from the greater Arthurian mythos.

516b: “In the Stacks” by Scott Lynch – When graduate school involves a self-aware magical library, returning a book to the stacks is no trivial task. (full cast narration)

516c: “Saints, Sinners, Dragons, and Haints in the City beneath the Still Waters” by N.K. Jemisin – Dangerous things lurk in the flood waters left by Hurricane Katrina. This was re-aired fairly recently and I reviewed it here.

516d: “Makeisha in Time” by Rachael K. Jones – A woman who involuntarily slips back and forth through time turns her fate into a struggle and triumph for women throughout the ages. There’s a reason this story has been regularly celebrated and praised since it first came out.

516e: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu – Everyday magic and the difficult journey of the son of a “mail-order bride” to properly appreciate his mother’s love and sacrifice.

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REVIEW: “The Sharp Edges of Anger” by Jamie Lackey

Review of Jamie Lackey, “The Sharp Edges of Anger”, Apex Magazine 107 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

In a world in which anger is a physical substance that can be pulled out of the body, women are expected to relinquish theirs whenever it bubbles up, to swallow it down or squash it. Rose refuses to do that. Obviously, there are consequences, both for her and her loved ones.

The structure of this story really works, touching on Rose’s life between the ages of 10 and 29. It’s hard to cover that much time in a short story, but Lackey manages it well. By letting the story span almost two whole decades, we get a comprehensive look at how Rose’s life plays out, rather than focusing on just one incident. This is necessary in order to tell the story that needs to be told.

The poignant depiction of how removing anger can also remove agency moved me, and the ending, though difficult to read, felt real and inevitable. Highly recommended for anyone (of any gender) whose anger has been silenced.

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REVIEW: “She Still Loves The Dragon” by Elizabeth Bear

Review of Elizabeth Bear’s, “She Still Loves The Dragon”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 20 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

“She Still Loves The Dragon” works deliciously well as a metaphor for the pleasures and pains of being open to love. A knight-errant heads up a mountain to face her final challenge; a dragon. As the knight travels, the story illustrates the importance of healing old hurts when embarking on a new relationship:

The knight-errant who came seeking you prepared so carefully. She made herself whole for you…

She found the old wounds of her earlier errantry and of her past errors, and the other ones that had been inflicted through no fault of her own.

At the top of the mountain, the knight-errant finds a complex creature who she comes to love, and who loves her in its turn, but who always has the power to hurt the knight. By using fantasy to place the knight-errant in an unbalanced romantic relationship, the story underlines the important role trust & vulnerability play in making a relationship work. Unfortunately, when the dragon become bored, it sets the knight-errant on fire to see what will happen; illuminating the dangers inherent in laying yourself open to love.

The knight-errant keeps the fire stoked with her own anger because she is afraid of how she’ll be changed when she stops burning. When she eventually lets the fire die down she finds ‘The scars are armor. Better armor than the skin before. Not so good as the flames, but they will keep her safe as she heals.’ The scars are a defence mechanism, but she is also ‘stiff and imprisoned in her own hide.’ The heroine is in the middle of a healing process after a betrayal; not necessarily wishing to leave the dragon who broke her. It’s important to note that while Elizabeth Bear’s story works well as a metaphor, the dragon is not a stand in for an abusive lover. It is clearly a supernatural force that operates by different, inhuman standards, and the knight-errant is free to leave when she is finally able to do so.

Eventually, the knight-errant scratches off her scars, and finds she has become ‘the thing I am. I am the space I take up in the world.’ or as the dragon says ‘what you made of yourself this time was not for anyone but you.’ The knight is reborn into someone more ‘tempered’; more experienced, open, and ‘complete’ in herself. Bear has crafted a story that calls out to be examined from all different sides, and is full of artistry to be enjoyed as the reader travels through this story of identity, love, and bravery. I would be interested to know however whether readers think this story strays a little too close to imagining a magically healed disability as it evokes its story of emotional healing.

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REVIEW: “The Oval Portrait” by Edgar Allen Poe

Review of Edgar Allen Poe, “The Oval Portrait”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 127-130 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story is one of the reasons I was so excited to review this anthology — for despite having been an English lit major many many years ago, the only Poe I’ve ever read is “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” (if you can call listening to the Crüxshadows’ version of it “reading”).

Poe’s tale of an oval vignette portrait of a young woman is gothic in the extreme — an injured hero, a forced entry into an abandoned building, old and gloomy and grand, references to Mrs. Radcliffe — and it was a little bit weird to read a story that wasn’t so much aping or mimicing or paying homage to these literary structures as being a part of what the homage is paid to in the first place.

Two other things struck me about the story: I love Poe’s use of hyphens, his punctuation style is very much after my own heart; and on p. 129 there were a few things where I wasn’t sure if they were errors in language or intentional. When Poe’s narrator reads a description of the portrait in a small volume he has found upon his bedpillow, the same sentence describing the woman is repeated. A few sentences later, the unusual spelling “pourtray” (for “portray”) is found — not implausible for the mid-19th century, but it’s the only atypical spelling in the story. I could look past both of these as being quirks of Poe’s writing, but then a few sentences later there is a genuine typo, (“be” for “he”), which served to make me unsure about the legitimacy of the two earlier issues. It’s unfortunate: For it then made me question the reliability of this edition of the story.

There is a note at the end of the story indicating that this is a shortened version of a longer story originally published in 1842; this shortened version was revised to remove “the suggestion of a drug-induced hallucination” (p. 130). Given that, and my uncertainty about the story as it is published in this 2018 edition, if nothing else I have now been stirred to go find the original 1842 edition and read that!

(Originally published in Broadway Journal, 1845.)

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REVIEW: “The Stories We Tell to Sleep At Night” by Anna Yeatts

Review of Anna Yeatts, “The Stories We Tell to Sleep At Night”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 199-211 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: Contains oblique references to sexual assault.

John Clive Owens has been offered the chance of a journalist’s lifetime. The divorce of Frank and Cecile Cooper is “as high-profile as they come in Atlanta’s social circle” (p. 199) — not just because of the divorce but because two years into litigation, Cecile disappeared. So when Owens gets a letter purporting to be from her, ready to tell her story, he cannot say no.

He cannot say no when he arrives in the middle of nowhere and Cecile takes away all his tech, his cell phone, even his glasses.

She knows too much. Against Owens, that knowledge is her power over him; but against her ex-husband, no knowledge would be enough to free her from his power. The story she relates is a horrible one of deceit, manipulation, assault, gaslighting, and outright lies — a story all the more horrible because every woman reading Cecile recount her experience either has or knows someone who has had similar experiences.

But Cecile’s story is not the one that Owens needs to tell…

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REVIEW: “The Inheritance” by Bethann Ferrero

Review of Bethann Ferrero, “The Inheritance”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 267-274 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

When Glen inherits a house from his reclusive uncle Butch, and finds a rat-infested abandoned wreck left to moulder, it’s clear that we’re in for a classic horror story. There’s really no other way things can go than badly.

I’m not a huge fan or horror, and this story is certainly not one I’d ordinarily enjoy. Nevertheless — like fine Scotch that is well-made but not to my taste — I could appreciate how well Ferrero took all the typical elements of a horror story and wove them together into something where nothing is new or unexpected, and yet the story is still overwhelmingly successful in what it sets out to do. If you like horror — or prefer your Scotch aged in port to bring out the sweetness — you’ll like this story.

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REVIEW: “The Lost” by Doug Engstrom

Review of Doug Engstrom, “The Lost”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 229-238 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is one of the shorter stories in the collection, which is a plus in my book because it’s also 1st-person-present-tense — a combination I find tougher than some to read. Wait — that makes it sound like I’m saying “thank goodness it was short because then I was put out of my misery sooner”, which isn’t at all what I meant. Rather, that when this combination works for me, it tends to work best in shorter rather than longer pieces.

Another reason that makes the POV and tense work here for me is the way in which this otherwise solidly SF story adapts frameworks from fairy tales. In fairy tales, one rarely gets characters, only caricatures. The Beautiful Younger Daughter, the Clever Youngest Son, the Wicked Stepmother, all defined by their labels. In Engstrom’s story, the characters too are identified with their labels, but the labels become names: Engineer, Captain, Ship, Pilot, no definite article, defining their roles and defined by them.

No one is more so defined than Agent, who is the only one of the crew who has “allowed the imperative of privacy to be connected to taboo…stood in the Hall at the Agent’s Academy and seen the shrine dedicated to the Agents who died rather than violate the integrity of the mail” (p. 237). Agent chose this life, chose to allow himself to be defined as Agent, and through his choice this label contains untold power — and an untellable choice.

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REVIEW: “Strange Waters” by Samantha Mills

Review of Samantha Mills, “Strange Waters”, Strange Horizons 2 Apr. 2018: Read online. Reviewed by Danielle Maurer.

Every now and then, you find a story that resonates with you on a deep level. “Strange Waters” is that story for me.

“Strange Waters” follows Mika, a fisherwoman from Maelstrom, a place where time flows in the waters off the coast and can transport ships backward and forward through history. Mika is lost in time, desperately sailing the waters to get back to her children, refusing to read anything of the years around her old life so she never loses hope.

The worldbuilding in “Strange Waters” is breathtaking. It’s hard to cram so much into so few words, but Mills gives us a fantastic universe in miniature: Maelstrom and all its variable history, influenced as it is by the knowledge of fisherwomen as they travel. There are tantalizing little drops, like the queen in the early 300s and the oligarchy that forms in the 900s. The worldbuilding even extends to the strange fauna that swim the seas, which Mika harvests for her livelihood as she fights to get back.

Mika herself is empathetic and easy to root for. At its core, the story is about a mother’s love and the lengths she’ll go to for that love, in her determination. So far, in fact, that she becomes one of the most famous fisherwomen, her name recorded numerous times in the history book of Maelstrom. And while she doesn’t get exactly what she wants in the end, it’s enough to satisfy her–and us, the reader.

This one grabbed hold of me early and didn’t let go. I highly recommend it.

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REVIEW: “Fishing Village of the Damned” by George R. Galuschak

Review of George R. Galuschak, “Fishing Village of the Damned”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 251-266 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching SFF TV from the 90s on, it’s that things never go well for the Chosen One — and it doesn’t go any better for Astraea in this story, on assignment with Fred the Burning Skeleton, Sadako the evil spirit, and Dave. It’s supposed to be a charity mission, rescue the provincial Spanish fishing village from Big-Dick Howie, but Astraea — none of them — expected to find a village that didn’t want to be rescued.

This was a light comedy of errors, quick to read and amusing.

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