REVIEW: “A Sky Without Smoke” by Jocelyn Koehler

Review of Jocelyn Koehler, “A Sky Without Smoke,” Luna Station Quarterly 20 (2014): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Steven and his brother Kevin live in Williamsburg, not far from the spaceport that sends regular rockets to Mars with all the luxuries that could only be obtained on earth. This story traces two days in their lives, and it is a beautiful mixture of the mundane — daily life, brotherhood, rivalries — and the momentous — when their life shifts and nothing is as it was before.

Really enjoyable!

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REVIEW: “The Social Phobic’s Guide to Interior Design” by Sarah Grey

Review of Sarah Grey, “The Social Phobic’s Guide to Interior Design,” Flash Fiction Online 103 (April 2022): 26-28 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Grey captures exceedingly well the experience of being out in public, terrified of anyone noticing you or asking you a question. And it took me all the way until the end of the story to realise there is not a speculative drop in it.

(First published in Flash Fiction Online 2013).

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REVIEW: “A Midsummer Night’s Abduction” by Jennie Evenson

Review of Jennie Evenson, “A Midsummer Night’s Abduction,” Flash Fiction Online 103 (April 2022): 22-25 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The aliens have arrived, and they’ve captured Shakespeare — they need him to write a new play to convince their homeworlds to cease their war. So who do they turn to when Shakespeare is recalcitrant? An adjunct university lecturer, who researches Shakespeare, of course.

This was a rollicking fun story, full of humor, which I enjoyed a lot.

(First published in Every Day Fiction 2018).

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REVIEW: “On the Anniversary of Your Passing” by Thomas K. Carpenter

Review of Thomas K. Carpenter, “On the Anniversary of Your Passing,” Flash Fiction Online 103 (April 2022): 17-20 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I won’t give away too much of the story if I quibble with its title: Instead of “anniversary”, it should be “anniversaries“. This not-quite-a-time-travel story hinted at complexities that are never quite explained, but the ending is satisfying enough that I didn’t really care about the unanswered questions I had.

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REVIEW: “The Annual Conference of the Ladies in White” by Stephanie Feldman

Review of Stephanie Feldman, “The Annual Conference of the ladies in White,” Flash Fiction Online 103 (April 2022): 8-11 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Once a year all the Ladies in White from across history gather for their annual conference — this year, in a hotel “like an antique wedding cake preserved by moonlight” (p. 8), as only befits such a gothic gathering — except this year they aren’t the only people at their hotel. Chance has brought the narrator, herself a woman spurned, to the same hotel, and for a night she is adopted into their company. But she’s not ready, not yet, to become a lady in white herself. This is quite a hopefully, uplifting story for such a ghostly premise.

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