Review of Marisca Pichette, “How to Safely Store Your Dragons,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 21-23 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The “tl;dr” of this story is: Dragons are flammable buggers, don’t forget it; but the story itself is so much more than this, it’s cute, fluffy fun, something that you can read and feel happier about life afterwards.
Review of Stewart C. Baker, “Five Books from the Alnif Crater Traveling Library,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a series of vignettes (which nevertheless held together well enough to constitute a proper story) about life on Mars.
As much as I enjoyed the story, it did feel a bit of a strange choice coming, as it did, immediately after Rachael K. Jone’s “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention”. Both are structurally similar and use a conceit which I think works better in isolation, rather than in conjunction.
(First published in Nature Magazine, September 2021.)
Review of Rachael K. Jones, “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a fun, funny, and touching story, which I liked quite a bit even if it is in 2nd person (my least favorite way of telling a story).
Review of Bella Han, “De Profundis, a Space Love Letter”, Clarkesworld Issue 205, October (2023): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.
“Dear Yuwen,
This is the last night of your existence.”
When a story starts like this, you can’t help but continue. Can I call it a space opera about stories? I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of this one. As long as feelings exist, there will always remain a very real need for good storytelling. The flood of AI-generated stories aren’t cutting it, as it turns out. A human tries to change that.
An enchantingly grand novelette.
Review of Rebecca Harrison, “Little Pound Shop,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 7-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story was a little bite of candy-floss: Super yummy and desirable, completely insubstantial, and just a little bit too sweet.
(I am a huge fan of cotton candy, so this is not as negative a review as some might read it!)
Review of Chelsea Sutton, “Ursula the Monster,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 18-20 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
A short, sweet story of one woman’s revenge on every wrong that’s ever been done to her gender.
(First published in Orca Literary Summer 2022.)
Review of Katy Boyer, “Saint Woad and Sister Welwitschia,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 15-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
“We are a ghastly bunch, we who remain.”
This sentence perfectly encapsulates the grim horror of this story, which explores all the different ways the stillbirth of a child ripples outward.
Review of Lyndsey Croal, “The Constellations of Daughter Death,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
What a beautiful little story this was — both in the language it was told in and the content of the story itself. Reading it made me want to find glow-in-the-dark paints to paint it.
Review of Dylan Curry, “To Slay a Goblin,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 7-9 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was about three-quarters hilarious and one-quarter sudden sucker punch to the gut.
Well. That’s exactly the sort of thing good fiction is supposed to be. I’m saving this one to show to give to students as an exemplar.
Review of Lyle Stiles, “Mephisto & Me,” Assemble Artifacts 2 (2022): 156-176 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
When Jerod’s demon-possessed robot finally succeeds in harnessing Jerod’s angerinto bringing about Armageddon, he won’t have anyone to blame but himself. After all, it was Jerod who was willing to do anything to bring his father back after he was murdered — including a pack with the devil.
The premise has a lot of potential, but I found the implementation of it sometimes a bit clunky and stodgy; I never really quite got into the story. I did appreciate Jerod’s attempts to speak up against the horribly whitewashed version of BML his teacher tried to give him in school.
SFF Reviews