REVIEW: “What Any Dead Thing Wants” by Aimee Ogden

Review of Aimee Ogden, “What Any Dead Thing Wants,” Adventitious no. 1 (Feb/Mar 2026): 72-109 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was exceptionally long, meaning I kept putting it off whenever I’d sit down to read and review a story because I didn’t have the time.

I finally did today, and the story completely repaid what I spent on it. At the end, I find it hard to know what to say about it, other than echo Hob when he says that “he would have known what to do, if there were obvious bad guys” (p. 103). It’s a story where there’s no good moves, even when there are moves that are right, and it ends up being really, really sad.

(First published on psychopomp.com, 2024)