Review of Jason Pearce, “A Concise History of the Goldfish Trade,” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 12-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There’s something about this story that feels very much like the type of fairy tale where a gullible young boy trades away his wealth for a myth. Two things made it more than that — Pearce’s setting amonst his ancestral Mi’kmaw, and the fact that the gullible young boy turns the tables at the end.
Review of Jacob Baugher, “Recitations,” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 8-11 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Sometimes all an author has to do to win me over is provide me with one great phrase. As soon as I read “as if thoughts and prayers were an actual sacrifice” (p. 9), I knew that Baugher could do practically nothing to ruin his story for me. But even without this masterful piece of wordcraft, I’d’ve still enjoyed this beautifully imagined story.
Review of Zeke Jarvis, “Skinfluencer,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 27-29 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Body modification / possible body horror.
Sometimes speculative fiction is incredibly realistic: This story certainly couldn’t happen today, but reading it I feel like this could easily happen in 5-10 years’ time.
(First published in Backchannels 2023.)
Review of Madeline White, “The Seal Wife,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 23-25 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I sometimes shy away from selkie stories because the myth is so narrowly defined that it is hard for an author to do something new and different. One aspect I really enjoyed about White’s take was that the titular seal wife while nevertheless always longing for the sea simultaneously refuses to give up her humanity and the chance to linger in the sunshine. That’s an angle I rarely see, and I liked it. More than that, I liked how the would-be husband to the narrator’s wife steadfastedly refused to satisfy the normal tropes, and instead doggedly insisted on consent and respect.
It wasn’t quite a happy story, but it was close.
Review of Julia Lafond, “The Aftertaste,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 19-21 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Disordered eating.
The last thing Mom needed was my worries on top of hers (p. 20).
This is a story of accommodation, of swallowing all the distress, fear, anger, unhappiness, tamping it down, keeping it down, so that everyone else can be happy.
It’s beautiful and toxic and Lafond’s words make the tastes tingle on my own tongue.
(First published in Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, October 2023.)
Review of Elou Carroll, “It’s Become a Bit of a Habit,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 16-17 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
What an absolutely peculiar little story.
I honestly have no idea what else to say about it.
Review of D. A. Straith, “Things Elan Reacquainted Himself With After Being Broken Out of His Single-Day Time Loop,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 13-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I do love a good list-story! This was short, but effective, especially in conjunction with another title-which-is-basically-a-story-in-itself.
(First published in Inner Worlds 2024.)
Review of Jennifer Lesh Fleck, “This Island Toward Which I Row and Row, Yet Cannot Reach Alone,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 8-12 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I love it when a title is almost an entire story in itself.
I love it even more when the story that goes with the title is not at all what I thought it would be, and yet the title is exactly right for the story.
Review of Heather Pagano, “The Growing Song,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 147-173 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The Growing Song that Anila’s choir sings is one that urges the Dawlee sprouts to grow, to rise up from the base of the Atlantic ocean according to a careful blueprint that will eventually provide sustainable housing. This is a story of how aliens fleeing the destruction of their own planet landed on earth unknowingly bringing with them the saviour of our planet. In that respect, the story starts off feeling very much like fiction — the idea that we could welcome immigrant, refugee aliens rather than destroy them seems far away from our current reality. But sometimes it’s good to read stories about how we would like humanity to be, rather than how it is! And as it goes on, humanity-as-we-know-it reasserts itself in all sorts of recognizable and disappointing ways — but also in ways which actually make it hard for me to sympathise with alien-Anila, rather than her human-husband Thomas. A lot of ambivalence in this story!
Review of Keira Reynolds, “The Black Hill,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 191-213 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a simple story (albeit long): There’s some magic, some Irish mythology, some lesbian love, and not much more — well-enough written, but nothing extraordinary or unusual or unexpected.
SFF Reviews