Review of Jennifer Hudak, “Little Fish, Big Fish,” Flash Fiction Online (August 2023): 15-18 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
“The daughters go; the mothers bring them back”: This fist-in-the-gut line encapsulates the essence of this story, about intergenerational trauma and one generation learning to trust the next generation coming to make their own choices, known their own minds. It’s a powerful story of a visceral circle of hate and need.
Review of Phoenix Alexander, “Nancy Shreds the Clouds,” Flash Fiction Online (August 2023): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Domestic abuse.
This was a strange little story. Starting off as it did, the story of a lonesome, friendless child who quickly learned that being good meant being alone, it ended up not in some righteous justification of taking the high road, but in a raw, sordid triumph.
Review of M. C. Benner Dixon, “Let the Field Burn,” Flash Fiction Online (August 2023): 7-9 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Death of a parent.
There was something really beautiful in this story about just how ordinary it was. Clearing out a house after the death of a parent. The teen who’d been co-opted into mowing the lawn. The minutiae of life and death. But one of the best thing about fiction, about telling stories, is how the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Dixon nailed that, in this lovely little tale.
Review of Davida Kilgore, “My Dear, My Love,” Fantasy Magazine 94 (August 2023): 10-20 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This is a frank, intimate story of queer Black love. The fantastical element is simultaneous slight and integral.
Review of A. T. Greenblatt, “Essay: More Than a Journey,” Fantasy Magazine 94 (August 2023): 40-41 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Greenblatt’s fascinating and reflective essay focuses on the question of “Who does this story belong to?” It’s a question she was posed early in her writing career, and on the one hand, it makes sense as a question to ask a budding writer, because if we do not know whose story we are telling, how can we know what story it is that we are telling? But what Greenblatt highlights, from a more experienced perspective, is that stories do not belong to individuals, but to groups. For Greenblatt, the mismatch between the drive to hang a story on an individual and the fact that we all collectively participate in the stories around us results in a particular hunger, “for a type of story I don’t see very often in SFF” (p. 40) — stories that are about collectives, about groups, not about individuals.
Thought short, I found the essay compelling, found myself nodding along at almost every point. One thing I often wonder, reviewing stories for this blog, is “why this story?”, i.e., how did the author decide that this was the story to tell, rather than that. And I think some of my own concerns reflected in this question are the same concerns that Greenblatt has: Who gets to tell a story, and why, and how do we, as authors, make these decisions.
I love read about other author’s crafts and practices, it’s one of the most valuable things I find for my own writing practices. This was an extremely stimulating and useful essay, full of through-provoking points that I hope will help me out of the slough of despond when I’ve got a story that needs to be told, but I’m just not yet sure why or whose.
Review of Hana Lee, “Bari and the Resurrection Flower,” Fantasy Magazine 94 (August 2023): 25-33 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This is exactly the sort of story I want to read — steeped in a culture and mythos that I am not so familiar with (Korean) combined with overt and explicit nonbinary characters. I’d love to see this turned into a movie, or a TV series.
Review of B. Pladek, “The Runners,” Fantasy Magazine 94 (August 2023): 21-24 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Childlessness not by choice.
This is the sort of story I would probably have opted not to read, if it had the sort of content note that I’m providing here: It’s a story about a couple, who start off neither of them sure they want children, but then grow into a couple where one does and the other doesn’t. But having read it, I can say that the way in which it navigates this tough and sometimes treacherous situation is good, it’s a good story…it’s just one that I find hard to read.
Review of Marie Brennan, “Damnatio Memoriae: A History of the Past That Used to Be,” Fantasy Magazine 94 (August 2023): 37 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The power of this beautiful, depressing poem lies in the way in which it purports to be a fantasy, and yet reading it, we all know what it is describing is reality.
Review of Ubong Johnson, “Kumbaya,” Fantasy Magazine 94 (August 2023): 35 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Fantasy poetry is a tricky genre, in part because even ordinary poetry is itself often fantastical in nature. I felt that this poem could be read in two ways, one, merely as using metaphorical language to express grief and loss, the other in a more fantasy light; how I read it was definitely influenced by the nature of the venue it was published in. Without that, I’m not sure I’d call it “fantasy,” but I would still call it beautiful.
Review of Joshua Lim, “Voices of Kings,” Fantasy Magazine 94 (August 2023): 8 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a lovely little story circling around the question “Who gets to be king?” Is it the person that someone else has appointed as king? Is it the person everyone agrees is their king? Is it — the relevant question for this story — the one who can sing the most beautiful? In posing and answering these questions, Lim strikes the perfect note of mythology, bringing Malaysian folktales to a wider audience.
SFF Reviews