REVIEW: “Redbean” by Dixon March

Review of Dixon March, “Redbean,” Luna Station Quarterly 51 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Larron is pregnant and on probation, her movements, her choices, her life restricted. When her story opens, it is entirely ordinary — up until the moment she finds a package of redbeans, tucked away forgotten on a grocery store shelf. Immediately things shift into the realm of the speculative, in a way that made me anxious with anticipation to find out what’s so special about these redbeans, and how they will change her life (because of course they will. That’s how stories work). I thought I’d get a fairy tale ending; instead I got a horror story!

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REVIEW: “Peanut Butter Elegy” by Jenna Glover

Review of Jenna Glover, “Peanut Butter Elegy,” Luna Station Quarterly 51 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death of a parent.

The story starts off with one parent dying and the other lying about it to their child. It’s a tough start: Not in the sense that it is sad, but in the sense that I am royally judging the narrator and her decision to lie to her child. The narrator thinks she’s being a good mom — but I cannot see any way towards believing that.

As the story progresses it became quite clear that I was right to be on Team Don’t Lie to Your Child, especially as the lies only became compounded. I’m not sure if Glover meant me to feel sympathetically towards the narrator, but, wow, I did not, and ended up (sadly) really disliking this story.

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REVIEW: “Felt” by Denise Khng

Review of Denise Khng, “Felt,” Luna Station Quarterly 51 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a beautiful love elegy — slow paced but never dragging or over written, continually building emotions in layers. Nothing much happened, it mostly meandered from one place to another, but the strength and depth of feeling evoked something visceral in me. And that was before everything turned sad.

It was also very long, and yet, it seemed to be simultaneously exactly the right length. A very well put together piece.

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REVIEW: “The Hall of Being” by T. K. Rex

Review of T. K. Rex, “The Hall of Being,” Luna Station Quarterly 51 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

SF stories don’t incorporate religion often enough, so Rex’s story, which weaves together, poetry and ritual, science and religion, from the start predisposed me to like it. When the religious aspect were not monolithic, but diverse and varied across cultures, I liked it even more. And when she started poking fun at traditional theism and citing medieval philosophers? I knew I was in for a real treat! This was a wonderful mixture of mysticism and rationalism, and I really enjoyed it.

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REVIEW: “2122, Barrel-Aged and Biding” by Jordan Hirsch

Review of Jordan Hirsch, “2122, Barrel-Aged and Biding,” Luna Station Quarterly 51 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I had high hopes for this story, from the title and the opening paragraph, but I’m not sure they were quite met. The story was characterized by sharp, staccato dialogue between two characters who know much more than the reader does; with a richer background context and worldbuilding, this uncertainty could’ve been used to spark interest in the characters and build a connection between them and the reader, but because the depth of background/context wasn’t there, I didn’t feel the urgency of the conversation that clearly the characters did. Overall, it just felt a little bit flat.

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REVIEW: “85 Days in Flight” by Madeehah Reza

Review of Madeehah Reza, “86 Days in Flight,” Luna Station Quarterly 51 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I love epistolary stories! This story is told through letters from Amira to her granddad. He remained on earth while Amira and her mother took to space, leaving a dying earth behind. It’s a story of complicated familial relationships, of loss, and of the peace that writing brings. It’s a simple, straightforward, and soothing story: Nice to read if you want something calm and wonderfully positive.

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REVIEW: “The Birth of a Child” by Joyce Chng

Review of Joyce Chng, “The Birth of a Child,” Luna Station Quarterly 19 (2014): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

What a beautiful pearl of a story, with so many wonderful threads. For one, it captures beautifully all the ambivalence that can surround childbirth, how it can be a combination of the most beautiful thing ever and the most cold, sterile, and heartless thing, too. For another, it mixes traditional fairy tale and romance tropes with modern concerns of immigration, alienation, foreigness, and cultural appropriation, creating a perfect blend of fantasy and Vietnamese culture. I really loved this, absolutely stellar.

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REVIEW: “How the Queen Bought Beauty” by Sandi Leibowitz

Review of Sandi Leibowitz, “How the Queen Bought Beauty,” Luna Station Quarterly 19 (2014): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There’s an art to telling fairy tales, the way they use stereotypes and tropes and specific, rhythmic, almost formulaic language. It makes them exceptionally hard to write (in my opinion!). This story sometimes read more like notes for a fairy tale than the finished version itself: Still a good read, but not quite hitting the mark for me.

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REVIEW: “Bossy Boots” by Chikodili Emelumadu

Review of Chikodili Emelumadu, “Bossy Boots,” Luna Station Quarterly 19 (2014): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was not the sort of story that I expect from LSQ — full-on male gaze from a sexed-up narrator. I was torn reading the opening paragraphs; on the one hand, Emelumadu did a great job at portraying this certain type of character. On the other hand, one reason I enjoy reading LSQ is to get away from people like that.

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