REVIEW: “For Sale” by Jessica Walsh

Review of Jessica Walsh, “For Sale”, in Little Creepers (Sewn Together Reflections, LLC, 2018): 99-102 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was a smashing story to end the anthology on. The basic premise — what it is that the narrator is selling — made me laugh with delight as soon as I clocked what it was. And then came the true chilling horror as the details of the premise got successively filled in. No gore, all psychological games, and the ugly enjoyment that comes from watching someone rationalise the impossible.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Lovely Decisions” by Jessica Walsh

Review of Jessica Walsh, “Lovely Decisions”, in Little Creepers (Sewn Together Reflections, LLC, 2018): 95-98 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Summary in one sentence: In a setting that could be either post-apocalyptic or merely futuristic (one sometimes looks at the world’s current trajectory and wonders if there’s any difference), Ash and her lover Rebecca are forced to come to terms with the consequences of decisions that neither of them really wanted to make.

I found this story raised more questions than it answered; it felt lacking in details needed to help me understand the importance of the situation that Ash and Rebecca found them in. As a result, I never quite felt like I was following the conversation properly. This was particularly bothersome in the opening paragraphs when I was unable to tell whether the topic of their conversation was rape, or not — something pretty important to determine so that I can put appropriate content notes on reviews! In this case, I think the answer is “not rape”, but the story still involves a degree of sexual violence that some might wish to stay away from.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “I Wake Up in Strange Places” by Jessica Walsh

Review of Jessica Walsh, “I Wake Up In Strange Places”, in Little Creepers (Sewn Together Reflections, LLC, 2018): 46-50 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

When it came time to settle down and read a story before bed, I picked this one because of its excellent title. It’s the sort of title that clearly has a story behind it, begging to be told, and yet the reader has no idea what kind of story it will be.

The story opens on the unnamed narrator awaking yet again in a strange place, and follows what happens after. It is remarkably factual: As a reader, I get told what happens, but not how or why. And even some of the what questions remain unanswered, as even the narrator themself doesn’t know the answer. In the end, I felt the story lacked resolution: Without the background hows and whys, I didn’t care enough about the narrator for the whats to matter.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “White Noise” by Jessica Walsh

Review of Jessica Walsh, “White Noise”, in Little Creepers (Sewn Together Reflections, LLC, 2018): 35-38 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Sometimes, all it takes is a single moment for a person’s life to change irrevocably. In “White Noise”, we get to see one of these moments in the life of an unnamed narrator, and to see how she must grapple with the consequences of that moment and the decisions she must take afterwards.

If I had to classify the genre of this story, I’d put it firmly in “paranormal” rather than “horror”; it may read as horror to some, but I found I had figured out what the ending would be too soon for the story to have any uncertainty or weighty anticipation for me.

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REVIEW: “Giving In” by Jessica Walsh

Review of Jessica Walsh, “Giving In”, in Little Creepers (Sewn Together Reflections, LLC, 2018): 24-26 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: Suicide.

This brief story starts off dark and tremendously sad — Christmas night, a man contemplating suicide, awash with memories of committing his senile mother to care, how in the aftermath he lost not only his mother but his wife and son, too. The thread that runs through all the events and emotions, past and present, is a music box that once played on the man’s mother’s dresser, and which he hoped would one day play for his son. In the end, the song of the music box is, I think, intended to leave the reader with a sense of hope, but I’m not sure how successfully it did so: I just felt rather down after finishing it.

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REVIEW: “Whispering Waters” by Jessica Walsh

Review of Jessica Walsh, “Whispering Waters”, in Little Creepers (Sewn Together Reflections, LLC, 2018): 9 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story — at one page long — is over and done with before it even gets started. It was the story I started off with, and it probably wasn’t the best choice for me; it was too short to be satisfying, and I find the 2nd-person narration grating. However, the final line went a long way to turning around my initial impressions.

(Originally published in Apex Magazine 66).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Little Creepers by Jessica Walsh

Review of Jessica Walsh, Little Creepers, (Sewn Together Reflections, LLC, 2018) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This year, SFFReviews participated in #RevPit on twitter for the first time — where authors promote their books for review and reviewers indicate which books they’d be interested in reviewing — and that’s how we received a copy of Jessica Walsh’s short collection of horror stories. Two of the stories, “Whispering Waters” and “Lurking Status”, had previously been published, but the rest are new. Interspersed throughout the tales are interesting illustrations which lend a new dimension to the stories.

It is an eclectic collection, ranging from the single-page almost flash-fic story “And Then There Were One Hundred and Twenty-Eight” to the nearly-novellette 43-page story “My Life”. As a result, I read the stories out of order, rather than sequentially, so that I could pick a length that suited my reading desires at a given time. As is customary, we’ve listed the contents below (pretty much my only significant complaint is that I would’ve liked to have had a table of contents in the book itself!), and will review the stories individually and link the reviews back here as they are published:

To speak to the collection as a whole: I often struggle with where “horror” fits into SFFReviews. It certainly can fall under the umbrella of “speculative fiction”, especially in its psychological guises. Sometimes horror can be purely mundane, though; for instance, when it stems from physical violence and gore. It was hard to categorise these stories, some of which were definitely on the speculative end of things, while others (like “Giving In”) were so mundane as to be merely depressing rather than horrible. Good speculative horror that is well done I truly enjoy, and that’s what keeps me dipping back into the horror genre time and time again. In this collection, some of the stories lived up to my hopes and satisfied my desires; but unfortunately only some.

Sara L. Uckelman14 Comments

REVIEW: “Search for the Heart of the Ocean” by A. J. Fitzwater

Review of A. J. Fitzwater, “Search for the Heart of the Ocean”, in Catherine Lundoff, ed., Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) (Queen of Swords Press, 2018): 181-198 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story was described in Lundoff’s introduction as “a new installment of [Fitzwater’s] dapper lesbian capybara pirate saga” (p. 6). I can’t say that this naturally inclined me towards the story — despite the fact that I like lesbians, capybaras, AND pirates, the combination seemed…a little farfetched. I’m not against anthropomorphised animals, but I did feel like I spent more effort in the initial stages of the story suspending my disbelief than I would’ve liked; and the use of dialect in the dialogue compounded the feeling of work that went into reading.

Eventually, though, the effort faded away, and I got drawn into the story of Cinrak and the cabin boy Benj and the kraken that Benj befriends, and the heart of the ocean that both Cinrak and the kraken are seeking. There was a lot of beautiful language, and a happy ending. If lesbian capybara pirates tick all your buttons, then this is definitely the story for you.

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REVIEW: “Tenari” by Michael Merriam

Review of Michael Merriam, “Tenari”, in Catherine Lundoff, ed., Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) (Queen of Swords Press, 2018): 168-180 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Captain Reed’s ship, the Black Manta, hasn’t always been black. Decades ago, the ship was just the Manta, an attack ship in the Colonial Defense Forces. At the time, Captain Reed wasn’t captain, merely senior lieutenant, and her current XO, Roger Baldry, was navigator and second officer. But it’s been a long time since Reed and Baldry encountered the mythical alien race, the Tenari, and — when no one else did — lived to tell the tale. Now the Manta is a pirate ship, no longer a military ship, and Reed and Baldry are facing the Tenari again. They were lucky once to escape with their lives; will they be lucky enough to escape a second time?

Merriam’s story is filled with rich detail and a panoply of characters, which I liked. However, two things about this story bothered or confused me. First, half the time the captain was named Kathleen Reed, the other half she was Katherine Reed, and I was never sure if this was intentional or just something that slipped past proofreading. Second, with almost no exception, the female characters were referred to solely by their given name, while the male characters were referred to by either their surname or surname + title. It’s such a small thing, but to see “Janet” (Sobrinski) working side by side (Roger) “Baldry”, “Mr. Roberts” the helmsman working with crewmember “Tilly” (no surname), was a constant reminder of how even when female characters are given equal screen time with male in a story, they are still treated unequally. We’ve come so far in terms of representation in SFF stories; but there is still so much further left to go.

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REVIEW: “After the Deluge” by Peter Golubock

Review of Peter Golubock, “After the Deluge”, in Catherine Lundoff, ed., Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) (Queen of Swords Press, 2018): 156-167 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

It wasn’t a big surprise when New York sank beneath the waves. The surprise was that everyone stayed (p. 161).

When global warming catches up with NYC and the city is deluged, one of the perks of city with many skyscrapers is that the floods only took out a few of the floors, leaving much of the city still high and dry. But with dry land left to the rich, it’s no surprise that the poor took to being pirates on the newly formed water ways, raiding big cargo ships with their little motor boats and dinghies. The Pizza Rat is one such ship, and her captain has been making a successful career as one of the most powerful pirate captains in the five boroughs for some time now. But when the captain of the Pizza Rat receives a tip-off from a trusted source, of an unescorted cargo barge, things don’t go exactly to plan…

Even if cops-and-robbers pirate-chase stories like this aren’t exactly my cup of tea, it was still a fun read.

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