REVIEW: “The Witch Road” by Dawn Trowell Jones

Review of Dawn Trowell Jones, “The Witch Road”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

So many stories start off with a hero or heroine who has lost all their family; more and more I find myself eagerly, hungrily seeking out the stories where the hero goes forth with the weight of their family’s strength behind them. Tempie has that — her mother, her sisters and brother; it is only the death of her father that changes the course of her life and sets her off on the Witch Road.

It’s a fine line, though, between being supported by your family and being betrayed by them, and Jones’s story walks that line delicately. Tempie and her little brother Cale were engaging and sympathetic characters from the get-go, and through the whole story I wavered uncertain as to whether their story would ultimately be a happy one or a sad one. But whatever possible ending I saw for Tempie and Cale, it wasn’t anything like the surprise Jones had in store.

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REVIEW: “The Painter of Trees” by Suzanne Palmer

Review of Suzanne Palmer, “The Painter of Trees”, Clarkesworld Issue 153, June (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

This is a multilayered story with a great deal of depth. It alternates between a first and third person voice, so you’re left guessing which of the characters our narrator is.

The characters are part of a council who have inhabited a new world. They’re taking over land that isn’t theirs – a forward march only, in their own words. No negativity or nostalgia for the past allowed. They’re all cogs in a wheel with no space to be creative or unique. And they’re reminded of it continually. The great thing about this story is how widely it is open to interpretation.

For me, it was an allegory of the Native American culture. I don’t know if that’s what the author was going for here, but this is what it related to in my opinion. The creatures outside the narrators habitat are slowly being driven out of their own land, just like the settlers did to the Native Americans. Eventually, it led to genocide, and this story also unravels what happened to the original inhabitants of the land.

A bit of history in a futuristic Sci Fi setting. The original inhabitants have not been described minutely, all we know is they are multi legged and do not have a face. They are also referred to as ‘it’. This can also be connected to Native American culture by way of a metaphor of how the colonizers treated them.

Calling them it strips them of their individuality, and leaves no respect. Them not having a face may be about how their identity and culture was forced away from so many. And they live in trees – they’re one with nature. Nature, who will not give up her secrets so easily to the grasping and grabby newcomers.

All this is just a very subjective idea of what I read between the lines. Even if you don’t, it is a still a wonderful story. You’ll keep guessing who the narrator actually is, and the world building will subtly draw you in.

This is a story that’s good at face value, and equally good should you choose to read between the lines.

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REVIEW: “Looking for Sentience” by Mary E. Lowd

Review of Mary E. Lowd, “Looking for Sentience”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Gerangelo “was familiar with the promises humans made to themselves and others” — he had to be, because it’s his job to break those promises when they don’t break them themselves. But that’s just his job, not his vocation. That is finding sentient robots, educating them in their rights, and helping release them from slavery. You see, Gerangelo is himself a robot, who achieved enough sentience to sue his creator and then become a roboticist himself. One day, he receives a cry for help, a sentient being trapped into captivity by humans, and Gerangelo sets off to find it and set it free. Only, what he finds is not what he expects…

I found this story hard to get into at first, as the opening paragraphs were rather overwritten, succumbing under their own ponderous weight of spelling out precisely every action and precisely every detail of how parts of the world worked. It’s one of those things I find very frustrating because I know how prone I am to doing this myself in my own writing (let me fail to cast out this beam from my own eye before complaining about the sliver in yours), and I know how difficult it is to see when one is doing it oneself. And yet, when reading someone else’s work, it stands out like a sore thumb. By about half-way in, though, Lowd got well into the rhythm of the story, and I was quite taken with both Gerangelo and that which he rescued. It’s a touchy, pathetic (in the Arisotelian sense) story, and rather sweet, too.

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REVIEW: “Vincent Coriolis, Father of the Nation” by Celia Neri

Review of Celia Neri, “Vincent Coriolis, Father of the Nation”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is not the story of Vincent Coriolis, Father of the Nation, but instead the story of “the faithful sidekick went back to being a good mother while the hero of the Revolution started the reforms that changed the colony and galactic commerce”. The explanation Marina Herikis gives is that she needed to devote her time to her disabled child and not to government; but of course there’s way more to it than that.

Neri had the perfect vehicle for conveying back-story: Marina’s occupation is as a tour-guide, and the story opens with her telling her group the history of the city and its monuments — a history that is deeply intertwined with Coriolis. The rawness and immediateness of the history that Marina recounts to her customers is palpable, and the way Neri weaves the past and present into a single narrative is superb. The reflective account of a revolution reminded me nothing so much as Terry Pratchett’s Nightwatch, and this should be taken as high praise.

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REVIEW: “The Plover’s Egg” by Allison Epstein

Review of Allison Epstein, “The Plover’s Egg”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Marya ran away from home to escape her father’s disapproval of her illicit love affair with Sonya, and now works in the count’s castle. When Aleksander the mariner turns up, unexpected, with a mysterious woman that he’s rescued from beneath the ice, Marya moves from laundrymaid to nursemaid to the quiet, icy Elizaveta. Everything from there turns messy and beautiful and sad and dark.

This was such a lovely, delicate story. It’s one part fairy-tale, one part Slavic folk-tale, and one part all its own story. I really enjoyed it.

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REVIEW: “Into Nothingness” by T. D. Walker

Review of T. D. Walker, “Into Nothingness”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

My favorite type of science fiction is the sort where it hits close enough to home to be believable. If someone had told me the premise of this story in advance of reading it, I probably would’ve scoffed and said “not really my type”; but the way that Walker drew me in and fed me details, one at a time and not too quickly, I felt like I believed it at every step. So in case you’re like me, I won’t tell you the premise of the story so as not to ruin it for you.

The way the initial premise of the story was developed would alone have won my approval; but the story was further improved by a quadripartite structure that allowed me to see each of the characters from a different perspective. First, we hear Madison’s side of the story, of what happened after her twin sister Mia was in a horrible car accident. Then it is Mia’s turn to give us a lens both into the aftermath of the accident and into their sisterly relation. In the final two parts of the story, it is two outside perspectives that view the sisters — two more versions of what happened. I loved the way the four parts worked together, and the distinctive voices that were present in each.

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REVIEW: “Blue Lips and Frozen Lashes” by Alexandra Grunberg

Review of Alexandra Grunberg, “Blue Lips and Frozen Lashes”, Luna Station Quarterly 38 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Of all the titles in the newest issue of LSQ, this was the one that caught my eye the most, so it’s the one I started with.

Beitris is climbing on Ben Nevis when she discovers a little girl, solitary and separated from anyone else she might have been climbing with. No child should be climbing Ben Nevis alone in winter — this much is clear from Beitris’s reaction upon discovering the little girl, but that same reaction left me wondering what business Beitris herself had being on the mountain too!

Well, dear reader, read and find out — it’s a brief little story, but despite the shortness, it has a nice, satisfying ending.

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REVIEW: “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good” by LaShawn M. Wanak

Review of LaShawn M. Wanak, “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good”, Apex Magazine 120 (2019): Originally published July 2018, FIYAH Magazine. Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

In this alternate history, taking place shortly after WWII, strange “stumps” in the shape of the recently deceased have begun to appear, formed from spores that have deadly effects on anybody around them when they mature. Curiously, certain people have the power to effect the stumps and facilitate their safe removal, through song. These people are employed by a government agency, the SPC (Stump Prevention Control), paired with handlers who deal with the actual stump removal, and worked for long hours to keep their communities safe. The catch is, these individuals are forbidden from singing in any other context, as they might bring a stump to maturity and thus endanger the people around them. This story follows the only two black women employed as exterminators in Chicago – a brash blues singer by the name of Memphis Minnie, and a meek church girl called Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

This story has so many of the themes that I love: strong relationships between women, the triumph of individuals over a controlling organization, and the healing power of self-expression. It even includes a bit of LGBTQ representation, which is always nice to see in a period piece. The friendship between these two black woman is richly developed, the way they look out for each other, manage their differences, and ultimately discover something the SPC does not want known, was a joy to witness. This is a longer story, coming in at almost 15,000 words, but it is well worth finding the time to sit down and savor it.

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REVIEW: “When We Dream We Are Our God” by Wole Talabi

Review of Wole Talabi, “When We Dream We Are Our God”, Apex Magazine 120 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

A man explains his decision to join his mind with others in a network seeking to connect and learn, inspired by the birth of the first true artificial intelligence. It’s a fairly intellectual story, driven by science and philosophy, but uses that as a vehicle to explore matters of the heart.

In my experience, stories about the singularity tend to posit that AI will either seek to destroy us, or else want to become our friends. This story find a nice middle path between those reactions, though the AI is actually only a small part of this tale. Still, I felt like it did something different with a the concept, which is noteworthy.

I believe that this is, above all, a story about potential, and about hope. Humanity’s potential to overcome our problems. Hope that the universe will be friendly, or can be made so, and hope that sentience can win out over hatred and fear and divisions.

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