REVIEW: “At Love’s Heart” by Amanda J. McGee

Review of Amanda J. McGee, “At Love’s Heart”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There are certain tropes that creep up again and again in fantasy literature, one of which is the “virgin to the dragon” story, whether it be actual virgins to actual dragons or is more metaphorical, whether the sacrifice be compelled or voluntary. At the heart (hah!) of this story is the voluntary sacrifice of Bronne on behalf of her village, Reykjin — for “someone had to pay the cost of winter. The cost of the ice.” Reykjin is one of the northernmost villages, but that doesn’t make the trek north to the temple any easier.

McGee traces Bronne’s path north, accompanied by women of her village all singing songs and bearing witness, through each slow and delicate step. There is a ponderousness about the pace of the story that mimics the gradual slowing down of the body due to cold; but whereas such ponderousness could sometimes be heavy, in this story, it seems appropriate. It’s a beautiful story of the many different facets of love, each as sharp and brittle and beautiful as the facet of an ice crystal.

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REVIEW: “Curse Like a Savior” by Russell Nichols

Review of Russell Nichols, “Curse Like a Savior”, Apex Magazine 118 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Junior thinks this is going to be a quick job – just slip, in repair Mrs. Layla Fisher’s Halogram (currently displaying a Jesus who cusses up a storm), and move on. He doesn’t care what anybody else believes, so long as they let him do his job in peace. Unfortunately for him, it seems that Mrs. Fisher has other ideas.

This does a great job of mixing light fun with some more serious themes. On the one hand, anybody who has ever worked a customer service job will recognize Junior’s struggle to do his job without getting drawn into a long, emotionally taxing conversation with the client. But then we have the Halograms that are at the center of this whole transaction, holograms of famous people, specifically of the sort who people idolize – religious figures and inspiration writers and politicians ranging from Jesus and Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. and Maya Angelou. As the conversation with Mrs. Fisher goes on, the subject of faith comes to the forefront, and the story transitions from an almost frivolous look at futuristic customer service, to something much deeper and more challenging.

The ending took me by surprise. It’s much more unsettling than I expected, and made me rethink everything that came before it. Fortunately, this is a short enough story that it’s not a hardship to reread it!

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REVIEW: “Call to Mind” by Ella Syverson

Review of Ella Syverson, “Call to Mind”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

If swearing in your stories isn’t for you, then avoid this one — it starts off with a curse word.

But Sam and her traveling companion, Diesel, have something to curse about. Their memories have been wiped — again — and while artificial amnesia is part of the job when you’re employed by the Department of Supernatural Control, that doesn’t mean it ever gets any easier, especially when you know that there isn’t really any out. Even with artificial amnesia, DSC employees know too much to ever not be DSC employees.

Both Sam and Diesel are good at their job, though, and that’s why they’re the ones tasked to track down a rogue human who’s been fraternizing with sirens, werewolves, and witches. Too many DSC agents have been lost in trying to capture this rogue, so it’s up to the two of them to put an end to it.

Of course neither expected the job to be an easy one, but I as the reader also didn’t expect it to be easy, and found that the story came up abruptly rather short at the end. I would have loved to see the interesting premise that it began with fully developed into something more substantial than what I ended up getting.

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REVIEW: “Where Gods Dance” by Ben Serna-Grey

Review of Ben Serna-Grey, “Where Gods Dance”, Apex Magazine 118 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This is a story about grief, and the unbearable loss of a child. The narrator tries again and again and again to hold onto some small bit of what he has lost, with disastrous results.

This is more of a mood piece than a clear narrative, but that works well for such a short story. It invokes a host of complicated emotions, far more than could be fit if they need to be tied to a strict progression of scenes. I appreciate the way Serna-Grey refuses to shy away from the confusing tumult of the narrator’s feelings, nor from his increasingly desperate decisions.

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REVIEW: “Green is for Wishes and Apples” by Kathryn McMahon

Review of Kathryn McMahon, “Green is for Wishes and Apples”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

From Eve’s apple to the apple the witch gives Snow White, there’s no denying that in myth and story, apples are magic. Abigail knows the Granny Smiths in the tree she loves to climb partake in that tradition of magic — she learned about it from Gram, but Gram herself is now dead. Can even those potent green fruit bring back the dead?

McMahon’s slow, dreamy story of intricate witchery is creepy and unsettling, and I was rather glad the ending was dark rather than hopeful; it seemed fitting.

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REVIEW: “Laughter in the Graveyard” by Mab Morris

Review of Mab Morris, “Laughter in the Graveyard”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Gazev is a young woman who upon the death of her sister, Sonalie, inherited her job as temple cleaner. Wherever she goes she carries the weight of her sister’s death — never explained in the story — as well as the weight of “the years of [the priests’] gaze upon her beautiful, bent shoulders”. She wanders through the graveyard, but cannot escape her sister’s legacy.

I found this a heavy, depressing story. Casual misogyny is so rife in the real world, that one often looks to fantasy and speculative fiction for escape — for there we can explore worlds that are built on fundamentally different principles than our own. But while much of the world Morris builds in Gazev’s story is different from ours and foreign, the same old misogyny is there, as if it is inescapable.

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REVIEW: “The Prison-house of Language” by Elana Gomel

Review of Elana Gomel, “The Prison-house of Language”, Apex Magazine 118 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Dr. Sophia Abdoul is unique, as a linguist who finds human language painful to speak. That condition has driven her to study as many languages as she can, both modern and ancient, in a search for the mythical ur-language that pre-dated them all. This makes her the perfect person for the army to ask to help with an experiment that has gone awry – the subjects have begun speaking in tongues.

Sophia is a wonderful example of a protagonist who is not traditionally “likable,” but who is still sympathetic and enjoyable to read about. Because of her unique condition, she has trouble connecting with people, who all seem to constantly want to talk. She is acerbic and utterly certain that she is smarter than everyone around her. She’s also perceptive and witty and a wonderful narrator, reflecting both on what is happening around her in the present, and some traumatic experiences from her past.

At its heart, I believe this is a story about language and how it both divides and connects us. It connects us to each other, but divides us from the rest of the world. It divides Sophia from the rest of humanity in much the same way. The mysterious experiment that she is drawn in to help repair and explain takes it a step further, showing her exactly why she is the way she is, and what she can do that others can not. It’s a good ending, that doesn’t wrap things up too neatly.

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REVIEW: “Into the Flames” by Jasmine Smith

Review of Jasmine Smith, “Into the Flames”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

It’s always exciting to read the first publication of a new author, and Smith’s story did not disappoint. I found myself wrapped up in a story full of action and intrigue, in a setting evocative of medieval Arabic Egypt. There was a deep thread of uncertainty running through it all — even at the end, I was not sure who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

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REVIEW: “A Promise of Apples” by J. S. Rogers

Review of J. S. Rogers, “A Promise of Apples”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

In this story set during the era of the potato famines in Ireland, 17-year-old Deirdre and her family are fighting starvation after all the crops have failed. One night when it seems that all hope of survival is lost, Deirdre finds herself following strange music into a vale of oaks, where she meets her greatest temptation: Food, freely offered and given. But can she trust the giver?

In the end, what matters is not whether faeries are to be trusted, but whether a faery-cursed fate is worse than living a life uncursed. Deirdre makes an impossible choice, and saves her family — and her whole village — by doing so.

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REVIEW: “Sirens” by Britani C. W. Baker

Review of Britani C. W. Baker, “Sirens”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content warning: Memories of child abuse.

The titular sirens of this story are not the ones I immediately thought of — tantalising creatures of the watery depths — but ones that strike fear into my childhood midwestern heart: Tornado sirens. The world that Baker populates has been destroyed by tornadoes, everywhere, all at once, and the sirens haven’t stopped since. Through their raging call walk Denver and Isaac.

I found this story left me with more questions than answers — where did the tornadoes come from? What sort of weather could have resulted in that many, all at once, including in places that don’t normally have tornadoes? How is it that vast cities are abandoned and left to scavengers, but the sirens in them are still going off? (This is quite a practical question: I found myself wondering “just how are tornado sirens powered, such that it’s possible for them to still be blaring after two years?”) I also found myself wanting somewhat more than the story had to give — something more speculative than merely a post-apocalyptic setting. However, for anyone who has lived through the sort of abuse that Denver has survived, I can imagine reading this story might be sort of cathartic.

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