REVIEW: “Notes from an Unpublished Interview with Mme. Delave, Fairy” by Brittany Pladek

Review of Brittany Pladek, “Notes from an Unpublished Interview with Mme. Delave, Fairy”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When I first skimmed the table of contents for issue 33, I saw “Notes from an Unpublished Interview…” right after the editorial and figured it was a non-fiction piece and that I wouldn’t review it here. Only after I’d read a few other stories in the issue did I take a closer look at the title and go “Ooooh!” Because all it takes is that final word to hook me in and make me want to read this story.

The story opens with a little editorial note explaining the circumstances of this present piece taken from the archives. The note ends with a sentence that I could give my philosophy students to analyse: “Because unsubstantiated does not mean impossible.”

This was an absolutely lovely and engaging story, chock full of myth and history. “As Europe has history, so Faerie has change,” Mme. Delave tells her interviewer. But Faerie died. It did not fade, as Mme. Delave reprimands her interviewer for saying, but rather, it thickened. It became solid. It ceased to change. And as Aristotle tells us, “time is the number of motion in respect of before and after”, that is, with respect to change. Where there is no change, there is no motion, there is no movement, there is no time. And where there is no time, there is no life, only death.

Sara L. UckelmanLeave a comment

REVIEW: “Dix” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Review of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, “Dix”, Asimov’s Science Fiction March/April (2018): 13-46 — Read Excerpt Online or Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

We’re trained to make the most of the situation we’re in, not to wish we were somewhere else.

Set in Rusch’s wider Diving universe, after an ill-fated rescue mission the crew of the Ivoire find themselves 5,000 years in the future far from the rest of the Fleet and everyone they’ve ever known or understands who they are, with no way of getting back. The crew are coping in different ways with the loss – both productive and destructive.

Without giving too much of the plot away, the story here is tightly told and, despite dealing with an established universe and technologies, Rusch leads those unfamiliar through the intricacies and risks being handled without bogging down in exposition.

I did find some of the more tense moments didn’t quite come across as stressful as they could have – for example, the threats, despite being tricky to diffuse, never really came across as particularly likely to me. Perhaps knowing where this piece sat between the other works in the series also made me feel the characters were less at risk.

Overall, though, this was a fun, self-contained adventure sci-fi story that didn’t require awareness of the related material to enjoy.

kieralesleyLeave a comment

REVIEW: “The Last Shaper at The Witch City’s Waypoint” by Emily Lundgren

Review of Emily Lundgren, “The Last Shaper at The Witch City’s Waypoint”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story has a gorgeous opening line:

Ess sang he found me in the reeds in the heat of summer, my mother a crow lying dead.

(Even if every time I read it, my eyes see “cow” instead of “crow”, and I can’t help but think that that would also work, and perhaps be even more interesting.)

The rest of the story was as beautifully crafted, full of lovely language like a song itself, and the rhythm and pacing and descriptive imagery of a fairy tale. Except part-way through it shifts from a fairy tale into something more akin to science fiction. The story transcends boundaries and classification, and is just really good.

Sara L. UckelmanLeave a comment

REVIEW: “Irregularity” by Rachel Harrison

Review of Rachel Harrison “Irregularity”, Apex Magazine 106 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

After nearly perishing in an alien invasion, humanity decided that computers were not reliable enough to watch the void of space for threats. Now, specially trained humans work at outposts, watching the data for inconsistencies. Nyle is one of those observers. It’s a lonely job – he only sees his one human co-worker for a few minutes a day, and otherwise interacts only with the station itself and the endless data stream. This makes for a quiet, character driven story, focused almost entirely on Nyle.

In addition to the impeccably well-crafted character of Nyle, this story also has a well-built, interesting world. We mostly get hints of it from his memories, but so much of the story takes place in Nyle’s head, that still gives us a good look at the stratification of this society.

I enjoyed the quiet, introspective story telling in this piece, and recommend it for anybody who enjoys space stories that are less action and more reflection, with a strong, emotional ending.

J.Z. WestonLeave a comment

REVIEW: “Bury Me in the Rainbow” by Bill Johnson

Review of Bill Johnson, “Bury Me in the Rainbow”, Asimov’s Science Fiction March/April (2018): 140-196 — Read Excerpt Online or Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

The walls of the chapel, from top to bottom, on all sides, were made of thousands of little medicine bottles, test tubes, small glass containers. A rare few were clear, but most were red or rose or orange or yellow or green or blue or indigo or violet. Sunlight streamed through the windows, and through the bottles and into the chapel, in arcs and bands and mixtures and spilled across the floor and the altar and the pews and us.

Johnson returns to the world from his Hugo Award-winning novelette We Will Drink a Fish Together to present this sequel novella.

An unknown alien assassin dies in Summit, trying to kill the alien ambassador, Foremost. Tony, the new mayor, must manage the politics between the different lodges making up Summit to determine the fate of his people: how should they deal with the assassin’s body? How long can their way of life last? Should they take the ambassador’s offer and join the Ship? And will Summit and the individual lodges survive the transition if they do?

At the centre of this story is the idea and motif of the Rainbow – the central resting place a small piece of everyone who has ever died in Summit. Through this Johnson looks at history, ancestry and connection with a place and people over time, something which is valuable to everyone in Summit and challenged by the Ship’s arrival and offer.

The world is full and Johnson’s experiences from living on Lake Traverse Indian Reservation in South Dakota permeate the piece’s perceptions of community, independence and land.

This novella is small and thoughtful rather than action-packed. It spends a lot of time developing a sense of place and people, rather than pushing the narrative forward which made it feel like it ran a bit long in places. Where the story could have focused on the ambassadorial interactions happening between the ground and the Ship, Johnson instead looks at the different communities within Summit and Tony’s frustrated attempts and negotiations to get them all agreeing on the Ship issue.

kieralesleyLeave a comment

REVIEW: “Heart Proof” by Holly Schofield

Review of Holly Schofield, “Heart Proof”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There is a lot of world-building that has gone into this story — always a plus — but the flip side of it is that I’m not sure I got the details I needed to get when I needed to get them.

The story opens with a strong sense of anger and antagonism between the two main characters, Kamik and Techan. The tension is palpable, but I found it difficult to figure out where it came from. I feel like I’ve been dumped into the story a bit too precipitously and so I don’t know enough of their history to understand why their tempers are so short and why they are so angry with each other, because it is also clear that they have known each other for a long time and were, at least once, friends. It is only later that one very oblique comment makes me realise that they are — or at least once were — lovers.

The classic fantasy story involves a quest, and the quest in this story is one of pilgrimage — pilgrimage to make sacrifice, “a sacrifice to a god I no longer believe in!” (so says Kamik). We learn that the pilgrimage is one that every member of the village one makes, but it takes a long while to find out why Kamik and Techan are making the pilgrimage now, so late in their lives — it is nearly half-way through that I find out that the pilgrimage isn’t a one-time thing, but something that is done every time the god Welmit eats the moon.

So the story took me awhile to suck me in. But when Kamik reaches the edge of Welmit’s Maw and begins to contemplate heresy, then I was hooked. My only complaint by the end is that I wished the heresy had been a bit more heretical, a bit less orthodox.

Sara L. UckelmanLeave a comment

REVIEW: “There’s No Need to Fear the Darkness” by Heather Morris

Review of Heather Morris, “There’s No Need to Fear the Darkness”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Brenda is one of those characters where a few paragraphs in, already I’m thinking, I like her. I want to get a beer with her sometime and hear stories about her job. She wouldn’t bore me with small talk, and I bet she has had some interesting adventures. And I bet she wouldn’t mind if I whittered on about my job; she strikes me as someone who both gives and takes. Morris describes Brenda as “petty and mean-spirited”, but I’d call her “honest” rather.

I like her no-nonsense approach to her work and to the stupidity of humanity, and I love the casual and easy love and friendship that flows between her and the other two “Lazes” (short for “Lazaruses”; I did make the mistake of mentally mispronouncing the word the first time it was used, not (yet) knowing it’s origin). I love the humor that Brenda, Cade, and Aage have — I laughed out loud more than once reading this story.

I like reading stories like this because I wish there were more people like this in the world, and since there aren’t, I just have to settle with reading stories about them instead.

Sara L. UckelmanLeave a comment

REVIEW: “We Head for the Horizon and Return with Bloodshot Eyes” by Eleanna Castroianni

Review of Eleanna Castroianni, “We Head for the Horizon and Return with Bloodshot Eyes”, Podcastle: 513 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

Somehow Greece–in this case, the Greek civil war shortly after WWII–seems the most appropriate setting for a tale of haruspicy (the divining of omens by the study of entrails). Nafsika has a talent for divining futures and presents in the bones and organs of the dead–a talent that her commanding officer begrudgingly values except when the fate that Nafsika sees contradicts her strategy and plans. The war provides the peril and hazards that make hard choices necessary, but as the author’s notes indicate, this is in some ways a symbolic exploration of the real-history hardships and consequences of the setting. Intertwined in the exploration of Nafsika’s talents is the dangerous love she shares with her female comrade and Nafsika’s desperate attempt to use her talents to find a path to survival for her squad.

For all the gruesome opening and looming disaster, I was riveted from beginning to end. This is a powerful story with an intense sense of place and time. The horrors are both supernatural and historical, and the framing story of the protagonist writing the events as a diary (based on actual historic examples) leaves the audience in suspense as to the outcome. I can’t say that I’d be eager to experience it again, but I’m glad to have listened the once.

Content warning for body horror and wartime violence.

heatherrosejonesLeave a comment

REVIEW: “C-a-l-l-a-s” by Katharine Coldiron

Review of Katharine Coldiron, “C-a-l-l-a-s”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“C-a-l-l-a-s” is the story of Solomon’s quest to obtain access to a piece of history that has been fervently suppressed in the wake of a cataclysmic event which we, the readers, simply know of as “the bacteria”. The effects of this bacterial event are pervasive and widespread — society is now quite dystopian and dictatorial — and there appears to be a connection between it and the lack of voice, quite literally, that people have. Communication happens primarily by sign language, or by electronic voice boxes; those who are bred to be able to speak command positions of power as literal mouthpieces for the government.

In such a world, what is it that takes the role of the most sought after, most precious? Why, music of course, and Solomon’s quest is a quest for opera, and in particular, a single opera singer, Callas.

For those who wish to experience a part of what Solomon experienced at the culmination of his quest, I leave you with this.

Sara L. UckelmanLeave a comment

REVIEW: “The Donner Party” by Dale Bailey

Review of Dale Bailey, “The Donner Party,” Fantasy & Science Fiction 134, 1-2 (2018): 228-256 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Standback.

“The Donner Party” is amply clear about its subject material from its title, and from its first line:

Lady Donner was in ascendance the first time Mrs. Breen tasted human flesh.

In this dark Victorian story, those at the apex of high society, at the most elevated of occasions, will eat human meat — “ensouled flesh” — and thus celebrate “the divinely ordained social order.” The horror of the story is far less in the gore of genteel cannibalism itself, although that’s definitely there too. Far more, it’s in the readiness with which Mrs. Breen, and others trying to touch that apex, are willing to accept, pursue and defend the practice — assuming themselves, of course, to be considered among the cannibals, and not the cannibalized.

This is definitely not a story for the squeamish. But if you’d like to read something that will make you squirm uncontrollably, “The Donner Party” is sharp and powerful. Its tone and characters are spot on; plausibly unconscionable, resplendent in their cruel self-aggrandizement.

The story’s conclusion is not unexpected; I don’t think it’s meant to be. Rather, it’s expertly built up to — and then served alongside a final twist of the knife. Recommended.

StandbackLeave a comment