Review of Heather Dee Norton, “Winter Finds,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 195-206 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story took a lot of familiar threads and wove them into something unusual and quite unexpected. I found myself enjoying it more the more I read.
Review of Jalyn Renae Fiske, “Vale of the Firefae,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 113-124 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
One of the things I want out of a fantasy story is something different from reality — the very best of worldbuilding can deliver something so utterly unlike what is actually the case that in addition to reading for escapism one can also marvel at the ingenuity to imagine something so unreal. Now, not every fantasy story can have the very best of worldbuilding, and I don’t measure stories against that very best. But there is something both disappointing and unsettling about a wildly fantastic story whose worldbuilding structures replicate — whether consciously or unconsciously — problem structures in our own world. I found that to be the case with Fiske’s story: She has constructed a society that is, on the one hand, not at all like any actually existing society; but on the other hand, the misogynist and patriarchal norms that are encoded in the structure are depressingly familiar.
Review of Teresa Koeppel, “Bussola,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 101-110 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
At the start of this weird little ghost story, Koeppel sets up some rules which I then spent the rest of the story watching carefully to see whether — and how — they would be kept. There were subtle inconsistencies that end up bothering me probably way more than they should have, making me pause to scroll back up to make sure I hadn’t read something wrong or misremembered. I don’t mind an unreliable narrator or an inconsistent story when it is clearly a deliberate construction of an author; but I wasn’t entirely convinced that these here were. End result: Not really my kind of story.
Review of Summer Jewel Keown, “The Weather Girl,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 261-273 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
It’s a bit weird reading a romance when you know from pretty much the first line that it doesn’t have a happy ending, but nevertheless I enjoyed the unfolding of this one, waiting to see just how the unhappy ending would come about. Unfortunately, in the end, it was for boring, mundane, ordinary reasons, which kind of defeated any more fantastic/speculative elements that the story had, for me.
Review of Mina Ramirez, “Trespassers,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 27-36 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Considering the trajectory of current circumstances, I can get the desire to write a story of signing away all of one’s rights to a faceless corporation in exchange for survival; there’s a certain sort of catharsis in doing so.
But given the trajectory of current circumstances, this isn’t necessarily the sort of story that I want to read. Maybe other people do — if so, I hope they’ll enjoy it. (It does have a satisfactory ending, which helps.)
Review of Amelia Weissman, “What Should We Do With the Body?” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 95-99 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Never thought I’d read a story about nuclear fairy beetles — something that sounds a bit like “take a word from this hat, a word from that hat, and another word from that hat, and then write a story about the combination” — but whatever Weissman’s inspiration was, the result is something different and a bit unusual, and fun to read.
Review of Morgan Lockhart, “All Creatures,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 15-24 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The thing about being a vet is that you have to treat all creatures — and the thing about being a druid is that these creatures might not always be animals. This is a story I’ll definitely be recommending to my veterinary friends!
Review of Vikki Stea, “The Museum of Lost Sound,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 127-133 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There was something about this story that I found particularly magical, something about the way it was told as a fantasy story even if its bones were fundamentally SF. I loved the way that Stea was able to evoke a potential future with just a few phrases and carefully selected words, building a framework that I as the reader could paint in the details. Part of me wants to live in New Shanghai; part of me rebelled against the whole idea with the very core of my being. That slightly insidious feeling of “this is not right” was a delicious undercurrent.
Review of Johanna Ivy Levene, “Bumblecat,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 275-280 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
As the owner of a cat whose nickname is “Bumblefoot,” I had to read this story. However, my Bumblefoot is named so because of his tendency to fall over his feet as he rushes down the stairs to see What’s Up, whereas this Bumblecat is more literal — a cross between a cat and a bumblebee.
What I really loved about this story was the dialogue between the mother and the daughter, the way that this drove the story forward. It reminded me of conversations with my own daughter, and — dare I make the comparison — with a story of my own that resulted from one such conversation (“Metamorphosis”). I love it when I can see the author’s life lurking behind a story they’ve written. What made me sad was seeing the bright spark of an idea completely swallowed up by capitalism, an outcome that was as inevitable as it was expected. But the ending was a hopeful one, that I loved, loved, loved.
Review of M.J. Jones, “Sunk Cost Fallacy,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 55-71 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The opening paragraphs of this story were immediately gripping — taut, unsure, full of more questions than answers, but not so vague as to be annoying.
When the scene shifted and I found out this was a selkie story, I was immediately cautious (I’ve read far more ordinary, boring, common selkie stories than I have distinctive and interesting ones). The fact that it was a “selkie life in the time of copycat selkie-wannabe TicToc influencers” story went some way towards reassuring me, as this is definitely not a take I’ve read before.
In the end, this story was nothing like any selkie story I’ve read before, except, perhaps, that in its bones its a story of loss. There are, on the face of it, two relationships lost in this story; the one that hurt me the most, as a reader, is perhaps not the one you might expect.
SFF Reviews