REVIEW: “The Aftertaste” by Julia Lafond

Review of Julia Lafond, “The Aftertaste,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 19-21 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Disordered eating.

The last thing Mom needed was my worries on top of hers (p. 20).

This is a story of accommodation, of swallowing all the distress, fear, anger, unhappiness, tamping it down, keeping it down, so that everyone else can be happy.

It’s beautiful and toxic and Lafond’s words make the tastes tingle on my own tongue.

(First published in Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, October 2023.)

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REVIEW: “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro

Review of Tia Tashiro, “Missing Helen”, Clarkesworld Issue 226, July (2025): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

If you had a clone, would you wonder about them? If you were a clone, would you want to know more about your origin? 

Both sides of the story seem interesting, and I’m happy this story gave us all that and more. 

A tightly woven tale of these two people, so similar and so different. The prose added a lot to the story; this is something I always appreciate about Clarkesworld stories. They’ve got a beautiful way with words.

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REVIEW: “This Island Towards Which I Row and Row, Yet Cannot Reach Alone” by Jennifer Lesh Fleck

Review of Jennifer Lesh Fleck, “This Island Toward Which I Row and Row, Yet Cannot Reach Alone,” Flash Fiction Online 141 (June 2025): 8-12 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I love it when a title is almost an entire story in itself.

I love it even more when the story that goes with the title is not at all what I thought it would be, and yet the title is exactly right for the story.

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REVIEW: “The Growing Song” by Heather Pagano

Review of Heather Pagano, “The Growing Song,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 147-173 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The Growing Song that Anila’s choir sings is one that urges the Dawlee sprouts to grow, to rise up from the base of the Atlantic ocean according to a careful blueprint that will eventually provide sustainable housing. This is a story of how aliens fleeing the destruction of their own planet landed on earth unknowingly bringing with them the saviour of our planet. In that respect, the story starts off feeling very much like fiction — the idea that we could welcome immigrant, refugee aliens rather than destroy them seems far away from our current reality. But sometimes it’s good to read stories about how we would like humanity to be, rather than how it is! And as it goes on, humanity-as-we-know-it reasserts itself in all sorts of recognizable and disappointing ways — but also in ways which actually make it hard for me to sympathise with alien-Anila, rather than her human-husband Thomas. A lot of ambivalence in this story!

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REVIEW: “Oathbinder” by L. Fox

Review of L. Fox, “Oathbinder,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 303-319 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There was something about Fox’s use of language in the opening pages — how the words sort of slipped and rolled sideways — that was purely magical. The feeling of the prose translated, for me, into a feeling of the world itself, slightly strange, slightly confusing, full of depths that I definitely couldn’t quite understand. This is probably my favorite story of the entire issue.

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REVIEW: “Mother Maggie” by Rebecca Harrison

Review of Rebecca Harrison, “Mother Maggie,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 127-144 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Harrison tells this story through the medium of podcast transcript [1], effectively just a dialogue between the two hosts, Tasha and Claudia. Their show appears to be a mixture of folklore, sensational stories, baking, and digressions [2]. I enjoy this sort of medium because it means there things don’t get bogged down in unnecessary description; but at times I also couldn’t really get into it for the same reasons I can’t get into actual podcasts — they’re just a bit too tedious for me. Despite the tedium, though, there was an eerie, creepy pull as this horror story developed.

[1] At least, I think it’s supposed to be a podcast, or maybe a radio show (esp. as the hosts mention their “international listeners”). However, at one point Tasha says something that indicates she’s sharing a photograph, so maybe it’s actually video transcript.

[2] If you are not already familiar with the reference half-way down p. 129, go watch this, you won’t regret it.

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REVIEW: “The Family Ghosts” by M. E. Garber

Review of M. E. Garber, “The Family Ghosts,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 37-47 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Most families are haunted to some degree by the ghosts of their ancestors, but in this story, family ghosts are so much more than that —

“We are your family, your community, your past and your future” (p. 38)

and leaving means not only losing your family but also your history.

The metaphor is obviously one for generational wealth, support, etc. (or the lack thereof!) but its obviousness didn’t detract at all from my enjoyment of the story. I always approve of a story of someone who manages to escape bondage and find freedom.

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REVIEW: “Ends and Means” by Ana Wesley

Review of Ana Wesley, “Ends and Means,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 261-281 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

It’s another post-apocalyptic story, two women desperately running and trying to stay safe, never sure where they will sleep, what they will eat, who will betray them next. There’s been a lot of these such stories lately, it feels like, and one thing I’ve realized lately is how few post-apocalyptic settings ever really go deep into worldbuilding. The apocalypses are rarely articulated, the enemies often feel interchangeable, the central characters — while varied and interesting in themselves — too seem like they could be swapped from one setting to another without their stories fundamentally changing.

All this to say: There’s been so many stories of this ilk in recent years that it’s now going to take something special for one to stand out for me. It took Wesley’s story a good five pages to get going, but then I finally started getting glimpse of something at least a little bit different: post-apocalyptic fantasy, rather than SF.

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