REVIEW: “Promises We Made Under A Brick-Dark Sky” by Karen Osborne

Review of Karen Osborne, “Promises We Made Under A Brick-Dark Sky”, Clarkesworld Issue 178, July (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Just beautiful. This issue starts off strong and how! Our narrator is a strong, courageous woman and contributes greatly to the beauty of this story.

I’ve said beauty twice already, and I realize that this story really is deserving of that adjective, though the description of the world and the lives lived within it are often anything but.

Osborne’s vivid imagery and fresh descriptions add a different texture to the story, and her clever use of language reveals all in due time. A stark world, a type of God, fear and mistrust, love, code and prayer, and above all, hope.

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REVIEW: “Eleusinian Mysteries” by Charlotte Ashley

Review of Charlotte Ashley, “Eleusinian Mysteries,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story is a shining example of the very best of historical science fiction. In 17th-century Amsterdam, engraver Maghfira van Delsen discovers the secret of the mysterious city Eleusia, and her discovery threatens not only the colonising aspirations of the VOC (the Dutch Eastindia Company) but, as a result, her own livelihood and life. The story is a perfect blending of historical verisimilitude and extra-worldly adventure; not only is it good SF, it feels like it is exactly the sort of SF you would expect to get in the 17th century. I really loved this story.

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REVIEW: “The Tree of Life in Lisbon” by O. J. Cade

Review of O. J. Cade, “The Tree of Life in Lisbon,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Cade used a story structure that I hadn’t ever encountered before, each different scene/setting being prefaced with a parenthetical description. It was a bit odd in the first instance, but as soon as I hit the second one I was immediately “oooh, I want to see how the same characters and issues will unfold in each different setting,” so it proved to be effective. And so we see Eve, over and over again, in each of her different gardens, in Lisbon, in Jerusalem, in Alexandria, in Athens and elsewhere, as she continually plants “one creation at a time”. The result is an intriguing portrait of one of the most written-about women in history, and one that feels novel and fresh.

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REVIEW: “Larvae” by Kai Taddei

Review of Kai Taddei, “Larvae,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story combines two things I’m not a huge fan of — 2nd person POV and body horror — into something that I actually rather enjoyed. The mesmerising narration felt more like a person talking to themself, rather than instructions to the reader, resulting in a very intimate and emotionally draining glimpse into a sad and rather sordid life.

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REVIEW: “Brother, Unseen” by Sylvia Heike

Review of Sylvia Heike, “Brother, Unseen,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Oh, my goodness, this was a masterclass of a story. Short, effective, beautiful language, an amazing setting and scene. It left me hungering for me, I want to read a full novel set in this world, with these characters. Just about perfection — stories like this are what make reading through the archives so worthwhile.

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REVIEW: “His Soul” by Cathrin Hagey

Review of Cathrin Hagey, “His Soul,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There are a lot of lovely fairy tale elements in this story, as well as echoes of the myth of Narcissus, but also a lot of patriarchal stereotyping with an underlying misogyny.

I would love to have been able to enjoy this story, but it just failed to push the boundaries in the way it maybe could have.

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REVIEW: “Diamond Cuts” by Shaoni C. White

Review of Shaoni C. White, “Diamond Cuts”, Uncanny Magazine Issue 41 (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Isabel Hinchliff.

The first person protagonist of “Diamond Cuts” is magically forced to perform in a two-person play where they must act out real, physical harm. When their former partner dies, their new partner, a hasty replacement with more knowledge of the outside world, makes a plan to break the spell and leave the theater. But his plan might be more likely to kill them than save them, and even if they succeed, it will have far-reaching consequences…

The story begins with a sparkling, visceral paragraph about the narrator eating a star: plucking it from the sky, biting down, and spitting out “shards of glass coated in spittle and blood.” It is terribly beautiful and remains my favorite part of the piece. From that point on, I was a little disappointed in the main plotline of the story and particularly in its conclusion. I was getting ready for an expansive space opera narrated by some sentient heavenly body that could (masochistically) consume stars, but I was given a play about magic, a story trapped within the four walls of a theater house. This subversion of expectations feels deliberate: it brings the reader into the magic of the theater for a moment, since they assume the events of the play are a real part of the story. Still, that opening set up an expectation that I felt wasn’t quite fulfilled. While the physical pain and danger of our narrator’s acting comes up throughout the piece, I wanted more exploration of what it meant to them and why it had to exist in this world. 

Without giving away the exact events of the ending, it leaves many possibilities open and revolves around a theme that doesn’t have a lot of relevance to the rest of the story. It’s just classic; you’ve likely read some version of it before. I wanted more.

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REVIEW: “Embracing the Movement” by Cristina Jurado

Review of Cristina Jurado, “Embracing the Movement”, Clarkesworld Issue 177, June (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

A fantastical tale of a strange sort of first contact. Things don’t go the way you may anticipate. There’s delicious buildup about existence in outer space and the different kinds of lives people live. It also features a very creepy payoff.

Different sorts of living spaces, structures and communication types exist in our universe. We have barely begun to understand this universe, and stories like this throw that fact into sharp relief.

A subtle queasiness exists throughout the story. If you enjoy feeling creeped out, this one will be right up your alley.

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REVIEW: “The Scarlet Cloak” by Karen Bovenmyer

Review of Karen Bovenmyer, “The Scarlet Cloak,” Luna Station Quarterly 24 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Bullying, abuse, & harassment; murder ideation; cannibalism; references to rape.

One thing that’s interesting about reading the back archives of a journal is seeing which stories age well (or don’t age at all!) and which don’t. I feel like this one ends up in the latter category: A story where the central heroine is part of the police force is a bit harder to swallow in 2021 than it may have been in 2015.

Then again, I’m not entirely sure I would’ve appreciated this story when it first came out: It is too gruesome, too violent for my tastes.

(First appeared in The Crimson Pact Volume 3, 2012.)

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