REVIEW: “The Chameleon’s Gloves” by Yoon Ha Lee

Review of Yoon Ha Lee, “The Chameleon’s Gloves”, Uncanny Magazine Issue 41 (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Isabel Hinchliff.

You can never go too wrong with a swashbuckling space adventure. Two thieves (one exile with extraordinary lockpicking abilities and one pilot) are bribed and threatened into stealing a superweapon that could blow up thirty thousand light-years worth of space. It’s a wild ride with a fascinating and ingenious narrator at the helm.

My only complaint is that the ride was, perhaps, too wild. Our narrator, Rhehan, switches allegiances between factions several times, almost at the drop of a hat. The stakes (thirty thousand light-years worth of space!!) seem very high, and yet Rhehan is fairly nonchalant about playing hot potato with such a powerful weapon. I felt that in the kaleidoscopic narrative of shifting loyalties, Rhehan’s haunted past and history with their clan (one of the factions) was lost as a theme, only to return at the end as though we should have been following it the whole time. Overall, the story caught and held me, but I wondered if the complicated plot eclipsed some of the finer nuances of characterization.

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REVIEW: “From the Archives of the Museum of Eerie Skins: An Account” by C. S. E. Cooney

Review of C. S. E. Cooney,  “From the Archives of the Museum of Eerie Skins: An Account”, Uncanny Magazine Issue 41 (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Isabel Hinchliff.

Formatted as an interview transcript, this captivating tale takes place on a university campus populated by people with magical abilities, including witches, wolfcasters, and warlocks. Our narrator, a wolfcaster, is nigh-invulnerable just as long as she keeps her pelt safe, but with a rich warlock targeting her, this doesn’t last long. Her path to revenge is darkly humorous, playing on the failures of our own present-day justice system. 

The voice of our narrator, Firi, is so robust that it seems to burst from the page, unloading fiery commentary. I reveled in her energy, her exuberance, and her dauntlessness. There was something profoundly comforting about the way her harrowing tale was told from the perspective of herself in the future, after the conflict had been resolved and she had clearly moved on to accomplish great things with her life. While the interview transcript formatting did seem a little unnecessary at times, it generally added a lot to the worldbuilding, giving me a sense that we were being told about only one small part of an entire world full of cutthroat politics. On the whole, it’s a tight piece with more than enough detail for a second read: plenty of “aha” moments! A deeply satisfying story.

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REVIEW: “A Moral Majority” by Nikoline Kaiser

Review of Nikoline Kaiser, “A Moral Majority”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a very different sort of love story than the one in “Forestborn” (read the review), but every bit as lovely, and the way it was underpinned by the collective will, of the entire town of Goldville, to do the right thing in support of Angela and Marigold in their time of need was something quite special. If Kaiser weaves this strength of moral virtue into the rest of her writing, then I want to read more of it.

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REVIEW: “Bots of the Lost Ark” by Suzanne Palmer

Review of Suzanne Palmer, “Bots of the Lost Ark”, Clarkesworld Issue 177, June (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Featuring 9, the much loved bot from The Secret Life of Bots, a Hugo award winning story. It can be read as a standalone story, which indeed I did, before further research led me to understand that 9 has made an appearance in a previous story. Of course it’s next on my list.

Bots of the Lost Ark, however, was an amazing tale. I’ve read Palmer’s work before, and I’ve loved every single thing I’ve read of hers. This is no exception.

9 is basically the little bot that could, and every other character – human or glom – is so well written. The urgency, the moral dilemma, the instincts and feelings that bots and ships can have, and an overall poignant yet humourous feel make this an absolute masterpiece.

I want to say more words but I can’t find the right ones, which is something that pretty much never happens to me. Just read this. I love. This has been yet another Suzanne Palmer appreciation post.

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REVIEW: “Unit Two Does Her Makeup” by Laura Duerr

Review of Laura Duerr, “Unit Two Does Her Makeup”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I didn’t expect a story of make-up, misogyny (okay, that isn’t fun, but the way it was casually ignored was), and a conscious navigation of the uncanny valley to end up being so empowering. It was an accomplished telling from the POV of an AI, who sometimes awkwardly, sometimes smoothly straddles the line between being herself and being more humanlike, and I’m considering reading it to my newly-discovered-make-up daughter. I think it’s got a message that she’d value hearing.

(Weirdly, though, this was the second story of this issue that had proofreading issues: Sometimes it’s Suzanne, sometimes Susana, and I think the one lone instance of “Maya” was meant to be Suzan(ne/a). Frustrating.)

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REVIEW: “Stones and Bones” by Devon Widmer

Review of Devon Widmer, “Stones and Bones”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The other day I saw someone asking for recommendations for SFF with humor; if only I had read this story then, I could’ve recommended it, because it is laced with delightful comedy! And that’s in addition to the queer romance that blossoms into a ghost-exorcism business. All in all, this was a good fun read.

The only drawback — unusual for LSQ — was how the typesetting marred the story; about two-thirds of the way in, all of a sudden most of the capital letters were lost. No fault of the author, but it was still unfortunately distracting.

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REVIEW: “Lemon” by Mara Regan

Review of Mara Regan, “Lemon”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“When someone is dying, the rest of us do weird things.”

This. This is why I read short SFF fiction. Because of lines like this, which hit you in the stomach and ring so full of truth.

It hardly matters what the rest of the story is, once you read a line like this, because the story has fulfilled its purpose. It was an added bonus that the rest of the story was so good — and so sad.

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REVIEW: “The Wandering Fae” by Alex Grehy

Review of Alex Grehy, “The Wandering Fae”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

On the one hand, you have Finn, the Fae, who lounges and loafs around and is generally reckless and idlesome; on the other hand, you have Belladonna, the witch, who cooks and cleans and weaves and cares and does all the things that need to be done to keep a shared life going. I think we were supposed to read this story partly as a sweet fairy-tale love story, but I kept tripping up against the structural misogyny encoded in the two main characters, and never quite found myself enjoying it.

I totally did not expect what came when they encountered the Dark Fae, though. So, half a thumb up for unexpected surprises.

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