REVIEW: “The Family Recipe” by Alexandra Grunberg

Review of Alexandra Grunberg, “The Family Recipe”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Though the title of this story talks of the family “recipe”, in truth, it’s recipes: The star of the story is a cookbook collated and then handed down from generation to generation. Some recipes get lost through sticky mishaps; others are written down and added; the entire life of the cookbook a repetition of losses and additions. I liked the cyclic structure this forced onto the story, which was otherwise remarkably devoid of plot in a way that did not make the story feel deficient. My only complaint is that I found the ending weak; I would probably have stopped with simply “Everyone knew that it was never just a cookbook.”

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REVIEW: “Deep in the Drift, Spinning” by Lisa L. Hannett

Review of Lisa L. Hannett, “Deep in the Drift, Spinning”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 312 (September 10, 2020): listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

I found this to be a rather frustrating read. Though the story is certainly well written—Hannett has won four Aurealis awards, so that’s no surprise—I find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for it. Mostly that’s because I don’t find the point-of-view character, Winnifletch, very engaging. She’s a witch, of sorts, living a solitary, regret-filled life outside the sea town of Baradoon, whipping up magical broths to help her neighbors-in-need. Her daughter Shales is, or perhaps fancies herself, a harpy, while her mother pictures her more as a sailor on a galleon crewed by mermaids. Unfortunately, we don’t actually meet Shales; we learn about her and her desires only from her mother’s somewhat meandering perspective. That’s too bad. I would have liked to learn more about the lives of harpies and mermaids in the world of Baradoon, and what tugs a person more in one direction than the other. 

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REVIEW: “A Worship” by Andrea Goyan

Review of Andrea Goyan, “A Worship”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Detective Angie Ferguson has been assigned to investigate the death of Henry Van Patten, a case in which “nothing in the account, detailed by an Officer Benton, appeared abnormal.” Except, of course, that would be too easy…

And so what we have here is a fun little mystery/SF story as Angie solves the farmer’s mysterious death. Goyan captured perfectly the way a mind can flit from one subject to another, seeing strange patterns, identifying connections (even if those connections aren’t really there) — it’s not often I read a character and think “oh, she thinks like I do”, so I really enjoyed this. But don’t read it if you’re squeamish about graphic descriptions of bugs.

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REVIEW: “Doorway, Smile, Kiss, Fox” by Jeremy Packert Burke

Review of Jeremy Packert Burke, “Doorway, Smile, Kiss, Fox”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 311 (August 27, 2020): listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

In this lovely and compelling story, Themis—a character presumably named after the Greek goddess of justice, wisdom, and good counsel—is his king’s sole mnemosyne.  By some “obscure alchemy,” a mnemosyne is able to “take on, in their entirety, the memories of generals, scientists, poets, doctors—any citizen marked great by the king’s council.”  

In theory, a mnemosyne is able to search this “living archive” of information and provide solutions to whatever catastrophes befall his city, and the king who rules it. Unfortunately, in this case the city is plagued by a catastrophe for which there is no solution. Buildings have seemingly taken on a life of their own, growing “the way trees, and love, and cancer do: too slow to see but constant.” Over time, however, the rate of growth is nothing short of alarming. Knowing there is no solution, Themis is convinced the king will soon have him killed. Where he finds consolation, even joy, in the face of imminent death, I’ll leave you to discover. 

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REVIEW: “Call Center Blues” by Carrie Cuinn

Review of Carrie Cuinn, “Call Center Blues”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

With just a few sentences Cuinn manages to capture the frenetic horror of modern-day multi-tasking life — IMing while sending an email while talking on the phone, all wrapped up in the horror that is working in a call center. Throw in some recalcitrant androids, and this story just seems to hit a lot of nails on the head. I thought this story was really well done — well written, snappy, nicely balanced with humor, and just good fun to read.

(Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, 2011.)

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REVIEW: “True Colors” by Beth Goder

Review of Bethe Goder, “Rite of Passage”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact September/October (2020): 79–80 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Julia visits an AI that can allegedly read a person’s brain patterns and produce their perfect version of a work of art. But when Julia goes through the process, all she gets is a blank painting with nothing but layers of white on it.

Reading “True Colors,” I got the impression that there’s a deeper meaning in the painting metaphor, but I’m not entirely sure I get it. Something about the “deeper layers” of Julia’s personality, perhaps. I don’t there’s enough there to really come to a conclusion. Still, it was an a neat story and I enjoyed the idea of the artistic AI using something akin to machine learning to generate someone’s “perfect” work of art.

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REVIEW: “The Past, Like a River in Flood” by Marissa Lingen

Review of Marissa Lingen, “The Past Like a River in Flood”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 311 (August 27, 2020): read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

A school for magicians is hardly a novel concept these days, but what raises this fast-paced fantasy to a high level is its narrator: a forty-something former student who has reluctantly returned to her alma mater for a reason that terrifies her. When Ellis was a student, the school’s original Vault of Potions was destroyed in a flood. Now, twenty years later, two students are “mysteriously dead, found sitting against the Vault wall without a drop of blood or a bruise on them.”  At least two people suspect how the deaths relate to the long-ago flood: Ellis’s mentor, still a professor at the school, and the school’s provost. Now they need Ellis’s skill as a geomancer to neutralize the “nasty forces” in the Vault that have been allowed to build unchecked for two decades. Before the story ends, Ellis will be betrayed and witness a murder, but she’ll also have an opportunity to teach an important lesson on what it really means to put the past behind you.

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REVIEW: “Wayfarers” by Heather Morris

Review of Heather Morris, “Wayfarers”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: References to rape.

The titular wayfarers in Morris’s story are only vaguely hinted at, and the hints are not pretty — they are drug-users, they shriek and scream, they will rape “anyone they think can make babies,” as Meli, the head whore of Honeycomb, tells Athena, the narrator. As of the opening of the story, that class of people now contains Athena, whose period has just started and who “For twelve years I figured that one day I would wake up a boy. Bein’ a woman was worse than bein’ dead.”

Athena has to face not only the betrayal of her body but also the capture of her friend by the wayfarers. The only way to rescue the one is to come to terms with the other. In the end, I mostly felt sad for Athena. No one should have to feel resigned about being a woman, not when there are other options out there.

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REVIEW: “Attrition” by Leslie J. Anderson

Review of Leslie J. Anderson, “Attrition”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story had a lot of Neon Genesis Evangelion overtones — a motley collection of people and mechs they must control in order to save humanity. But since it was a short story rather than a drawn-out TV series, a proportionally higher percentage of story space was spent explaining what the mechs were and how they worked. At the end, I kind of wanted more story, and less explanation. (I also think there was a continuity error — pretty sure the two references to Mr. Hernandez were supposed to be to Mr. Henderson. Props for the character in the wheelchair, though.)

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REVIEW: “Into the Starfish Heart” by J. M. Wetherell

Review of J. M. Wetherell, “Into the Starfish Heart”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This one was a bit off the mark for me. I spent a lot of the story confused about chronology (partly, I think, because the initial paragraph set me up to think that Ledo the artist was dead, but then it turned out they weren’t? At least I don’t think so? Like I said: Confusion.), and despite the fact that at times it felt like there was a lot of back-story being dumped in a bit clumsily, I still never felt like I got a good picture of just what, exactly, the setting was. It was frustrating, because I wanted to understand what was going on, but never quite did.

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