REVIEW: “Curse Like a Savior” by Russell Nichols

Review of Russell Nichols, “Curse Like a Savior”, Apex Magazine 118 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Junior thinks this is going to be a quick job – just slip, in repair Mrs. Layla Fisher’s Halogram (currently displaying a Jesus who cusses up a storm), and move on. He doesn’t care what anybody else believes, so long as they let him do his job in peace. Unfortunately for him, it seems that Mrs. Fisher has other ideas.

This does a great job of mixing light fun with some more serious themes. On the one hand, anybody who has ever worked a customer service job will recognize Junior’s struggle to do his job without getting drawn into a long, emotionally taxing conversation with the client. But then we have the Halograms that are at the center of this whole transaction, holograms of famous people, specifically of the sort who people idolize – religious figures and inspiration writers and politicians ranging from Jesus and Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. and Maya Angelou. As the conversation with Mrs. Fisher goes on, the subject of faith comes to the forefront, and the story transitions from an almost frivolous look at futuristic customer service, to something much deeper and more challenging.

The ending took me by surprise. It’s much more unsettling than I expected, and made me rethink everything that came before it. Fortunately, this is a short enough story that it’s not a hardship to reread it!

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REVIEW: “Call to Mind” by Ella Syverson

Review of Ella Syverson, “Call to Mind”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

If swearing in your stories isn’t for you, then avoid this one — it starts off with a curse word.

But Sam and her traveling companion, Diesel, have something to curse about. Their memories have been wiped — again — and while artificial amnesia is part of the job when you’re employed by the Department of Supernatural Control, that doesn’t mean it ever gets any easier, especially when you know that there isn’t really any out. Even with artificial amnesia, DSC employees know too much to ever not be DSC employees.

Both Sam and Diesel are good at their job, though, and that’s why they’re the ones tasked to track down a rogue human who’s been fraternizing with sirens, werewolves, and witches. Too many DSC agents have been lost in trying to capture this rogue, so it’s up to the two of them to put an end to it.

Of course neither expected the job to be an easy one, but I as the reader also didn’t expect it to be easy, and found that the story came up abruptly rather short at the end. I would have loved to see the interesting premise that it began with fully developed into something more substantial than what I ended up getting.

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REVIEW: “Tenari” by Michael Merriam

Review of Michael Merriam, “Tenari”, in Catherine Lundoff, ed., Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) (Queen of Swords Press, 2018): 168-180 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Captain Reed’s ship, the Black Manta, hasn’t always been black. Decades ago, the ship was just the Manta, an attack ship in the Colonial Defense Forces. At the time, Captain Reed wasn’t captain, merely senior lieutenant, and her current XO, Roger Baldry, was navigator and second officer. But it’s been a long time since Reed and Baldry encountered the mythical alien race, the Tenari, and — when no one else did — lived to tell the tale. Now the Manta is a pirate ship, no longer a military ship, and Reed and Baldry are facing the Tenari again. They were lucky once to escape with their lives; will they be lucky enough to escape a second time?

Merriam’s story is filled with rich detail and a panoply of characters, which I liked. However, two things about this story bothered or confused me. First, half the time the captain was named Kathleen Reed, the other half she was Katherine Reed, and I was never sure if this was intentional or just something that slipped past proofreading. Second, with almost no exception, the female characters were referred to solely by their given name, while the male characters were referred to by either their surname or surname + title. It’s such a small thing, but to see “Janet” (Sobrinski) working side by side (Roger) “Baldry”, “Mr. Roberts” the helmsman working with crewmember “Tilly” (no surname), was a constant reminder of how even when female characters are given equal screen time with male in a story, they are still treated unequally. We’ve come so far in terms of representation in SFF stories; but there is still so much further left to go.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “After the Deluge” by Peter Golubock

Review of Peter Golubock, “After the Deluge”, in Catherine Lundoff, ed., Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) (Queen of Swords Press, 2018): 156-167 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

It wasn’t a big surprise when New York sank beneath the waves. The surprise was that everyone stayed (p. 161).

When global warming catches up with NYC and the city is deluged, one of the perks of city with many skyscrapers is that the floods only took out a few of the floors, leaving much of the city still high and dry. But with dry land left to the rich, it’s no surprise that the poor took to being pirates on the newly formed water ways, raiding big cargo ships with their little motor boats and dinghies. The Pizza Rat is one such ship, and her captain has been making a successful career as one of the most powerful pirate captains in the five boroughs for some time now. But when the captain of the Pizza Rat receives a tip-off from a trusted source, of an unescorted cargo barge, things don’t go exactly to plan…

Even if cops-and-robbers pirate-chase stories like this aren’t exactly my cup of tea, it was still a fun read.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “A Crooked Road Home” by Caroline Sciriha

Review of Caroline Sciriha, “A Crooked Road Home”, in Catherine Lundoff, ed., Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) (Queen of Swords Press, 2018): 144-155 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story caught me by surprise. It started off being a relatively ordinary story about space pirates and organised crime and smuggling — the sort of thing you’d find in a typical B-grade SF flick — and ended up turning much deeper and sharper and harsher and more beautiful. This isn’t merely the story of space pirate Captain Jesson out to win his freedom from his mob-boss father to secure a future for himself; it’s the story of how he must face the ugly aspects of his past, the parts he had no control over then but maybe can make restitution for how.

Sciriha tangles together threads of child trafficking, parental loss, and the displacement that comes from being a member of a minority culture in such a way that I was left with a lump in my throat and a lingering sadness for Jesson’s past and hope for his future.

Sara L. Uckelman2 Comments

REVIEW: “Where Gods Dance” by Ben Serna-Grey

Review of Ben Serna-Grey, “Where Gods Dance”, Apex Magazine 118 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This is a story about grief, and the unbearable loss of a child. The narrator tries again and again and again to hold onto some small bit of what he has lost, with disastrous results.

This is more of a mood piece than a clear narrative, but that works well for such a short story. It invokes a host of complicated emotions, far more than could be fit if they need to be tied to a strict progression of scenes. I appreciate the way Serna-Grey refuses to shy away from the confusing tumult of the narrator’s feelings, nor from his increasingly desperate decisions.

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REVIEW: “Green is for Wishes and Apples” by Kathryn McMahon

Review of Kathryn McMahon, “Green is for Wishes and Apples”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

From Eve’s apple to the apple the witch gives Snow White, there’s no denying that in myth and story, apples are magic. Abigail knows the Granny Smiths in the tree she loves to climb partake in that tradition of magic — she learned about it from Gram, but Gram herself is now dead. Can even those potent green fruit bring back the dead?

McMahon’s slow, dreamy story of intricate witchery is creepy and unsettling, and I was rather glad the ending was dark rather than hopeful; it seemed fitting.

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REVIEW: “Laughter in the Graveyard” by Mab Morris

Review of Mab Morris, “Laughter in the Graveyard”, Luna Station Quarterly 37 (2019): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Gazev is a young woman who upon the death of her sister, Sonalie, inherited her job as temple cleaner. Wherever she goes she carries the weight of her sister’s death — never explained in the story — as well as the weight of “the years of [the priests’] gaze upon her beautiful, bent shoulders”. She wanders through the graveyard, but cannot escape her sister’s legacy.

I found this a heavy, depressing story. Casual misogyny is so rife in the real world, that one often looks to fantasy and speculative fiction for escape — for there we can explore worlds that are built on fundamentally different principles than our own. But while much of the world Morris builds in Gazev’s story is different from ours and foreign, the same old misogyny is there, as if it is inescapable.

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REVIEW: “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate” by Matisse Mozer

Review of Matisse Mozer, “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate”, in Catherine Lundoff, ed., Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) (Queen of Swords Press, 2018): 128-143 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Jack Hurwitz’s life is boring. He still lives with his dad and step-mom. He doesn’t have a job. He’s failed his classes and won’t be going to community college. There is basically nothing in his life to redeem it.

That is, before an alien satellite lands in his backyard, complete with a refugee alien pirate girl who is the only thing that stands between the earth and its destruction. Suddenly, Jack’s life is anything but boring.

A fun swashbuckling-in-space story with so many double-crossings and double-bluffs that I could hardly keep track of who was a good guy and who was a bad guy, Mozer’s tale was lighthearted and fun to read.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Prison-house of Language” by Elana Gomel

Review of Elana Gomel, “The Prison-house of Language”, Apex Magazine 118 (2019): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Dr. Sophia Abdoul is unique, as a linguist who finds human language painful to speak. That condition has driven her to study as many languages as she can, both modern and ancient, in a search for the mythical ur-language that pre-dated them all. This makes her the perfect person for the army to ask to help with an experiment that has gone awry – the subjects have begun speaking in tongues.

Sophia is a wonderful example of a protagonist who is not traditionally “likable,” but who is still sympathetic and enjoyable to read about. Because of her unique condition, she has trouble connecting with people, who all seem to constantly want to talk. She is acerbic and utterly certain that she is smarter than everyone around her. She’s also perceptive and witty and a wonderful narrator, reflecting both on what is happening around her in the present, and some traumatic experiences from her past.

At its heart, I believe this is a story about language and how it both divides and connects us. It connects us to each other, but divides us from the rest of the world. It divides Sophia from the rest of humanity in much the same way. The mysterious experiment that she is drawn in to help repair and explain takes it a step further, showing her exactly why she is the way she is, and what she can do that others can not. It’s a good ending, that doesn’t wrap things up too neatly.

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