REVIEW: “Snow” by Chen Danyan

Review of Chen Danyan, Paul Harris (trans.), “Snow”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 9-22 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Another story that is not particularly speculative/SFF in nature, Danyan’s tale follows Zheng Ling one New Year’s morning as she navigates not only a trepidatious visit to her mother, but also a growing realisation that she is inhabiting the type of life that she pities in others.

It’s a quiet, not especially happy story, with a weight that makes everything feel like it’s blanketed in the titular snow. Little scenes are sketched here and there with great clarity, and while it may not be the sort of story that I ordinarily enjoy, I definitely enjoyed the writing (so kudos to the translator, whom I can only assume did an excellent job.)

(Originally published in Shanghai Literature, 2010).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Calm Face of the Storm” by Ramona Louise Wheeler

Review of Ramona Louise Wheeler, “Calm Face of the Storm”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact May/June (2020): 119–131 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.

Contains spoilers.

In a planet orbiting twin suns, Bret is a flying man that has strayed away from his home while chasing a strange looking lizard. On the way, a violent storm almost kills him, knocking him unconscious. Bret wakes up in one of the lighthouses that populate the edge of his people’s territory. There he finds out that the lighthouses are maintained by a set of “transparent” flying people, not as technologically advanced as his own culture, living a more natural way of life. Bret falls in love with Mornell, the daughter of the lighthouse keeper, and with her help, adopts their way of life. However, he soon realizes that he can’t stay with them forever and must return home.

I always try to not be a stickler about “genre purity,” but I was nevertheless surprised this story was included in Analog. While it has some elements of science fiction (twin suns, spaceports, possibly aliens, etc.) it reads a lot more like a fantasy story — or at the very least, a convoluted hybrid of the two (I could not stop thinking of Avatar). It doesn’t matter so much, since most of the story takes place inside the main character’s head, but it is nevertheless something that stood out to me.

Genre nitpicking aside, I was rather disappointed with the story. The world that the author creates, while rich in detail, is nothing new or original, drawing on many preexisting tropes. At times I was impressed with the author’s prose, but much of it felt padded with one unnecessary description after another, making the story rather painful to read. Similarly, the plot offers little more than a standard coming of age story with the addition of some serious holes in its logic. For example, Bret comes from a somewhat technologically advanced society, yet nobody knows what lies just a few miles outside their city. This sounds highly implausible to say the least.

Overall, I found very little to enjoy in “Calm Face of the Storm.”

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REVIEW: “The Honey of the World and the Queen of Crows” by Dimitra Nikolaidou

Review of Dimitra Nikolaidou, “The Honey of the World and the Queen of Crows”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 304 (May 21, 2020): listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

Ever hear the one about the nun and the soldier who enter a bar and can’t see their reflection, or that of the bartender, in the mirror on the opposite wall? Neither had I until I read this wonderful story. Magdalene is the nun and Leandros the soldier. He and a fellow soldier he loves (Yiorgos) have just suffered mortal wounds in battle and now Leandros finds himself on what Magdalene describes as “the border.” While they sit there, drinking honeyed raqi (him) and whiskey (her), Magdalene offers him a chance to live again and escape the war with Yiorgos. Leandros can’t help thinking of the offer as a bargain with the Devil. To convince him otherwise, the nun magically stops time and tells him the very unnunlike story of her life and death and the price she paid for the opportunity to tell it to him. It’s a remarkable story, told in a compelling narrative voice, marred only slightly by the somewhat jarring, though ultimately satisfying, point-of-view shift toward the end.  

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REVIEW: “Clever Jack, Heavy with Stories” by R. K. Duncan

Review of R.K. Duncan, “Clever Jack, Heavy with Stories”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 304 (May 21, 2020): read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

This enjoyable adventure in the land of the fairies is well worth reading, even though the ending is a bit predictable. It primarily centers around the close relationship between two childhood friends. Rowland, the son of Lord Robert, is the stronger of the two, while Jack, the son of Lord Robert’s cook, is smarter and wiser than his friend. Class differences should force the two to part company, but in spite of the difficulties, their companionship continues into their fourteenth year. That’s when a magic spell transports Rowland to Fairyland against his will. Jack is determined to rescue him and—with the help of an old witch, some gifts from his mother, and his own quick wits—he does so, gaining more than he bargained for by story’s end. 

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REVIEW: “Fox Red, Life Red, Teeth Like Snow” By Devin Miller

Review of Devin Miller, “Fox Red, Life Red, Teeth Like Snow”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 303, May 7, 2020: listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

In this brief but interesting story, a changetroll named Hryggda is returning home to her wives shortly before dawn with a human baby she secretly “traded” a changeling-babe for. Along the way she meets a wolf hungry for more than animal prey. Somehow, “wolves have been hunting the sun since her autumn waning, but she has escaped, hidden herself in a den to sleep until spring like a bear. And now, it seems, the forest’s hunters aim to eat the moon.” Hryggda is determined to protect the moon, much as the moon protects her during her late night excursions. She is, however, hampered by her even greater need to protect the newborn she carries. 

I won’t tell you what happens, but I will say that the story ends too quickly and too conveniently for my taste. It would have benefited from a deeper examination of the lives of the changetrolls and the world they inhabit.  

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REVIEW: “Ah Fang’s Lamp” by Wang Anyi

Review of Wang Anyi, Helen Wang (trans.), “Ah Fang’s Lamp”, in Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020): 1-8 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Ah Fang hangs her lamp outside her door, to sell fruits and vegetables to passers-by, changing the entire life of the street, in the eyes of the unnamed narrator who walks the street daily and weaves their “own beautiful fairy tale, which, on grey or rainy days, inspires [them] not to be disheartened” (p. 8).

The story itself doesn’t have any speculative elements to it, but it was full of finely crafted details that made me get a real sense of the space and the place, something I struggle with sometimes, due to mild aphantasia. Normally I gloss over a lot of written description, but here, I really felt like a few well-placed words conjured up vivid pictures.

(First published in People’s Daily Overseas Edition, 2018.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Reincarnation” by Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert

Review of Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert, “Reincarnation”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 377 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This spare, evocative poem makes for a wonderful closing piece to the volume, playing on the idea that we are all stardust, and stardust we will all become.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Les Korrigan” by JBMulligan

Review of JBMulligan, “Les Korrigan”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 365-376 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Good stories play with stereotypes and turn them on their head. Think of a fairy: What do you imagine? Small, fluttery wings, probably female…this is about as far from Les Korrigan as you can get! Les is a tough old manual laborer, powered by alcohol and full of “groaner” jokes, filing reports on the so-called “self-contemplative beings” to headquarters three times a day.

But being a fairy didn’t always use to be like this. In the story we learn about the Old Way and the New Way, and that Les’s father was caught in the transition from one to the next. Beyond that, though, I felt like I didn’t get much context for the story, nor very much character development or action. It was a strange little piece.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Legato” by Brian A. Salmons

Review of Brian A. Salmons, “Legato”, in David G. Clark, Callum Colback, Joe Butler, and Alex Hareland, eds., Beneath Strange Stars, (TL;DR Press, 2020): 363-364 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This poem, described as “a pantoum after a line from Ursula K. LeGuin’s Planet of Exile“, is a beautiful one full of sweet longing. I wasn’t familiar with pantoums before reading this poem, but I have decided I love the style — full of ripples and repeats like the tide ebbing in and out.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: The Book of Shanghai edited by Jin Li and Dai Congrong

Review of Jin Li and Dai Congrong, ed., The Book of Shanghai, (Comma Press, 2020) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The Book of Shanghai is part of a series of books which pick a city and then collect stories from/of that city. In the introduction to this volume, Jin Li provides a nine page overview of the history of literature and authors from Shanghai, from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, charting the evolution of the modern period of Shanghainese literature and the influence of western culture upon its development. It was fascinating and accessible and I learned a lot about a topic I had previously known very little. Thumbs up for that alone.

This isn’t the sort of collection that we normally review here, as most of the stories in it are of a more straight-up literary flavor, with little to no speculative elements in them; only a few stories fall under the spec-fic umbrella, to a greater or lesser degree, despite the blurb on the back making the stories sound much more fantastical than some of them are. Nevertheless, when I was offered a review copy, I jumped at the opportunity, having previously read and deeply appreciated two of Comma Press’s spec fic/SFF anthologies. This volume also didn’t disappoint. As usual, we’ll review each story separately and link to the reviews below as they are published. As is not usual, however, we’ve put an asterisk (*) next to the stories that do fall in the SFF/spec fic remit of this blog, so that if for whatever reason you wish to avoid the non-speculative stories, you can (though we don’t recommend that — they’re all good).

Sara L. Uckelman11 Comments