REVIEW: “The Caged Budgerigars” by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

Review of Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, “The Caged Budgerigars,” Flash Fiction Online 135 (December 2024): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Miscarriage, stillbirth, and infertility.

This was a well-put-together story but upon reading it I knew I’d have difficulty reviewing it because it’s not really speculative in any way (FFO has the occasional non-spec story). But I was curious about what the issue’s theme was, to see if understanding how it fit into the theme would reveal something more than what was in the story itself. The theme for this issue is “eco-futures,” and knowing that didn’t actually clue me in any more; this story is very much rooted in the present. So I delved into the editorial to see if I could understand why the editors chose this particular story for this particular theme, and Halsey’s comment piqued my interest: “I went with this portrayal of a woman struggling with her inability to have children because it mirrors the intimacy of another mother’s story within this issue” (p. 6). Guess I’ll have to read that one next!

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REVIEW: “Five Easy Hairstyles for Snake-Haired Girls” by Jelena Dunato

Review of Jelena Dunato, “Five Easy Hairstyles for Snake-Haired Girls,” Small Wonders no. 4 (October 2023): 10-11 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This poem was a twist on the standard Medusa story, from her despoilment to her eventual escape and ascension. It had a couple of good lines in it, including: “If you wanted criticism, you’d call your mother,” which is a banger.

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REVIEW: “Luminous Glass, Vibrant Seeds” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires

Review of D.A. Xiaolin Spires, “Luminous Glass, Vibrant Seeds”, Clarkesworld Issue 218, November (2024): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Yet another beautiful story of hope! Clarkesworld is really spoiling us readers lately, each and every story making me feel a certain type of way. This one is a beautiful combination of food, agriculture, and glassblowing, amongst other things.

Set sometime in the future, where people have gotten more in touch with their roots and nature. Decentralization and independence is the focus for many humans here, allusions to a past occurrence that created a sort of dystopia. But humans are resilient. And humans have also always appreciated beauty, right from cave drawing times. Beauty in the craggiest mountain and smallest seed. Oh, and a little green-thumbed robot feels the same way, too. Just lovely.

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REVIEW: “If We Live to be Giants” by Allison Mulder

Review of Allison Mulder, “If We Live to be Giants,” Small Wonders no. 4 (October 2023): 25-28 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Domestic abuse.

This was a shudderingly sad story of two girls’ escape — and their mother’s escape — from an abusive grandfather. It’s the kind of story that makes you think there must be something behind it, a reason why the author chose to wrote this story rather than another one. I hope the exorcism of writing it helped.

(First published in Fireside Magazine 47, 2017).

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REVIEW: “Drunken Supernova” by Keira Perkins

Review of Keira Perkins, “Drunken Supernova,” Small Wonders no. 4 (October 2023): 21-23 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

One of the things that Small Wonders does very well is speculative poetry, and this one is no exception. Perkins’ poem is long enough to be a flash fic piece in itself, but it is very clearly poetry and not just prose that’s been formatted with strange line breaks. It has a tight, clear voice, blending reality and unreality exquisitely, with a sucker punch at the end.

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REVIEW: “On the Bare Unwelcoming Shore” by Zohar Jacobs

Review of Zohar Jacobs, “On the Bare Unwelcoming Shore,” Small Wonders no. 4 (October 2023): 17-19 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

What a beautiful and evocative story this was, exploring the lives of the generation after the generation after the generation that first settled on Mars. It’s ostensibly SF — space travel, planet settling — but the strongest thread in the story, for me, was the way it questioned what religion is and where it comes from. So much in such a small package: I loved it.

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REVIEW: “Granny’s Spider” by Wen Wen Yang

Review of Wen Wen Yang, “Granny’s Spider,” Small Wonders no. 4 (October 2023): 13-15 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Gwen has never known what happened to The First One, Granny’s first husband and the grandfather of Gwen’s husband, and this story is the story of how she asked and found out. I actually really struggled with this story for perhaps a silly reason: Granny knew that The First One was not a good one quite early on, already back when her kids were young. She says she went to a lawyer and was advised to go and ask for a divorce. But this is below the Mason-Dixon line, and Granny is 80, so assuming this was in the 1960s…lots of states didn’t introduce no-fault divorces until 1970 or later, and prior to that it was just not that easy for a woman to “go and get a divorce”. So would this really have been what a lawyer would advise her?

It’s such a small point to get hung up on, but get hung up on it I did (paused in the middle of the story to go trawling down wikipedia to confirm my hazy memory for dates), and while I love a story that causes me to wikipedia dive, I don’t like it so much when I feel the need to do it in the middle of the story as a fact-check mechanism.

(First published in The Arcanist 2021.)

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