REVIEW: “Exalted Guests (Or, How Malka Raised a Dybbuk Army)” by Rena Rossner

Review of Rena Rossner, “Exalted Guests (Or, How Malka Raised a Dybbuk Army),” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

LSQ over the years has been one of my most reliable sources of Jewish speculative fiction, and Rossner’s story of young Malka leaving her family’s Sukkot celebration to the village cemetary, only to find herself calling out “the kabbalistic incantations she was supposed to only hear, not speak” and speaking in languages she does not know to call up the dead, is another tick in that box. It’s a wild, frenzied story, leaving the reader uncertain whether the dybbuk army is a blessing or a scourge.

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REVIEW: “Ingebjorg Unspelled” by Jessamy Dalton

Review of Jessamy Dalton, “Ingebjorg Unspelled,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Oh, I absolutely loved this story. Ingebjorg is the daughter of the king of the Northlands, taking after her boisterous, raw-boned father rather than her cultivated, educated mother. Her character comes through in the very first lines of the story and it is engaging and distinctive. Dalton paints her relationship to her parents, and her parents relationship with each other, with great deftness; every word rings true, every one is sympathetic. It’s hard not to feel for Fridesweide, who has to grow old and grey and fretful that she will lose everything her husband has loved in her; it’s not hard to understand how Ingebjorg can love her mother but get along better with her the further they are apart; it’s extremely easy to feel the same revulsion for Klovass the alchemy professor that Ingebjorg feels. And when a Delphic oracle is cast upon Ingebjorg’s life, I could not wait to see how it would resolve itself. I just really enjoyed reading this.

(First published in Lorelei Signal 2011.)

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REVIEW: “Peaches in the Breeze” by Siobhan Gallagher

Review of Siobhan Gallagher, “Peaches in the Breeze,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This extremely short story felt a bit more like a sketch for the real thing — too bare bones to quite be fully fledged. If you like tales of women conquering over misogyny, then you might like this one; but I would have liked to see more than just this.

(Originally published in Abyss & Apex, 2013.)

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REVIEW: “Promises We Made Under A Brick-Dark Sky” by Karen Osborne

Review of Karen Osborne, “Promises We Made Under A Brick-Dark Sky”, Clarkesworld Issue 178, July (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Just beautiful. This issue starts off strong and how! Our narrator is a strong, courageous woman and contributes greatly to the beauty of this story.

I’ve said beauty twice already, and I realize that this story really is deserving of that adjective, though the description of the world and the lives lived within it are often anything but.

Osborne’s vivid imagery and fresh descriptions add a different texture to the story, and her clever use of language reveals all in due time. A stark world, a type of God, fear and mistrust, love, code and prayer, and above all, hope.

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REVIEW: “Eleusinian Mysteries” by Charlotte Ashley

Review of Charlotte Ashley, “Eleusinian Mysteries,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story is a shining example of the very best of historical science fiction. In 17th-century Amsterdam, engraver Maghfira van Delsen discovers the secret of the mysterious city Eleusia, and her discovery threatens not only the colonising aspirations of the VOC (the Dutch Eastindia Company) but, as a result, her own livelihood and life. The story is a perfect blending of historical verisimilitude and extra-worldly adventure; not only is it good SF, it feels like it is exactly the sort of SF you would expect to get in the 17th century. I really loved this story.

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REVIEW: “The Tree of Life in Lisbon” by O. J. Cade

Review of O. J. Cade, “The Tree of Life in Lisbon,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Cade used a story structure that I hadn’t ever encountered before, each different scene/setting being prefaced with a parenthetical description. It was a bit odd in the first instance, but as soon as I hit the second one I was immediately “oooh, I want to see how the same characters and issues will unfold in each different setting,” so it proved to be effective. And so we see Eve, over and over again, in each of her different gardens, in Lisbon, in Jerusalem, in Alexandria, in Athens and elsewhere, as she continually plants “one creation at a time”. The result is an intriguing portrait of one of the most written-about women in history, and one that feels novel and fresh.

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REVIEW: “Larvae” by Kai Taddei

Review of Kai Taddei, “Larvae,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story combines two things I’m not a huge fan of — 2nd person POV and body horror — into something that I actually rather enjoyed. The mesmerising narration felt more like a person talking to themself, rather than instructions to the reader, resulting in a very intimate and emotionally draining glimpse into a sad and rather sordid life.

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REVIEW: “Brother, Unseen” by Sylvia Heike

Review of Sylvia Heike, “Brother, Unseen,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Oh, my goodness, this was a masterclass of a story. Short, effective, beautiful language, an amazing setting and scene. It left me hungering for me, I want to read a full novel set in this world, with these characters. Just about perfection — stories like this are what make reading through the archives so worthwhile.

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REVIEW: “His Soul” by Cathrin Hagey

Review of Cathrin Hagey, “His Soul,” Luna Station Quarterly 23 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There are a lot of lovely fairy tale elements in this story, as well as echoes of the myth of Narcissus, but also a lot of patriarchal stereotyping with an underlying misogyny.

I would love to have been able to enjoy this story, but it just failed to push the boundaries in the way it maybe could have.

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REVIEW: “The Curse of the Stillborn” by Margery Lawrence

Review of Margery Lawrence, “The Curse of the Stillborn,” in Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth, edited by Jen Baker (British Library, 2021): 295-312 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This story — featuring British missionaries living in Egypt — opened with a surprising commentary on colonialism and colonial practises:

“Dammit — why can’t you let ’em bury their dead in their own way?” (p. 295).

Mr. and Mrs. Bond cannot fathom why anyone would refuse the option of a good Christian burial for a child, which they are so generously willing to offer. And yet, Takkari and her daughter Mefren want nothing more than to be allowed to bury Mefren’s stillborn child according to their own practices and traditions.

While usually in western European ghost stories, the refusal of Christian burial is what dooms a tortured soul to walk the earth, in contradistinction here it is the performance of the Christian rite that traps Mefren’s child in ghostly limbo and invokes the curse of the stillborn. A rather surprising story to read, given the time it was published!

(First published in Hutchinson’s Mystery Magazine in 1925.)

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