REVIEW: “We are Turning on a Spindle” by Joanna Parypinski

Review of Joanna Parypinski, “We are Turning on a Spindle”, Nightmare Magazine 61: Read Online. Reviewed by Winnie Ramler.

Time marches ever on. It pays no attention to the desires of us mortals, and it certainly doesn’t stop for anything. One of the fun aspects of science fiction is that it gives us a chance to imagine how the future might appear. Some choose to go not too far into the future, but Joanna Parypinski goes so far that there is hardly anything left. You can’t even be sure if this was Earth or if it’s some other planet where beings like us may have existed.

In this retelling of Sleeping Beauty, the main character traverses a long distance in the far off future in order to find the greatest beauty in the universe. The world is so changed that it is alien and ancient and falling a part. His obsession with his quest is what drives him- the strength of the legends he’s heard and the strength of his own convictions.

I love the descriptions in this story. The details were gorgeous (even when they were describing things that were less so). It was a very visceral read.

I really appreciated the introspective tone of the tale. Possession is a tenuous concept, and this story examines what exactly this term means and the consequences that can come with it. Be careful what you wish for.

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REVIEW: “Poison_apple.exe” by Chanel Earl

Review of Chanel Earl, “Poison_apple.exe”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 145-159 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is another story where the inspiring myth is clear from the title alone. The twist comes from the fact that the story is told from the POV of the “evil queen” (who is the grandmother, rather than the stepmother — a pleasant twist away from a standard trope). The setting of the story is maybe one or two generations from the present, and Earl works in the SF elements — which are perforce muted because of the timeline — in a very careful and precise way. The magic mirror is not magic, merely a robot. Instead of poisoned apples, Snow White must avoid a cleverly implanted computer virus.

Earl’s take on “Snow White” was a vivid and different retelling of the story. She evokes the reader’s sympathy in the main character while also perfectly capturing 7-year-old exuberance.

My enjoyment of the story was marred by the number of missing apposite commas, which jars me every time, as well as a few typos and errors in capitalization. It’s a shame that a good story was let down by the proofreading and editing.

Sara L. Uckelman2 Comments

REVIEW: “Tree of the Forest Seven Bells Turns the World Round Midnight” by Sheree Renée Thomas

Review of Sheree Renée Thomas, “Tree of the Forest Seven Bells Turns the World Round Midnight”, Apex Magazine 101: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

The main action is simple: Wilder is hiking through the Tennessee woods at night with his lover, Thistle, in order to meet her mother. The language is dense and lyrical, dripping with portent. In order to get the most of this one, you have to be willing to let yourself sink into that language without worrying too much about the plot. The narrative follows a meandering path though the present and the past, dipping into Wilder’s attempts to woo Thistle, into their relationship, and occasionally into his life before her, before returning to the present day. The point of this story is not the plot (though it’s a fine, well-developed plot). The point of this story is the characters, mood, and feeling. It is the dawning realization that all is not as it seems to the narrator, and the inevitable resolution.

While I admire the luscious language and the the languid journey, I personally found that this story moved too slowly for me, towards a resolution that I guessed at shortly after the opening lines. An inevitable ending isn’t necessarily a bad thing – sometimes it can allow the reader to focus on the journey over the destination – but it didn’t entirely work for me in this case. I kept thinking about how the details and diversions might come together in the end, when they were the point in and of themselves. Each memory, each observation, feeds the mood, giving it depth and weight. That is the point: to be fully immersed in the world, so that ending, once it arrives, has a gravity to it.

I want to emphasize that I didn’t dislike this story – I think it’s expertly written and executed – I just wasn’t able to sink into as fully as I wanted to. If you love to linger over dense prose, lyrical descriptions, and a beautifully meandering narrative, then this may well be the story for you.

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REVIEW: “Ashes” by Mike Lewis

Review of Mike Lewis, “Ashes”, in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 63-80 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I really do love retellings of known tales. You get all of the comfort of familiarity and all the joy of wondering what the twist(s) will be. This story is, of course, Cinderella — if the title wasn’t a big enough clue, then the main character’s name being Ella definitely should be.

One of the fascinating things about fairy tales is that the characters in them are more like caricatures; they are fitted into a story according to the roles that they play rather than according to characteristics of themselves. This works brilliantly for fairy tales told to small children, who can use the technique as a means of inserting themselves into the story. For a retelling of a fairy tale, however, the use of stock characters executing well-known tropes can sometimes feel a bit tiresome. I spent much of the story being bounced between irritation at the appearance of these tropes and then having that irritation assuaged by the way Lewis played on the tropes and twisted them. Why must Ella’s sisters be physically gorgeous while she is not? Why must Ella dream of a handsome captain to rescue her? The answers are not what you might think! Sometimes, the heroine gets something better than a prince…

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REVIEW: Poetry in Starward Tales II

Review of poetry in Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017). — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I decided to tackle all the poetry in the anthology in one go because poetry can be wicked hard to review and it made sense, in the context of a themed anthology like this, to discuss all the poems together.

“Penelope Longing for Odysseus” by Vonnie Winslow Crist (p. 141)

One of the hallmarks of a classic story is that it transcends both time and genre. In this poem, Crist has transposed the story of Odysseus to far into the future, with Penelope waiting at home for her space-ship captain to return. Whether told in epic poetry and set in ancient Greece, or told in short blank verse form and set far in the future, the story of Penelope’s patience, love, and dissatisfaction with her wandering husband remains a powerful one. (The poem also reads aloud nicely, and rated an “It was good” from my 6 year old.)

“Chained” by Vonnie Winslow Crist (p. 39)

Like Crist’s other poem in the anthology, this one also draws upon a foundation of Greek myth, but it is not a straightforward retelling of a known tale. Instead, Crist uses the familiar elements of mythology to couch an unfamiliar future, when humanity has been awoken from cryo-state on a foreign planet. Will we find ourselves in the underworld, in purgatory, or in paradise?

“Girl in the Red Hood” by Richard King Perkins II (p. 97)

The inspiring story for this poem is obvious from the title. The first four stanzas follow the traditional story for the most part, with embellishments and details that make it a distinctive and not generic re-telling. The final stanza is where the dramatic climax is reached; unfortunately, there was not quite enough in it for me to understand the import of the ending. It wasn’t clear who the narrator of the poem was, nor what memories it was that the girl in the red hood forgot before the wolf devoured her.

“Icarus” by María Castro Domínguez (p. 117)

(Note that the table of contents puts this poem on p. 115).

The story of Icarus is one of my favorites, so I was immediately drawn to this poem from its title. The poem did not disappoint — Castro Domínguez paints some vivid pictures with her words — but I am not sure what connects the story of the poem to the story of Icarus.

“Beauty, Sleeping” by Marsheila Rockwell (p. 173)

This brief (10-line) poem takes the story of sleeping beauty and turns it upside down — what happens if when the prince comes to wake the princess instead of giving her his animative power, he takes hers instead?

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “So Sings the Siren” by Annie Neugebauer

Review of Annie Neugebauer, “So Sings the Siren”, Apex Magazine 101: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This story sneaks up on you, which is impressive for a 1000 word piece of flash fiction.

A young girl waits with her mother outside the hall where she is going to hear a siren sing for the first time. She asks all sorts of questions, as children are wont to do, and twirls out her excess energy in an innocent scene. That facade crumbles as we learn more about the details of how a musician plays a siren.

There is a beauty that can be born from suffering sometimes, if one is willing to work for it and lucky enough to find it. I believe that this is a story about how best to honor that choice, and whether it is better to turn away from the horror of the source in order to focus on the outcome, or whether we need to acknowledge both. It’s not an easy read, but it is powerful.

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REVIEW: “At Cooney’s” by Delia Sherman

Review of Delia Sherman’s, “At Cooney’s”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 18 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

Delia Sherman certainly has a way with sensory description. After a few lines of “At Conney’s” I felt like I had been whisked away to the dingy bar of her imagination:

Down on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there’s a little bar called Cooney’s. It’s an old bar, with a tin ceiling and carved-up tables and a floor you don’t want to look at too hard and no air-conditioning to break up the historic atmosphere of stale beer and dusty upholstery and unwashed hair.

Enter Ali, the story’s narrator, who is sitting in Cooneys with her friends Grace and Michael. Grace & Ali argue with Michael about how ‘his man Dylan didn’t invent poetic protest songs.’ and discuss the history of black musical protest. It’s 1968, and Ali is in love with Grace. Grace is black, Ali we’re left to assume is white. Ali doesn’t know how Grace will react if a girl professes their love to her. So, from its opening moments, “At Cooney’s” is a smart, politically focused story.

During an emotional breakdown, Ali stumbles into the bathroom only to find herself transported back in time. Sherman creates real jeopardy with this device. The past is not a safe space for Ali. She arrives without money, or I.D. And her 60’s fashion choices get her branded as a girl dressing as a man.

Even returning to her present doesn’t guarantee Ali safety. It’s 1968, a time when Michael can ask, without much censure, whether the young girls on stage are ‘lezzies’. This choice to transport a narrator from the reader’s past into their own past, and then return them to a historical present, sets “At Cooney’s” apart. Sherman’s story challenges the idea that the present is always a safe space; a space where underrepresented characters are required to “be grateful”.   

In fact, despite the problems of the past, her trip provides Ali with many examples of strength. It turns out, Cooney’s used to be a club where the clientele dressed to express their true gender identities without fear of censure. When the club is raided, she sees people for who ‘being busted is a familiar pain, like a bad hangover, the price they pay for letting it all hang out, even in a speakeasy.’ And yet, these people continue to come to Cooney’s and dress the way that makes them feel their best. There she meets Ronnie, an incredibly seductive character. It’s worth reading “At Cooney’s” just to watch Ronnie’s moves:

Her breath is warm, her voice like damp velvet. I shiver, my eyes on the couples gliding past, bright-eyed and flushed, absorbed in the music and each other. Ronnie’s lips move to my mouth, and somehow we’re still dancing as we kiss, slow, slow, quick-quick.

Ali returns to 1968 with new drive to get over her fear, and to tell Grace she loves her. And while the reader never knows how Grace reacts we’re left with hope hanging in the air.

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REVIEW: “Möbius Continuum” by Gu Shi

Review of Gu Shi, “Möbius Continuum”, Clarkesworld 132: Read online. Reviewed by Kerstin Hall.

This one didn’t work for me, and it may be the case that I was simply the wrong audience. As it stands, I found “Möbius Continuum” to be amongst the weaker pieces published in this issue of Clarkesworld. I believe that readers with a taste for the philosophical may find more to admire – that’s not what floats my boat.

In part, the story functions as a thought experiment, a sort of mental repositioning. It is interesting, but there’s little more I can say without giving major spoilers. And even though I anticipated the ending, I still didn’t quite buy it. The conclusion necessitated a kind of tidiness which I experienced as anti-climactic.

Early in the narrative, the protagonist crashes his car over a cliff. Both he and his passenger survive, but the protagonist is left paralysed from the neck down. His enigmatic companion urges him not to despair, and to see his injuries as an opportunity.

I think my largest problem with “Möbius Continuum” is that I never received a strong enough impression of the protagonist’s character. I found it difficult to care about him, and thus the stakes of failures never raised my heart rate. I can see how this nebulousness served an ultimate thematic purpose, but I experienced it as a structural problem. Why should I be invested in this story, what is there to keep me reading? The answer is probably intellectual curiosity, but I wanted emotion on top of that.

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REVIEW: “The Signal” by Halli Lilburn

Review of Halli Lilburn, “The Signal”, Starward Tales II, edited by CB Droege (Manawaker Studio, 2017): 135-142 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The pin for this story is placed in Germany (East Germany, I believe). It’s a short story, so there isn’t much time for clues about its fairy tale inspiration to be dropped — in fact, it was on the first page that I had a sudden lightbulb “Oooh, oooh, I know this one!” moment, even though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly which one it was. I just knew that it was one of the Grimms’ grimmer repertoire, and not one apt for Disneyification (though now I am fascinated by the idea that someone would someday try this). The rest of the story was then read enjoyable along two dimensions. On the first, there where the simple pleasures that come from reading about kick-ass female captains, translations of foreign languages, and mysterious signals from the void. On the second, there was the “I know I should recognize this story, I know I should know which one it is, is that another hint, is that another clue?” dimension, which was all the more deliciously satisfying when the ending came — with an amusing twist — and I was hit with the “oh, that’s right, it’s that one“. Someone who recognises the story sooner will alas not have that part of the enjoyment, but it hit the right spot for me.

A few parts that didn’t hit the spot have to do with a few of the liberties taken with reality. Within the span of two sentences we go from a radio signal that, when certain filters were placed on it, morphed “into a woman’s voice speaking an unknown language” to a point at which “the translation proved the message was urgent”. Unless you’ve got a babblefish on hand, this simply isn’t how the decoding of languages works — if the language were truly unknown, I would have wanted to see the decoding of the signal take decades or more, or I would’ve liked to have been told something about the new technology that makes such quick decipherment possible. I also found it rather hard to believe that rigorous checks weren’t in place when evacuating a ship to prevent people from being left behind; it may be a small detail, but even fiction needs enough verisimilitude to be enjoyed.

These are small niggles. Overall, it was a fun read.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “I’m Your One-Way Street” by Naomi Libicki

Review of Naomi Libicki, “I’m Your One-Way Street”, Persistent Visions (7 July 2017): Read online. Reviewed by Essence B. Scott.

After the slog that was the last couple of stories from Persistent Visions, I was definitely looking forward to reading the next story in the queue (working backwards from the most recent story): Naomi Libicki’s “I’m Your One-Way Street.”

This story, though a little shorter than the previous ones, did not disappoint. I was immediately drawn into the world established for the reader. It also was a bonus that this is a love story and I don’t read many love stories. However, the header photo and the title got me curious to see what this story was about.

“I’m Your One-Way Street” reads like a stream of consciousness; the reader becomes one with the story and, much like a something caught in the river, flows along with it, which I think was what Libicki was trying to go for. If so, a job well done. Libicki uses her human protagonist, Josephine’s (or “Jos,” as friends call her) drunkenness to start the story. But, the reader wonders, is Jos so drunk? Is her supernatural lover, Via, real? Is this all happening in her head? Could the story just very well be a dream? I personally don’t think the entire story is a dream; it feels very much real to me. Could it be a premonition? I don’t think so. No matter which way you cut it, Via is real to Jos, and vice-versa.

In the beginning of the story, the lovemaking scene is beautifully written. As my mom would put it, “sexy, but not dirty.” I felt the connection that Jos and Via made and was actively rooting for them to hopefully get back together. I won’t spoil the rest of the story for you. Give it a read…

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