REVIEW: “Itself at the Heart of Things” by Andrea Corbin

Review of Andrea Corbin’s, “Itself at the Heart of Things”, Shimmer, 38: [Read Online]. Reviewed by Sarah Grace Liu.

There are times that I feel a story is smarter than I am, and that story is “Itself at the Heart of Things” by Andrea Corbin. It is a story both dream sequence and metaphor, both apocalyptic and ordinary (in the best way).

The narrator and her husband are disassembling themselves throughout the story, piece by piece, in the face of a coming invasion. The world only knows that the Szemurians are coming because they are each and all dreaming of them, each dream a different path to destruction.

The narrative is lyric and beautiful. I was never sure whether the narrator was some kind of android, or whether she was speaking of her dream, or whether she was speaking in riddles. There was overlap, perhaps, and the entire thing feels more like a way of speaking about relationships than anything else:

I held the makeshift satchel of myself, and he held me, and we left.

And isn’t that like any disaster?

There wasn’t much more that we could do for each other. An arm each, a head each, leaving enough to hold each other, and not enough to come apart entirely. We would lay ourselves out in all our parts, reordered and useless

It is as if Corbin is saying, The world will end this way, and this way, and this way, and we are all doing our small things, and sometimes we do those things together.

 

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REVIEW: “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” by Fran Wilde

Review of Fran Wilde, “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand”, Uncanny Magazine 18 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

Uncanny Issue 18 is certainly high on horror, and Fran Wilde’s “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” should be your top choice if you’re looking for a scary read. It’s a disturbing, opaque trip into an old-fashioned freak show; directed by one of the people who plays a part in the show. The reader is personally engaged at every step as the narrator addresses all their instructions on how to progress through the show to ‘you’. This encourages the reader to quickly insert themselves into the story, and to experience all of Wilde’s cleverly crafted horror up close. As the narrator draws the reader on through a selection of increasingly disturbing scenes, this use of the word ‘you’, which is both impersonal and personal, enhances the story’s creepy power.  

“Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” feels reminiscent of Alyssa Wong’s style. It’s darkly bitter, and visits quite perfect, and quite disturbing, magical punishment on those who do wrong. Let’s just say ‘you’ do not come out of this encounter well. It’s not quite a revenge story; the punishment is too impersonal to call it revenge. It’s more about punishing society for their stares, words, and medical experiments. Punishing slowly; one person at a time. The reader is left with the feeling that the narrator will always remain, and that they have eternity to teach visitor after visitor a lesson.

And oh that narrator is tricky. They open the story by seeming to show the reader a safe way through the exhibitions. However, once the story is finished, it becomes clear that they planned to trap their visitor all along. ‘Your hands are beautiful, did you know that?’ has never been quite so chilling.

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REVIEW: “And the White Breast of the Dim Sea” by Hilary Biehl

Review of Hilary Biehl, “And the White Breast of the Dim Sea”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is not your ordinary story of man-meets-mermaid and has a child. This is a story of the complexities of family relationships and prejudices, which just happens to be about an enchanter and a mergyndr and their daughter, and it is filled with terribly wonderful lines like

“I know very little about human magic. Possibly it molds to human prejudice.”

I enjoyed this story because it is an example of what stories can be at their best — a mirror on our lives and our actions. It’s not a moralising story, but it is also one you cannot read without thinking and reflecting on what it reflects to you.

All this, and a delightfully satisfying ending. More stories like this, please!

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REVIEW: “Flowers for the Moon” by Clio Yun-su Davis

Review of Clio Yun-su Davis, “Flowers for the Moon”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m a sucker for a good fairy tale. So when I get a story that starts off

There once was a girl who fell in love with the moon even though she knew in her heart that the moon could never love her back…

I’m already in love.

And this story lives up to the promise of its opening line. It is a classic fairy tale — a heroine, her beloved, an old crone who sends her off on a journey, a fateful quest, a snarky talking forest (oh, wait, that’s hardly a classic fairy tale element. But it should be. I want more snarky talking forests in my life) — and yet it is different from any other fairy tale I’ve ever read.

It’s hard to imagine a fairy tale where the happily ever after doesn’t involve two lovers living out their lives together, but this story manages such a happily ever after. Because, as the heroine says to her beloved, “My feelings for you haven’t changed. I, however, have.”

I adored this story, and intend to read it aloud to my 5 year old.

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REVIEW: “Tumbledown” by Kameron Hurley

Review of Kameron Hurley, “Tumbledown”, Apex Magazine 100: Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston

“Tumbledown” is a short story that feels like a novel. It’s expansive. It takes its time. It develops an entire alien world, and it doesn’t take any short cuts. It’s also unusually long for a short story, coming in at 8700 words. Most venues have a cut-off at 7500, or even 5000 words.

The epic scope is both this story’s greatest strength, and its only weakness. A strength, because there is a lot going on in this story. Not only does Hurley build a fully realized alien world and colonial society, she grapples with the experience of disability. The main character, Sarnai, is paraplegic and living on an inhospitable ice planet where survival of the fittest reigns. But of course, Sarnai is surviving, and continues to survive a heck of a lot as the story progresses. From my perspective as an abled-person, she is a bad-ass, not because she overcomes disability, but because of who she is as a person. We repeatedly see how she has to act as if she were less-than, in order to make the people around her comfortable, and how their perceptions restrict her more than any physical limitations.

The length is a weakness because it’s hard to hold the whole story in your head at once. In a novel, there are natural breaking points, and the tension rises and falls, so you can pause and reflect. Here, the tension keeps rising until the denouement. There is no way to safely step back, and yet there is so very much to take in. I recommend saving this story for a time when you can focus and read it uninterrupted, for maximum enjoyment.

Beyond all of that, beyond the length and the deft handling of disability, this is a fantastic adventure story, a true SF example of the “man v. nature” plot-type. I tend not to love those stories, but “Tumbledown” was an exception.

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REVIEW: “Below the River” by Rose Strickman

Review of Rose Strickman, “Below the River”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

It often seems like literature takes a very long time to catch up to technology. The advent of ubiquitous cell phones and smart phones has fundamentally changed the way we interact with each other and our world, and it feels — to me at least — that these changes have been so radical in their depth and scope that we are still struggling to articulate this in our writing without making reference to phones, etc., seem “gadgety”.

One of the things I really appreciated in Strickman’s story was the way in which contemporary technology was seamlessly interwoven into the story. None of the awkwardness that I so often see was present.

But that ease displayed there was not always reflected in the rest of the story, which was occasionally somewhat stilted. The opening scenes were filled with mournful portent without giving the reader a clear indication of what the portent was of or why we should be mournful, and the use of a dream sequence to convey memory is a somewhat overused technique. There are a number of places where I think what I wished for most was less vagueness and more distinctiveness. (Not just “ill”, but ill with what? Not just “medicine”, but what kind of medicine?) Lastly, the ending was pretty clearly telegraphed from fairly early on; now, this is not always a bad thing; sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than a growing suspicion of how things will turn out being vindicated when you reach the end of a story. But that vindication only comes if it is clearly possible that that ending would not be reached. Here, there was never really much doubt.

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REVIEW: “Oshun, Inc.” by Jordan Ifueko

Review of Jordan Ifueko’s “Oshun, Inc.”, Strange Horizons 18 Sept. 2017: Read online. Reviewed by Danielle Maurer.

This story reminded me vividly of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, if the gods in question worked in a customer service center. It has the same old-world-meets-new-world, coming-to-America feel, but with an emphasis here on a specific African pantheon and goddess. As someone unfamiliar with the goddess in question, I appreciated the choice as an opportunity to learn.

Moreover, Ifueko paints beautiful pictures with her words. Her descriptions appeal not just to the eyes, but also the ears, the nose, the tongue and even the fingers–leaving no sense neglected. She possesses the specificity of great writers, using precise analogies and examples to drive home the deeper points and nuances of her story.

The story also displays Ifueko’s talent for worldbuilding. “Oshun, Inc.” touches on the barest edge of what feels like a much larger, more detailed world filled with immortal gods and helpers. Ifueko walks a fine line between explaining terms the reader might not understand and letting the reader discover those meanings for herself, and she walks that line confidently.

I found the first half of the story to be more engaging than the second half, in part because the second half doesn’t actually resolve the problem introduced at the beginning of the story (finding a date for Bola’s problematic dentist). The ending is by no means bad, but I wish all the threads of the plot had found a resolution.

Setting that minor quibble aside, Ifueko is a promising new voice in speculative fiction, and I look forward to seeing more of her work.

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REVIEW: “The Call of the Orbsong” by A. M. Matte

Review of A. M. Matte, “The Call of the Orbsong”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Dafenid is an Amphibian who steals orbs from the Pavlina, a Biped who either creates or collects them (it is not clear which in the story). Though Dafenid is not able to make the orbs sing, she still delights in them, for she sees having them as an act of defiance on behalf of the Amphibians against the Bipeds.

This we learn at the beginning, but much of what transpires after the initial opening scene is the filling in of back story, which suffers a bit from more telling than showing and a couple of awkward info dumps. We learn quite a bit about the relative power differentials between the Amphibians and the Bipeds, and of illicit attraction, but through the middle part of the story I kept find myself wishing for less history and more of the present.

There is, however, a fun twist at the end, which is no less enjoyable for the fact that about 1/3 of the way through, I suddenly had an intuition that that was where the story would go: It was gratifying to read the rest of the story and be proven right. (Half-way through, however, I did get a bit of a shock, when the object of Dafenid’s love was revealed, since earlier in the story (I had to go back and double check, but the implication was definitely there) I had gotten the impression that he was her brother!) All in all: A fun little fairy-tale interpretation, slightly hampered by presentation.

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REVIEW: “The Joy of Baking” by Holly Lyn Walrath

Review of Holly Lyn Walrath, “The Joy of Baking”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

WARNING: Do not read this story without cake on hand, or you will want cake by the time you’re done reading it.

“The secret to effective baking is patience,” we are told, which is why I am such a bad cook. “Timing is everything,” we are also told, and this as true of comedy as it is of baking, and this story has both cake and elements of delightful comedy. Heaven and hell provide much meat for stories, but how often do you get stories of purgatory? (Dante excepted, of course, and Beetlejuice). Whether purgatory is a waiting place before the ultimate destination, or simply a waiting place before moving on to the next life, a place one will come back to again and again, there is something comforting in thinking that perhaps it is a place where the waiting souls are fed and loved and comforted, where they may rest as long as they need, and where the caretakers have all the time in the world to perfect their baking skills.

Yes, I think I’d rather enjoy visiting Walrath’s purgatory. And now I want some cake. My great-grandmother’s sour cream coffee cake, I think.

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REVIEW: “Henosis” by N. K. Jemisin

Review of N. K. Jemisin, “Henosis”, Uncanny Magazine 18 (2017): Read online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

“Henosis” is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” but with a literary, and structural, twist. Harkim is an author in a world where, each year, the winner of the prestigious Opus Award is killed and portioned up; their parts distributed to large institutions as inspiration for the next generation of writers. If you smell a metaphor for toxic literary culture just wait until you get to the section on Vonnegut.

Harkim is kidnapped by a fan who believes Harkim will win the prize, and wants to keep him alive. Yet, despite the deadly consequences of taking home the prize, Harkim and his fellow writers desperately want to win this award. Winning means they, and their work, will always be remembered, and their great fear is being forgotten. The Opus Award, as brutal as it is, would guarantee Harkim a permanent place in the literary canon.

Harkim’s view is allowed much sway in this story, giving the whole tale a creepy ‘inside the cult’ feel, but the story also interrogates his views on The Opus Award. First, it provides a counterpoint view from Harkim’s kidnapper who values the life of her favourite author. She believes the award means ‘…they think you’ve done all you’re going to do, the best you’ll ever do. It means they stop listening.’ She also presents a forceful argument about the despicable way authors are picked apart after their death.  

And then there are those chapter headings.

“Henosis” is presented in short, out of order chapters, beginning with Chapter 4. By including these chapter headings, N. K. Jemisin deliberately disrupts the connection between the reader and Harkim’s story; pushing the reader to ask whether the story they are reading is the construct of an invisible author (other than Jemisin). Are Harkim and his world “real”, or is his tale of awards and kidnap a story written by an author that Jemisin has created but the reader never meets? If the reader is supposed to suspend disbelief and approach Henosis as they would any other story? And, if Harkim’s story is a work of fiction within a work of fiction, should the reader trust his conclusions about The Opus Award, ‘great men’, and the value of a good death for a writer?

By calling into question the reality of Harkim’s world, Jemisin also places the role of the real life author front and centre. The reader is reminded that each story is created by someone, and that authors make deliberate choices when crafting a story. This reminder that authors shape fiction is reinforced by the story’s subject matter which is all about an author. The out of order nature of the chapters really hammers this theme home as well, making “Henosis” rather a circular puzzle of a story. This makes it both frustrating and intriguing – one of those stories guaranteed to have the reader angrily scowling about ‘what is true’.  And that’s sure to make “Henosis” memorable at least.

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