REVIEW: “Butterflies” by Elizabeth Hinckley

Review of Elizabeth Hinckley, “Butterflies”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Reading this story was like sitting down to tea with someone you’ve never met but with whom you have mutual friends, friends who at one point told the two of you “you would like each other. you should meet up sometime.” So you do, and then you hear the other person’s story and can’t help but be fascinated (and to appreciate having friends who know you so well that they can recommend knew friends to you).

Let’s pretend, dear reader, that I am the mutual friend between you and this wonderful little post-apocalyptic story, and this is me telling you “why don’t you brew a cup of tea and settle down with this story? I think you’d like each other.”

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REVIEW: “Wise Woman” by Regina Higgins

Review of Regina Higgins, “Wise Woman”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This wasn’t meant to be a horror story (I don’t think), but there are few things that I can imagine that are scarier than false accusations. When Charlotte finds out from her aunt Sylvia that Mildred, whom Charlotte has been going to all her life, has been accused, Charlotte’s first response is to ask what proof there is being the accusations. Sylvia’s response is chilling:

“Oh, there’s no proof. Not yet. She’s just been accused.”

Behind those words is the chilling truth, that proof doesn’t matter. When a woman is accused, proof isn’t needed. When a woman accuses, proof is required.

It is fear that drives Charlotte to ask Mildred to read the cards: The Empress, the Emperor, the broken tower, symbol of destruction. But while Charlotte fears destruction as a dangerous, harmful thing, Mildred embraces hope: Hope that what is to come is the shattering of oppressive power structures. Mildred’s hope is so calm and steadfast, it is difficult not to believe in it. Hope in the face of oppression is always something worth reading about.

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REVIEW: “Joinery” by Jennifer Lyn Parsons

Review of Jennifer Lyn Parsons, “Joinery”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This entire issue of Luna Station Quarterly is filled with strong, confident, older women, which has made the entire collection of stories a joy to read. Regine, in Parsons’ “Joinery”, is no exception. I loved the care and dedication with which she approached not only her woodworking but also the other people who lived on the same technologically-backward planet, Diot. When an unexpected stranger arrived in her isolated village, Regine is wary but not suspicious. Grannie Hella knows more than she lets on, and lets on that she knows too much. She also brings with her more than Regine could ever imagine.

I love when a story sucks me into all its layers, and hints at all number of layers that can’t be reached in the course of a single short story but which are clearly there, touched on here and there. Who are the Bright Ones? What is their curse, and can it ever be broken? Why does Grannie Hella come to Regine? All these questions swirl around — some are answered, others, painfully, are not — and the end result is a story that’s both bittersweet and hopeful.

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REVIEW: “A Handful of Mud” by Artyv K

Review of Artyv K, “A Handful of Mud”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

What can you do with a handful of mud? That’s what Dana and her sister Mtra ask their mipaati, their grandmother, when she brings home not food, not chocolate, but a handful of mud. Mipaati is a hoarder, and at first her granddaughters think this is just another part of her irrational behavior. But mipaati has a plan for her mud, one that Dana thinks cannot possibly work: She is going to grow food in it.

See, Dana, Mtra, and mipaati all live underground; it’s not entirely clear why, but hints are dropped — capitalism, poisoned soil in the land above, a land destroyed by industrialist greed. But it’s not just that it’s hard to grow plants underground that makes Dana think this cannot possibly work; it’s all the restrictions against hazardous, toxic materials that govern their underground compound. If anyone finds out what mipaati is doing, they are all in trouble…

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REVIEW: “Cry Sanctuary” by Anna Catalano

Review of Anna Catalano, “Cry Sanctuary”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content warning: Domestic violence, alcoholism, death in childbirth.

Tuppy has been trapped in her marriage to Josiah for more than twenty years, for more than half of it she’s been trying to figure out how to escape. Tonight is her night, if only she can get out of the house without waking him, out of the house and to the bus stop.

After that, she doesn’t know what next, can’t even think beyond the first step to freedom. What she finds at the bus stop is nothing she could ever have planned on, but her silent cry for sanctuary was heard and listened to.

Despite the (relatively) optimistic note that things started off moving towards, this was a hard, harsh story. The route to the ending is not a happy one, and the ending, while victorious, is also not happy. But there is something hopeful about the story of one woman’s escape from violence, and the way in which it sets the scene for her to help others escape.

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REVIEW: “Death’s Armchair By the Sea” by Mariah Montoya

Review of Mariah Montoya, “Death’s Armchair by the Sea”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Whatever I might have expected of this story, given it’s title, I certainly didn’t get it, and got a lot of other things instead. A scabrous female death with fleshy hair. Myths about pigs. (Very strange myths about pigs.) Death’s runners, comma, instructions how to become one. Conferences of old ladies’ armchairs.

I also didn’t expect such a lovely, powerful story giving an entirely new mythos of death and rebirth. Deeply satisfying.

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REVIEW: “The Last Evening at Prosperity” by Stuti Telidevara

Review of Stuti Telidevara, “The Last Evening at Prosperity”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The opening scene brings us into the scented, steamy confines of a bathhouse, on a special night where the bathhouse workers become the customers instead. The feel is very much old, luxurious, haremlike. But this feel is offset by hints and bits dropped here and there, about the Prosperity process, about a company rich enough to buy an entire jungle, that make the story feel modern, maybe even futuristic, and this tension provides a great sense of unease while reading. Just what is this place? And what is going on?

I really enjoyed reading this story, which immersed me in its setting with rich detail appealing to all the senses, and kept me guessing all the way to the end. I’d love to read more by Telidevara.

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REVIEW: “Down Among the Fireweed” by Sarah McGill

Review of Sarah McGill, “Down Among the Fireweed”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story of Jack, born to a mother who could not care for him and so made a compact with Tom Scratch, an exchange of her child’s future for his life, and of Marjorie Hart, the only one who could remove the chains that bound Jack, is told in a “forsoothly” sort of voice to enhance its old-fashioned, old-world, old-timey feel. At times this works for me, while at other times it simply ends up either over-written (too many words for too little feeling or action) or under-written (leaving me uncertain what just happened).

The story is quite complex, so having the narrative style interfere with it, as it did for me, meant I got to the end still unsure quite how it hung together, and wishing that I had understood it better. This might be one to reread.

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REVIEW: “Bog Witch” by Maya Dworsky

Review of Maya Dworsky, “Bog Witch”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

In the opening paragraphs we are introduced to Taterra, who joined the Lioness Project in her sixties and who is careful to remind herself that she chose to be here on “this horrible backwards moon”. With quick, skilful sentences Dworsky fills us in on Taterra’s character and background, and by the time she drops the line “Taterra was not his girl. She was not anyone’s girl; Taterra had tenure”, I am utterly sold. Taterra might not be anyone’s girl, but I’m totally Taterra’s girl. (Later on I find out she likes Argentinian malbecs, and I am further convinced that Taterra is who I want to be when I grow up.)

Taterra’s assignment on Hecate III, an old prison moon, isn’t exactly first-contact, but it is “first-in-a-long-time contact”, and Taterra is there to observe and gather data, as any good anthropologist and social scientist would. But of course she cannot only observe, and the way in which Taterra gets sucked into the court life on Hecate III, how her guise as mystic and seer shapes and changes the future of the royal family and the entire colony, how her prophesies come true, is gripping and fascinating. It’s not just a story of science and magic, it’s a story of how wanting something can make it happen, how belief in magic creates magic itself, and how the birth of a girl-prince can change everything. I loved it.

One warning for those who wish to avoid it: The story features underage marriage, and death in childbirth.

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