Review of Kel Coleman, “The Sacred, the Sacrificial,” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 20-21 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was an interesting story, but I feel like it was written for a reader who isn’t me.
(First published in Pipe Wrench, 2021.)
Review of Saul Lemerond, “Janet and I Try to Get Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts at the Gilbert Rd Super Target. It’s the One in Scottsdale. No, the Other One. The One on Gilbert,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 12-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
When I skimmed the table of contents of this issue of FFO, I knew immediately I had to read this story first. The title alone is practically a story in itself!
And I wasn’t disappointed: This was a perfectly packaged little gem, making me smile and laugh the whole way through, right up until the sucker punch ending. Relationships, whether natural or supernatural, are never easy, and often heart-breaking.
(First published in Electric Spec 16, no. 3, August 2021).
Review of Joshua Jones Lofflin, “Lizzie Williams’ Swampy Head,” Flash Fiction Online 138 (March 2025): 14-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I often find short stories told in the voice of a child annoying, because far too often that voice feels cloying and fake. Not so at all with Lofflin’s story, which had all the sorcery inherent in a passel of young girls — he nails it.
(First published in MetaStellar May 2021.)
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.)
Review of Marilyn Hope, “Nosebleed Weather,” Flash Fiction Online 132 (September 2024): 17-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a horror story but with a very weird bent. If you’re in it for the wild and unusual, this will be a story you’ll enjoy. Death, murder, poison, botany, this story’s got it all.
(First published in X-R-A-Y October 2021.)
Review of Aimee Ogden, “Like Blood for Ink,” Flash Fiction Online 127 (April 2024): 18-20 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Ogden is a master of a particular type of flash fiction craft: Take an ordinary situation, change one thing to be out of the ordinary, and use the result to say something about our daily lives (in this case, every parents’ worry of passing the worst of themselves on to their children). The more I read her stories, the more I admire her skill.
(First published in Daily Science Fiction, 2021).
Review of Eris Young, “Up From Out of Clay,” Small Wonders no. 11 (May 2024): 24-27 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I’m not quite sure what I make of this story. It’s about a girl and a golem, about a master and his apprentice, and I feel like there is more to it than this, but two readings through didn’t quite reveal what that more is.
Perhaps other readers will resonate more with the story than I did.
(First published in Gwylion 3, 2021).
Review of Emily Anderson Ula, “Salt,” Flash Fiction Online 124 (January 2024): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
One of my perennial complaints about a lot of SFF stories is that they seem to occupy a world in which religion doesn’t exist (nor does anything that would fill the same role). So when I get a story that is all about googling solutions to demon possession, it scratches an itch that’s always lingering. Consequently, I really enjoyed this story! Even if it was terribly sad.
(First publishing in The Blood Pudding April 2021).
Review of Stewart C. Baker, “Five Books from the Alnif Crater Traveling Library,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a series of vignettes (which nevertheless held together well enough to constitute a proper story) about life on Mars.
As much as I enjoyed the story, it did feel a bit of a strange choice coming, as it did, immediately after Rachael K. Jone’s “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention”. Both are structurally similar and use a conceit which I think works better in isolation, rather than in conjunction.
(First published in Nature Magazine, September 2021.)
Review of Jennifer Hudak, “A Gardener Teaches His Son to Enrich the Soil and Plan for the Future,” Small Wonders no. 3 (September 2023): 20 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Every avid gardener is familiar with the scourge that are caterpillars and slugs; but the titular gardener here teaches his son not only how to deal a far greater pest: zombies! The advice is equal parts gross and heartwarming, and makes for a sweet little story.
(First published in Triangulation: Habitats, 2021.)
SFF Reviews