REVIEW: “A Face Full of Nations” by Yelena Crane

Review of Yelena Crane, “A Face Full of Nations,” Flash Fiction Online 129 (June 2024): 20-23 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

For such a strange premise — the new fashion fad is to sculpt a nationscape upon your face — this story felt like a weird mix of things I’d already read, sort of a cross between Horton Hears a Who and another story I recently reviewed here, Holly Schofield’s “What You Sow”. This one, though, is much more dark and tragic than the other two, no happy ending here.

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REVIEW: “The Brides, the Hunted” by Lindz McLeod

Review of Lindz McLeod, “The Brides, The Hunted,” Flash Fiction Online 129 (June 2024): 16-18 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Domestic violence.

This story involved a flipped gender dynamic, which was interesting because of how weird it felt. Stories like this are good, because they remind us how unnatural and weird our current social structures are, no matter how used to them we may be.

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REVIEW: “Are They Cake?” by Justine Gardner

Review of Justine Gardner, “Are They Cake?,” Flash Fiction Online 129 (June 2024): 12-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Nothing like the combination of “cake” in the title and “horror” as the genre to get you into a state of “I have no idea what this story is going to be about”. The opening paragraph thrusts you straight into a dystopian version of the Great British Bake-Off, and you know nothing is going to go well — whether “they” are cake or not.

It’s hilarious — the sort of story that keeps you laughing just so that you don’t have to acknowledge the horror beneath it all.

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REVIEW: “War Makes Flowers” by Caroline Hung

Review of Caroline Hung, “War Makes Flowers,” Flash Fiction Online 129 (June 2024): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: body horror, gore, war.

Normally I’m happy to classify “horror” under the broad speculative fiction umbrella; but this story’s horror draws very much upon the horror of real life — what is most horrible about the story is how real it is. So while I think it’s effective horror, I think it’s also a rare example of a story that’s horror but not speculative.

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REVIEW: “Jelly” by Vicki Wilson

Review of Vicki Wilson, “Jelly,” Flash Fiction Online 128 (May 2024): 22-24 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When this story started off with measuring out sugar for making jam, my hope was that it would be a proper horror story.* Alas, this was a straight-up lit fic story — enjoyable enough in its own right, but definitely made more fun by imagining what it would look like with a speculative dress on.

(*I have wanted to try my hand at jam-making for years. But the processes are so complex and arcane that I’ve always been just a bit too scared to try.)

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REVIEW: “The Chicken’s Just Fine” by J. Autumn Needles

Review of J. Autumn Needles, “The Chicken’s Just Fine,” Flash Fiction Online 128 (May 2024): 11-13 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

What a strange little story. The FFO editors classified this as science fiction, but the only SF element I could find is the setting — one oblique reference to the characters having “brought those ideas from another world” (p. 11). The speculative elements are loosely defined enough that one could interpret them as either science or magic, a pleasing ambiguity which definitely helps the story along.

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REVIEW: “Lord Mortedart’s Revenge” by Katie Kotulak

Review of Katie Kotulak, “Lord Mortedart’s Revenge,” Flash Fiction Online 128 (May 2024): 7-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

A deity, or a demon (it’s not clear which, though he’s clearly something supernatural), comes to the end of their 100 year imprisonment and returns to earth — only to find that no one knows who they are, and no one cares. It’s a hilarious premise, humoristically and also thoughtfully rendered. This was a good little fun story, full of piercing moments of brief heart-wrenching tugs.

This was Kotulak’s debut publication, and let me tell you: I sincerely hope it isn’t the last!

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REVIEW: “Toby on Third” by Jim Kourlas

Review of Jim Kourlas, “Toby on Third,” Flash Fiction Online 127 (April 2024): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story gets reviewed on the blog here purely because of our commitment to review every story in an issue; there isn’t anything particularly speculative about it. Perhaps if there were, I would’ve enjoyed it more: A litfic story about baseball just isn’t my cup of tea. But even so, I was impressed at how Kourlas was able to construct such a complex and compelling father-son relationship in so little space.

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REVIEW: “Just a Greedy Ifriti” by Damyanti Biswas

Review of Damyanti Biswas, “Just a Greedy Ifriti,” Flash Fiction Online 127 (April 2024): 15-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

An ifriti that’s greedy will promise anything in order to get what it wants. In this story, it only takes two pages for the greedy ifriti to smooth-talk its way to freedom. It was nevertheless two pages of work — I had to reread the opening half page or so a number of times before I felt like I understood what was going on.

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