Review of Aggie Novak, “Mushroom Aesthetic,” Flash Fiction Online 145 (October 2025): 15-17 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Social-media-obsessed sellout goes mushroom hunting, finds extremely creepy doll: horrors ensue.
Sound interesting? You’ll enjoy this story then!
Review of Anne Wilkins, “A Touch of the Wild,” Flash Fiction Online 145 (October 2025): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story had a real “classic horror” feel to it.
Review of Jeannie Marschall, “To Breach a Citadel,” Flash Fiction Online 145 (October 2025): 7-9 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story didn’t quite work for me. It had the traditional horror-story’s build-up to a spooky, creepy ending, but maybe I missed something, but I didn’t get what was supposed to be scary about the denouement. Ordinarily, this would be an indication that I need to read a story a second time, in case I did miss something, but without something, some hook, some lovely language, some character that grabbed me, it doesn’t feel like this would be a worthwhile use of my time.
No story works for every reader; this one simply isn’t one for me.
Review of Parker M. O’Neill, “This is What Mouths Are For,” Flash Fiction Online 145 (October 2025): 24-26 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There are four mouths in this story — Guiltymouth, Anxiousmouth, Bittermouth, and Haughtymouth. All four mouths do what you’d expect mouths to do, and what I love about horror as a genre is how it provides space for the ordinary, everyday to twist into the macabre. O’Neill pulls this off excellently: About four paragraphs before the end I suddenly went “oh god,” as I figured how it was all going to end.
Review of Wendy Nikel, “The Forest Through the Teas,” Flash Fiction Online 144 (September 2025): 34-36 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I loved the pun in the title, it made me excited as a hint about what was to come. Sadly (at least for me and my tastes), what was to come involved a whole lot more, rather heavy-handed, botanical vocabulary, not all quite as punny as the title. It made me sad, because it detracted enough from my enjoyment that I never quite got into the story itself, which I think I might have otherwise enjoyed.
Review of Stefan Alcalá Slater, “The Things You Bought for the Robot,” Flash Fiction Online 144 (September 2025): 30-33 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
What makes a person a person? What makes a robot a person? With all the philosophy I’ve studied and taught, I’ve never found a better answer than that there is nothing more to being a person than being treated as one — an answer that works for humans or robots, and an answer that is worked out in this satisfying little story.
Review of Beth Goder, “Emerald Gears,” Flash Fiction Online 144 (September 2025): 26-29 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was little more than a series of linked scenes, not quite a story, but they were pretty little scenes, and I love it when I read something which is clearly a fantasy story even when the setting is SF-coded. I also enjoyed the very goblin-market-esque feeling the piece had.
Review of Leo Rein, “Yet Another Unforgettable Luncheon,” Flash Fiction Online 144 (September 2025): 18-21 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story is like what would happen if you took an entire season’s worth of “Murder, She Wrote” episodes and crammed them into a 20 minute show: Completely frenetic, but rather hilarious.
Review of Nadia Radovich, “Silence, in the Doorway, With the Gun,” Flash Fiction Online 144 (September 2025): 7-12 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
As a medievalist, I thought that the most exciting thing about this story, for me, was going to be finding out that the Roman de Silence mentioned in the opening paragraph is real. The roman itself is so fascinating that I figured it would be a hard ask for Radovich’s story to be more intriguing than the real thing.
Well, I shouldn’t have been so pessimistic. The story about the story was great.
Review of Eleanor Lennox, “The Color of Things,” Flash Fiction Online 143 (August 2025): 26-29 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There isn’t anything particularly speculative about this story (as happens occasionally with FFO), but that’s okay, I still enjoyed it. I love it when a story has a certain line that just jumps out at you, when you know exactly what the author means with it. When I read “She only knew she couldn’t bear to hurt Craig. She was a Midwesterner…” (p. 27) I went, ohhhhhh, yeahhhhh, I know exactly what Laura is feeling.
SFF Reviews