REVIEW: “Gig Economy” by Ali MacLeod

Review of Ali MacLeod, “Gig Economy,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 173-193 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I absolutely love how MacLeod plays with the reader’s knowledge of how apps like Uber work to give us enough idea of what’s going on while simultaneously making us wait a couple of pages before we find out just what kind of gig the narrator is involved in — a reveal which I found positively delightful, a real “I’m going to enjoy this story!” moment.

And I was right. It was so warm, and sweet, and funny, and it pulled at my heart-strings in the very best of ways. I loved it!

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REVIEW: “Magical Thinking” by J. Amanda Ferry

Review of J. Amanda Ferry, “Magical Thinking,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 73-93 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Serious childhood illness.

Where’s the border between magic and science? It’s a hard enough question for an adult to answer, much less for a 9yo like the story’s narrator, Rainbow (even a “catastrophically precocious” 9yo like Rainbow). I was a bit nervous upon starting the story, because 1st person POV where the narrator is a child often goes awry; but Ferry handles the balance between making Rainbow be a child without being childlike exceptionally well.

In many respects, this is a stark, harsh, and sad story. But it was also utterly gripping — one of the best in this issue.

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REVIEW: “Big Sister” by Jang Ami, translated by Joheun Lee

Review of Jang Ami, Joheun Lee (trans.), “Big Sister,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 235-258 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death.

There’s something about the classic fairy tale style that seems to transcend cultures — I was surprised at how familiar the archetype of this story (originally written in Korean) felt, even while none of the characters or elements or tropes were themselves familiar. It made the story both comforting and eerie; and with the final twist being saved for the very end, it kept me hooked until the final page.

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REVIEW: “Vale of the Firefae” by Jalyn Renae Fiske

Review of Jalyn Renae Fiske, “Vale of the Firefae,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 113-124 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

One of the things I want out of a fantasy story is something different from reality — the very best of worldbuilding can deliver something so utterly unlike what is actually the case that in addition to reading for escapism one can also marvel at the ingenuity to imagine something so unreal. Now, not every fantasy story can have the very best of worldbuilding, and I don’t measure stories against that very best. But there is something both disappointing and unsettling about a wildly fantastic story whose worldbuilding structures replicate — whether consciously or unconsciously — problem structures in our own world. I found that to be the case with Fiske’s story: She has constructed a society that is, on the one hand, not at all like any actually existing society; but on the other hand, the misogynist and patriarchal norms that are encoded in the structure are depressingly familiar.

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REVIEW: “Bussola” by Teresa Koeppel

Review of Teresa Koeppel, “Bussola,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 101-110 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

At the start of this weird little ghost story, Koeppel sets up some rules which I then spent the rest of the story watching carefully to see whether — and how — they would be kept. There were subtle inconsistencies that end up bothering me probably way more than they should have, making me pause to scroll back up to make sure I hadn’t read something wrong or misremembered. I don’t mind an unreliable narrator or an inconsistent story when it is clearly a deliberate construction of an author; but I wasn’t entirely convinced that these here were. End result: Not really my kind of story.

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REVIEW: “The Weather Girl” by Summer Jewel Keown

Review of Summer Jewel Keown, “The Weather Girl,” Luna Station Quarterly 64 (December 2025): 261-273 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

It’s a bit weird reading a romance when you know from pretty much the first line that it doesn’t have a happy ending, but nevertheless I enjoyed the unfolding of this one, waiting to see just how the unhappy ending would come about. Unfortunately, in the end, it was for boring, mundane, ordinary reasons, which kind of defeated any more fantastic/speculative elements that the story had, for me.

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