REVIEW: “Madder and Woad” by Deborah L. Davitt

Review of Deborah L. Davitt, “Madder and Woad,” Tree and Stone 2 (2022): 14-18 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

God, the way in which some stories cut straight to the chase without any prevarication: This is one of those. The fight between survival and death, the ways in which this strips away all parts of our humanity.

Read this story and weep. What else can you do?

Recommended especially for weavers and dyers. So much power in the work of women, the work that is so often discarded as meaningless.

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REVIEW: “Hykena” by Naomi Eselojor

Review of Naomi Eselojor, “Hykena,” Tree and Stone 2 (2022): 4-6 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The village Isoko is destroyed by a monster, burned to the ground overnight. Only the trapper’s boy, who tried to warn the village of Hykena’s approach, and his family survived. But the reasons why the villagers wouldn’t listen to him are the same as the reasons why the monster was there in the first place, which made for a satisfying resolution to this story.

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REVIEW: “When the Forest Comes to You” by E. M. Linden

Review of E. M. Linden, “When the Forest Comes to You,” Flash Fiction Online (July 2023): 12-15 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is more a series of vignettes than a story, snapshots of Keith’s life from when he was 5 to when his son was 5, all tied together by an underlying layer of sadness, culminating in an ending that feels like an ultimate betrayal.

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REVIEW: “To Rise, to Set” by Rich Larson

Review of Rich Larson, “To Rise, to Set,” Flash Fiction Online (June 2023): 10-13 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Rich Larson is one of those authors where whenever I see him in a journal line up, I get excited. His stories never fail to deliver — though what they deliver is different every time! This one gave me a strong character willing to speak up for her beliefs and for the protection of others. I will never not want to read stories that give me this.

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REVIEW: “The Massage Lady at Munjeong Road Bathhouse” by Isabel J. Kim

Review of Isabel J. Kim, “The Massage Lady at Munjeong Road Bathhouse”, Clarkesworld Issue 185, February (2022): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

A well-structured story about Jinah, who works at the bathhouse. She has the ability to see and scrape off the scales on her clients’ bodies – scales that show the effect of choices.

These translucent scales turn opaque over time, at which point they cannot be scraped off, signifying the calcification of the choices they make.

At one point in the story, Jinah needs to make a choice. Does she think scraping off her own scales would be worth it?

An insightful, well written story. The characters have a lot of depth, too.

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