Review of L. Fox, “Top Five Places to Worship Him, Most Terrible,” Luna Station Quarterly 63 (September 2025): 89-102 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There’s nothing like religious fervour to lay the foundation for something insidiously creepy (and at times really gruesome). If you want to feel vaguely disconcerted and unsettled, this is definitely the story for you.
Review of K.M. Veohongs, “The Accidental,” Luna Station Quarterly 63 (September 2025): 75-87 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was such a sweet little story. Trina is 5 years old and off to kindergarten for the first time, with a lunch packed by her mother and walked to school by her father. But Trina’s lunch isn’t a typical lunch, because Trina isn’t a typical little girl — she’s not a little girl at all, she’s a bird.
I loved this story for how sweet it was, and for how fun it was to read a story that was based on a premise along the lines of “right! okay, let’s do something different. I know. The MC is a bird, because her mom is a bird, but her dad is an ordinary human. Let’s run with it. Who cares about explaining how anything is? This is just how life is.” Because to a five year old, that’s how the world works. Things just are the way they are. The story was uncompromising and unapologetic, and I loved it for that.
Don’t be fooled, though, it’s not a saccharine sweet story, nor does it have a happy ending, but that just made me appreciate more, rather than less.
Review of Tanya Pond, “Underhill Wines,” Luna Station Quarterly 63 (September 2025): 51-72 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This fairy-tale of vengeance was delicately balanced between beauty and viciousness.
Review of Luscha Makortoff, “Going to Sea, Mother,” Luna Station Quarterly 63 (September 2025): 37-49 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Suicidal ideation.
Selkie stories tend to be more difficult to pull off than stories of other mythical creatures, in part because the mythology of the selkie is so constraining: There is one dominant narrative, and I find many authors struggle to escape it. Makortoff managed to add extra layers to the typical selkie story, intertwining it with another story of desertion and loss, in a way which I ended up enjoying quite a bit.
Review of Sarah Chin, “Self-Portrait as ChatGPT,” Luna Station Quarterly 63 (September 2025): 286-290 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: References to suicide.
I can teach you how to say “I’m sorry” so someone believes it. I can make you sound like you mean it, even when you don’t (p. 289).
This was a beautiful, somewhat heartbreaking story, which was even more interesting to read given that I had read a few days earlier this Guardian piece on chatfishing. It’s becoming harder and harder to imagine a future where significant portions of the population are not outsourcing a significant portion of their human interactions to a machine, and that’s both scary and sad.
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 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 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 Wen Wen Yang, “Out of Print,” Flash Fiction Online 144 (September 2025): 22-25 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Writers often speak of their characters as if they have a life of their own. This story was a gripping and touching take on that premise.
(First published in Apex, May 2024.)
Review of Guan Un, “The Last Items of the Forgotten Hero, or the Grandchild’s First Dragon,” Flash Fiction Online 144 (September 2025): 13-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Awww, this was one of the sweetest, most adorable little stories that I’ve read in a long time. If you need something beautiful to make you feel a bit better about the world, read this.
(First published in Worlds of Possibility, 2023).
SFF Reviews