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: “Going to Sea, Mother,” by Luscha Makortoff
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: “Self-Portrait as ChatGPT” by Sarah Chin
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: “Mushroom Aesthetic” by Aggie Novak
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: “The Forest Through the Teas” by Wendy Nikel
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: “Emerald Gears” by Beth Goder
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: “Out of Print” by Wen Wen Yang
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: “The Last Items of the Forgotten Hero, or the Grandchild’s First Dragon” by Guan Un
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).
REVIEW: “Silence, in the Doorway, With the Gun” by Nadia Radovich
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: “I Was Made For Loving You” by Angela James
Review of Angela James, “I Was Made For Loving You,” Flash Fiction Online 143 (August 2025): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a very strange story — made even more strange for me because I didn’t know who Gene Simmons was, and for about two pages confused him with Richard Simmons before I stopped to look him up on wikipedia.
That being said, I’m not sure the story would’ve been all that much less strange if I had known who he was from the start!
SFF Reviews 