REVIEW: “Buttercream and Broken Wings” by Aimee Ogden

Review of Aimee Ogden, “Buttercream and Broken Wings”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 307 (July 2, 2020): read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

I’m a fan of Aimee Ogden, whose memorable “Never a Butterfly Nor a Moth with Moon-painted Wings” was one of the highlights of BCS’s over-sized 300th issue. Ogden’s latest story features Willowbright, an independent-minded, down-on-her-luck fairy due to the death of an old widow who had often left out food and drink for her. Now “alone, unserved by human hands,” Willowbright’s future is grim unless she can find some other human patron. Toward that end, she provides magical favors for a girl in exchange for food and an unusual refuge from the cold. She also meets a wild fairy who provides unexpected aid in Willowbright’s direst moment. Overall, it’s a good story, if a bit open-ended. Perhaps Ms. Ogden plans to treat us to a sequel.   

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REVIEW: “Accidental Kaiju” by Dianne M. Williams

Review of Dianne M. Williams, “Accidental Kaiju”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

13-year-old Grendela dreams of becoming not another kaiju (a type of great Japanese monster) like her father and grandfather but an environmental scientist. Maybe there’s more to being a lava monster than smashing buildings and destroying cities. Maybe she could use her special knowledge of volcanos to help power cities rather than destroy them. But unfortunately, her little experiment didn’t go as planned.

This was a cute little story about hopes and dreams and how sometimes when one is a teenager one needs a little help and understanding from their parents and grandparents.

(First published in The Confabulator Cafe, 2016).

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REVIEW: “Moonlight Plastics” by Rachel Brittain

Review of Rachel Brittain, “Moonlight Plastics”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I found this story a little too in the mind of the MC, Sana — there was a lot of reflection and recrimination and meta content that would’ve made sense if I were properly situated in Sana’s world, but unfortunately, I wasn’t. So I had a hard time putting together all the pieces to figure out who she was and what she was doing, and why it mattered.

I also struggled with the abrupt shift in tone: It started off as a commentary on our modern-day tendency to flood the ocean with plastics, and then suddenly it jumped left and became a mermaid romance.

All in all, not the story for me.

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REVIEW: “Kill the Witchman” by William Broom

Review of William Broom, “Kill the Witchman”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 306 (June 18, 2020): read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

This is a story about the malleability and unreliability of memory. Dumu, the narrator, initially knows neither his name, his past, nor his motives. He is nevertheless in relentless pursuit of the witchman, Ketan, who has the power to implant false memories in anyone’s mind. “This is the power of a witchman: memory is wet clay in his hands. What you remember is what he wishes you to remember, and nothing else.” What Dumu comes to remember is that he is Ketan’s brother and that Ketan’s son, Nazd, is his much-loved nephew. But are these “facts” true, Dumu wonders, or false memories implanted by the witchman? This question—What is real?—is one readers must grapple with, too. It makes the story a somewhat frustrating read, since nothing in it can be taken at face value. Yet Broom is a talented writer and his story forces readers to confront the slipperiness of our own memories and what that implies about our own perception of reality. 

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REVIEW: “The Augur and the Girl Left at His Door” by Greta Hayer”

Review of Greta Hayer, “The Augur and the Girl Left at His Door”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 306 (June 18, 2020): listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

Knowing what lies in store for you versus the perhaps illusory freedom that comes from not knowing is the conflict that lies at the heart of this story. As its title suggests, the story revolves around two main characters, both unnamed. The augur somehow has the ability to foretell a person’s future by examining “every bump and line in his flesh.” The girl abandoned on his doorstep is, from the start, a spirited creature. Each comes to rely on the other, but the relationship is not without conflict. Though the augur has taught his adopted daughter to read and write, he refuses to teach her his way of foretelling the future. When one day he finds the girl reading a priceless volume called The Diviner’s Book of Augury, he rips it from her hands and throws it in the fire. Was this cruel or kind? I have my own opinion, but I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself. 

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REVIEW: “The White Place” by Dana Berube

Review of Dana Berube, “The White Place”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Berube’s story drew me in right from the opening paragraph. I felt the cold of the snow, felt Ti’s hunger, want to know more of how he ended up in Berron’s bed, who the Ordermen were and what sort of church law they maintained. It was the perfect balance of engaging characters, poignant description, and a heart-breakingly sweet and heart-breakingly sad plot that I enjoyed all the way through to the end.

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REVIEW: “The Midwife” by Carol Scheina

Review of Carol Scheina, “The Midwife”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Childbirth.

Hannah is a midwife of whom it is told she has never yet lost a mother or child. When she’s called to Emmilene’s childbed (far too late, in her opinion), she must draw upon all of her skill and experience to ensure her streak is not broken.

I found the story weirdly glorifying of the mystical experience of childbirth; it was also uncomfortably exclusionary (falling back into the default assumption that no husband could ever have a place beside his laboring wife). Just little things, but as a result, this story didn’t really do it for me.

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REVIEW: “Depth and Meaning” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

Review of Jennifer Lee Rossman, “Depth and Meaning”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Rossman’s stories appear in LSQ not infrequently — but after a couple of years of reading and reviewing LSQ stories, seeing her name attached to one of them is guaranteed to make my ears perk up, as her stories are pretty reliably good ones.

This present story is the story of Emi, a pictomancer like many others in her town, but unlike them, her paintings don’t take on the same magical life as theirs, the potential once seen in her (“People used to tell me I’d be an elder by the time I was twenty.”) trapped and inaccessible.

No one, least of all Emi, talks about what happened to make her this way. But even before she finally articulates it to her sister, it’s easy for reader to fill in the gaps, at least for anyone who has experienced how depression can prevent you from exercising your creative outlets.

That being said, I wasn’t especially keen on the way depression was treated in this story. Dex, Emi’s sister, tells her that it’s a good thing she’s depressed, that suffering is what gives art depth and meaning. Emi’s friend Ronaldo warns her against taking medication for it. Parts of the story felt heavy-handed and preachy at parts, and I’m not sure I liked the message.

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REVIEW: “Breath of the Sahara” by Inegbenoise o. Osagie

Review of Inegbenoise O. Osagie, “Breath of the Sahara”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 305 (June 4, 2020): Read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

Like its companion piece in the latest issue of BCS, this is a story of transformation—physical for one character, psychological for another. The story is narrated by a girl named Obehi Ehichoya, whose feelings for another girl, Esohe Okhah, deepen as the story progresses. For reasons that are not immediately apparent, Esohe is fascinated by and something of an expert on The Order of the Zephyrs, considered by the people of her village to be “our link to the gods.” Among the most striking creations I’ve encountered in recent fantasy fiction, Zephyrs look odd but for good reason. “Zephyrs were wind lovers, even if the wind shrank them; breathed through their skin so that it became loosened enough that it turned floury. They only came to the surface and gratified their wind lust on first Sabbaths . . .”  When the two girls sneak into the Zephyrs’ temple ostensibly to steal gold, they meet a Zephyr who conveys information to one of them that will forever change them both. This is an excellent story, and one I recommend highly. 

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REVIEW: “The Widow” by Emma Torzs

Review of Emma Torzs, “The Widow”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 305 (June 4, 2020): Listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

This story of transformation, revenge, and double-crosses takes the form of a confession dictated to a man “in the final hour of his life” by narrator Perrine Mauroy “in the first hour of her own.” As the story opens, Perrine is a battered wife seeking freedom from an abusive husband, but she also yearns for the chance to live a stranger, though—from her point of view—better life. When the blood of a living calf is transfused into her husband, somehow rendering him peaceful, Perrine takes hope, only to have that hope dashed when the transformation wears off. What happens next involves an unusual combination of science, magic, and double-dealing, and ends with an odd, but oddly satisfying, metamorphosis.  

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