REVIEW: Unbroken edited by Marieke Nijkamp

Review of Marieke Nijkamp, ed., Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was one of my WorldCon ’19 recs — a book that was mentioned during one of the panels I attended, where I thought “I want to read that”. I especially wanted to read it to see if it would be something that I could recommend to one of my nieces, who I have a suspicious would be interested in SFF, but hasn’t yet gotten the right route in.

Not all the stories in this collection are speculative in nature — some of them are straight up realistic fiction (including some whose authors are best known for speculative fiction, which was a bit of a surprise!). Both queer and non-queer romance arcs were strongly represented across the anthology. It was this perhaps more than anything else that marked this book out as a collection of YA stories; whenever one of the romantic developments felt a bit too much, too fast, I had to remind myself that I’m not a teenager anymore and that if I’d read these stories as a teenager, they probably would’ve felt more real.

The stories don’t shy away from the difficult subjects. The range of disabilities represented was wide, from wheelchairs to anxiety to terminal illnesses. The characters are confronted with not only the ordinary vagaries of romance and other aspects of teenage life, but also with the worry of burdening others, the anguish of never being enough, the guilt of it all. One thing I really liked about this anthology as a collection was the way in which so many of the narrators voiced these sorts of internalised ableism, and the ways in which the stories themselves pushed back against those narratives, made it clear that they were not the right narratives. On the flip side, one of the things that made me uncomfortable was how some of the stories were variants on “even though a disabled person might think themselves unworthy, they can still do things that are valuable to society!” in a way that felt, to me, like it bordered on inspiration porn. Such stories were, however, the minority, and loaded towards the front of the book, so that by the end such early impressions were mostly memories.

As is usual, we’ll review the stories individually, and link the reviews below as they are published.

Having read all of them, yeah, I probably will get this book for my niece. They may not all be to her taste, as they weren’t all to mine, but if she derives joy from even one of them, it’ll be a worthwhile purchase. (And I really hope she likes Benwell’s and Duyvis’s, the two outstanding stories of the volume in my opinion.)

Sara L. Uckelman14 Comments

REVIEW: “Doorway, Smile, Kiss, Fox” by Jeremy Packert Burke

Review of Jeremy Packert Burke, “Doorway, Smile, Kiss, Fox”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 311 (August 27, 2020): listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

In this lovely and compelling story, Themis—a character presumably named after the Greek goddess of justice, wisdom, and good counsel—is his king’s sole mnemosyne.  By some “obscure alchemy,” a mnemosyne is able to “take on, in their entirety, the memories of generals, scientists, poets, doctors—any citizen marked great by the king’s council.”  

In theory, a mnemosyne is able to search this “living archive” of information and provide solutions to whatever catastrophes befall his city, and the king who rules it. Unfortunately, in this case the city is plagued by a catastrophe for which there is no solution. Buildings have seemingly taken on a life of their own, growing “the way trees, and love, and cancer do: too slow to see but constant.” Over time, however, the rate of growth is nothing short of alarming. Knowing there is no solution, Themis is convinced the king will soon have him killed. Where he finds consolation, even joy, in the face of imminent death, I’ll leave you to discover. 

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REVIEW: “The Past, Like a River in Flood” by Marissa Lingen

Review of Marissa Lingen, “The Past Like a River in Flood”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 311 (August 27, 2020): read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

A school for magicians is hardly a novel concept these days, but what raises this fast-paced fantasy to a high level is its narrator: a forty-something former student who has reluctantly returned to her alma mater for a reason that terrifies her. When Ellis was a student, the school’s original Vault of Potions was destroyed in a flood. Now, twenty years later, two students are “mysteriously dead, found sitting against the Vault wall without a drop of blood or a bruise on them.”  At least two people suspect how the deaths relate to the long-ago flood: Ellis’s mentor, still a professor at the school, and the school’s provost. Now they need Ellis’s skill as a geomancer to neutralize the “nasty forces” in the Vault that have been allowed to build unchecked for two decades. Before the story ends, Ellis will be betrayed and witness a murder, but she’ll also have an opportunity to teach an important lesson on what it really means to put the past behind you.

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REVIEW: “Wayfarers” by Heather Morris

Review of Heather Morris, “Wayfarers”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: References to rape.

The titular wayfarers in Morris’s story are only vaguely hinted at, and the hints are not pretty — they are drug-users, they shriek and scream, they will rape “anyone they think can make babies,” as Meli, the head whore of Honeycomb, tells Athena, the narrator. As of the opening of the story, that class of people now contains Athena, whose period has just started and who “For twelve years I figured that one day I would wake up a boy. Bein’ a woman was worse than bein’ dead.”

Athena has to face not only the betrayal of her body but also the capture of her friend by the wayfarers. The only way to rescue the one is to come to terms with the other. In the end, I mostly felt sad for Athena. No one should have to feel resigned about being a woman, not when there are other options out there.

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REVIEW: “When the Moon Fell Down” by L. Lark

Review of L. Lark, “When the Moon Fell Down”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story surprised me with the deftness that it balanced upon fine lines — the line between urban fantasy and something richer and more wild, the line between witchcraft and madness. There were many times when I was uncertain how reliable a narrator Jone could be, and this uncertainty and tension gave a depth to this story that a lot of LSQ stories strive for but don’t quite reach.

My only complaint with the story was the use of the present tense, which I found so clunky it kept yanking me out of the story.

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REVIEW: “The Question of the Blade” by Alex Yuschik

Review of Alex Yuschik, “The Question of the Blade”, Luna Station Quarterly 28 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

What a beautiful and satisfying story to read this was. It’s the story of two childhood friends, Fel and Bas, and the different ways their heritages and histories dictate their future. There was a richly built world in the background of them, and a steadfast love between them no matter what tried to keep them apart. I was only a little bit disappointed by the ending, because I would have liked space to have been left for more character development.

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REVIEW: “Earth is a Crash Landing” by J. G. Formato

Review of J. G. Formato, “Earth is a Crash Landing”, Luna Station Quarterly 28 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Slavery.

This story was not at all what I expected. Celester, the narrator, is a self-described “Trashcan baby”, the sort of foundling who deserves to get stuck in a dead-end job issuing permits. And least, that is the facade that she puts up, not wanting to admit that there might be something else underneath her hard exterior. There are so many ways the story could then go, and none of the ways it did go were ones I could’ve imagined. There were twists and turns and hints and clues right the way through.

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REVIEW: “The Transubstantiation” by Evan Dicken

Review of Evan Dicken, “The Transubstantiation”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 310 (August 13, 2020); read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

Deff is the narrator of this interesting, but decidedly unusual take on the nature of heroes. He is part of a small group of “glory hounds” who trap and kill heroes in order to sell their bodies on the black market. Often this brings a high price since a hero’s blood can be used as a skin treatment that leaves a person’s face looking “smooth as marble and sheened with a pale glow.” In spite of the monetary rewards, Deff regrets this practice, though he justifies it by reminding himself that heroes always break bad. One case in point is the Weeper, the hunt for whom is what most of the story involves. The Weeper is “the woman who had toppled Empires, burned entire nations in the name of justice, made promise after promise then abandoned us when the payment came due.” Her form of abandonment was novel, at least. She somehow climbed all the way to Heaven searching for truth. However, the truth as she relates it leaves her in despair, but fills Deff with a very different emotion.  

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REVIEW: “Fire and Falling” by Andrew Dykstal

Review of Andrew Dykstal, “Fire and Falling”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 310 (August 13, 2020): Read online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

If this exciting adventure yarn set in a steampunkish universe is part of an ongoing series, I’m not aware of it; but if it’s the beginnings of one, I can’t wait for the next installment.  Mir, the story’s protaganist, is on her first assignment as a courier for the Lady of Situations, a master manipulator we hear a lot about but don’t actually meet. When given the opportunity to kill a large number of enemy agents, Mir does so by blowing up and unwittingly killing one of the most interesting characters in the story: a living airship. Many people die, too, but several survive, including an enemy agent Mir nicknames “Dogwood” and who befriends her. As the story progresses, Mir learns more and more about the fantastical nature of airships and their engineers. She also learns more about herself, including the fact that her destiny lies along a different path than she’d originally thought.  

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REVIEW: “All the Souls Like Candle Flames” by Vanessa Fogg

Review of Vanessa Fogg, “All the Souls Like Candle Flames”, Luna Station Quarterly 28 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I continue to be not a huge fan of 2nd person narration — I’ve said it before, but I had being told what I am thinking or feeling — so that it takes something quite extraordinary for me to overcome my high bar for stories that open up with an instruction to me, the reader. Unfortunately, Fogg’s story did not manage to hurdle it, despite the 2nd person narration being restricted to the opening, scene setting paragraphs. But after having been told that I know the Sea Witch’s name (I don’t) or that maybe I’m already dead (nope, definitely not), I wasn’t in the right mood to find out the story of Mikki, and why a fish has feathers. I think this story could’ve been much stronger if those initial paragraphs had been simply stripped out.

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