Tag: F

Review of Bogi Takács, “Standing on the Floodbnks” in The Trans Space Octopus Congregation Stories, (Lethe Press, Inc., 2019): 277-315 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: Combat, warfare, blood, nightmares, vomiting, post-traumatic stress, ableism, panic attacks, flashbacks, flooding, racism, objectification, slavery.

The anthology closes with a bang, this nearly-novellette sweeping together all the wonderful disparate skills that Takács has displayed in the rest of the stories in the collection.

There are certain stories that when you read you go “I didn’t know stories could be like that”. This is one of them. I sit here and I struggle to find a way to put into words what made this story so good and why I feel about it the way that I do. I can’t, though, so I will just direct the reader to Aristotle on “katharsis”, and hope that if they read this story too, they will find it as cathartic as I did. It’s gorgeous and painful and almost horrifying and beautiful all at once.

(First published in Gigantosaurus Nov. 2016).

Review of Bogi Takács, “Spirit Forms of the Sea” in The Trans Space Octopus Congregation Stories, (Lethe Press, Inc., 2019): 257-271 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: Death, being eaten, death of animals, vomiting.

This story surprised me by being set squarely in our own world — or at least, in a world where there are Croats, where there is a place called Venice. Takács blended the unreal and the real so carefully together in this story I found myself constantly pausing to look up the foreign words — is a ‘táltos’ an imaginary thing or a real? What about the turul? (Real, both). How much of this story is myth, how much is folk tale, and how much is pure fantasy? (So much harder to answer). I love stories like this, where the lines are blurred and where nothing is certain.

(First published in Sword and Mythos, 2014).

Review of Bogi Takács, “All Talk of Common Sense” in The Trans Space Octopus Congregation Stories, (Lethe Press, Inc., 2019): 273-276 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: Ableism, mention of warfare, vomiting.

This story was full of so many vivid visuals — as someone who is mildly afantasiac, I often tend to skip description because it just doesn’t do anything for me; but Takács’s skill makes even a few words come alive in a mental picture, no mean feat! And there’s quite a bit packed into this short little story beyond just vivid mental images: Detailed characterisations, a sufficiency of backstory, and a neat resolution. This is the sort of story you’d give to beginning writers as an example of how to do short stories well.