Review of Lydia O’Donnell, “Silver and Silt,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 175-184 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I don’t often come across stories featuring male selkies, so that was an interesting novelty in this one. But as with many stories about forbidden love, this one wasn’t really about whether the narrator and her selkie would have their happy ever after, and more about one girl’s path to finding what it is she really wants.
Review of Ziggy Schutz, “Through Glass,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 49-51 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
It’s quite incredible how much metaphor and allegory Schutz is able to stuff into three pages. I’m torn between loving this story for what it is and what it does, and wishing it had so much more.
Review of T.M. Conway, “The Alliance,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 95-104 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There are plenty of tales out there about the love a ship’s captain has for their ship — but this was the first story I’ve encountered about a ship’s love for their captain. It was delightful (albeit a bit bittersweet)!
Review of Lesley Hart Gunn, “The Philosophy of Weeds,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 187-189 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
“Be careful what you cultivate,” Lana’s husband warns her, but honestly, of the two of them, I’m on Lana’s side, on the side of letting the weeds grow and flourish. No matter how destructive they are in this tight, short story, they are far less destructive than what it is that her husband is cultivating.
Review of H.V. Patterson, “Downstairs Neighbor,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 71-78 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Moving out and on your own is never easy, even when space and independence is what you want. Thankfully, this can be made easier with the presence of a helpful neighbor — which is exactly what the narrator in this story gets, even if it’s not quite the neighbor she might have expected! This was a fun little story.
Review of Sam W. Pisciotta, “Transubstantiation,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 23-25 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There’s something about the glorification of motherhood (the whole “becoming a mother makes you a goddess” trope) in this story that doesn’t sit well at all with me. The emphasis on the transcendence of the mother also diminishes the role of the father, and while the resolution of the story comes as the father finds a way to restore his rightful place in the family, it’s a resolution to a problem that I wish hadn’t been there in the first place.
Review of Nicole Lynn, “Entropy in a Fruit Bowl,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Death of a parent, physical violence.
Apparently the trick to learning necromancy is: Start small. But love that only existed asymmetrically can never be resurrected once it is dead — these are the two lessons of this short, exceedingly sad, story.
(First published in The Arcanist October 2022.)
Review of Selphie Ke, “Akane is Dead,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 21-24 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Pregnancy, death, femicide.
“The standard lie of the prostitute is ‘I love you’. The standard lie of the client is ‘I will marry you.’” It was a lesson writ on the hearts of every
Yoshiwara courtesan (p. 22).
This was a powerful story of sisterhood and vengeance, set in a setting I was almost entirely unfamiliar with, so I enjoyed my regular pauses to look up various words and references to learn more.
Review of David Hammond, “The Thing About the Castle,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Oh, gosh, this was a beautiful and touching story. You think it’s going to be about Zack, the narrator, who builds Lego castles and makes up stories about them, but it turns out to really be a story about his mother, and father, and about love, and about loss. So many feelings stuffed into so short a story!
Review of Louise Hughes, “Practical Knitters,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Anyone who has ever worked with yarn knows there’s more than a bit of magic in the craft. Hughes’s story is a warm fairy tale premised on making this point explicit. (But now I want the companion story about theoretical knitters — the ones who write the patterns that the practical knitters then knit!)
SFF Reviews