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 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 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!
Review of Lisa Fox, “Textures,” Flash Fiction Online 143 (August 2025): 7-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This is a story of love, and weddings, and memories. It’s sweet and short and sad, and full of beautiful metaphors such as “If love had a texture, it would be satin” (p. 7).
But — Annie, the main character, says of this metaphor,
In thirty-five years of working with brides, I knew which marriages would last by the way they responded to my metaphor (p. 7).
I wonder what she would think of my reaction, which is that satin wrinkles easily and the wrinkles are almost impossible to iron out!
Review of Kawai Shen, “The Doll’s Boy,” khōréō 4, no. 4 (2025) — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Explicit body horror; non-consensual sex.
Reading this story was an extremely voyeuristic — and hence distinctly uncomfortable — experience. Definitely well-written, but nothing something I could comfortably recommend to anyone to read.
Review of S.L. Harris, “The Harrowing of Hell (Third Circle, Sausage Counter, Contracts Office),” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 27-30 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Anyone who has their own story about “terrible summer employment,” this story is for you! Even if you don’t have such a story, read this one anyway, you’ll get some laughs out of it, and we can all use those.
Review of Deanna J. Valdez, “My Flesh, My Beating Heart, A Willing Meal That Refuses to Remember the Dangers of Being Eaten,” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 23-26 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Violence against women.
I’ve read a lot of stories that take the “monster on my back” metaphor literally — some of them are enormously effective and I love how they can be so straightforward without being trite. Unfortunately, this one isn’t quite one of them.
Review of Kel Coleman, “The Sacred, the Sacrificial,” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 20-21 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was an interesting story, but I feel like it was written for a reader who isn’t me.
(First published in Pipe Wrench, 2021.)
Review of Emlyn Meredith Dorneman, “To Ashes,” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I loved the way that Dorneman’s use of language felt like an assault on the senses, replicating in my reading the story the same experiences of the characters within the story. It all felt a bit overwhelming, and strange, and increasingly horrifying.
Review of Jason Pearce, “A Concise History of the Goldfish Trade,” Flash Fiction Online 142 (July 2025): 12-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There’s something about this story that feels very much like the type of fairy tale where a gullible young boy trades away his wealth for a myth. Two things made it more than that — Pearce’s setting amonst his ancestral Mi’kmaw, and the fact that the gullible young boy turns the tables at the end.
SFF Reviews