REVIEW: “Recite Her the Names of Pain” by Cassandra Khaw

Review of Cassandra Khaw, “Recite Her the Names of Pain”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 263-270. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Three sirens share an apartment in New York, adapting to a modern world that doesn’t need them to tempt heroes to bind themselves to the masts of ships just to prove their bravery and worth. Ligeia and Parthenope, at least, have shed their previous life and moved on. The third siren (the story alternates between 1st person POV from her perspective, and 3rd person POV where she is only referred to as “the siren”; however, (and I’ll admit I spent far too much time researching sirens after reading this story) I’m pretty sure she’s Leucosia), however, cannot escape the cries of the people who call to her. She hangs out at the archipelago to offer prophecy — what people need to know, not what they want to know. Sometimes, those words are the most dangerous of all.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “She Searches for God in the Storm Within” by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

Review of Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, “She Searches for God in the Storm Within”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 233-245. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content note: Domestic and sexual abuse, religious violence.

This was a beautiful, painful, powerful story, full of strength and fury and might. In any other context, I think I would have given it full marks. In the context of this anthology, I felt let down by the fact that — while there was a strong heroic woman warrior at the center of the story — there was no poet that I could find: all of Helene’s words are a byproduct of her actions, not the other way around. I could make up a reading of the story whereby “poetry” is more than just words, it is also actions, but…I actually want my poets to deal in words and not just deeds, because that is one of the things that makes poets special. So I ended up a bit disappointed in this story, sadly. I wish I could’ve read it first in another context, divorced from expectations of content, for then I would’ve been able to appreciate it a lot more.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “With Lips Sewn Shut” by Kristi DeMeester

Review of Kristi DeMeeser, “With Lips Sewn Shut”, Apex Magazine 113 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

When girls are born, their lips are sewn shut to keep them silent, a prerequisite to making the fine lace that their families depend on for income. While boys run wild in the fields and under the night sky, girls stay inside, without even names. That is how it has always been, in the place where our narrator grows up.

Did that premise send a shiver down your spine? It should. This is one of the creepiest feminist fairy tales I’ve read in a long time, and I loved it. The tone is cold, but never barren. The narrator may not have learned to speak out loud, but she uses the emotional range of language beautifully.

There are subtle hints threaded throughout, suggestions of a wolfish, bestial nature within the boys, who grow into men. The details are vague, but the implication is clear, and it adds another layer to the plight of the girls. Without their mouths sewn shut, would they share this wildness? Is that why they must be silenced – to keep them domesticated? The story does not say one way or the other, but I like to think that it is, that sewing their mouths shut denies them their wolfish nature.

In a story about silence and names, it is fitting that nobody is referred to by name until the end, not even her brothers, who we are told do have them. The story is structured such that we do not need them, and it adds to the sense of universality that is often evoked by folklore. What changes at the end, you may ask? You’ll just have to read the story to find out.

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REVIEW: “And the Ghosts Sang With Her: A Tale of the Lyrist” by Spencer Ellsworth

Review of Spencer Ellsworth, “And the Ghosts Sang With Her: A Tale of the Lyrist”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 189-203. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I’m not a huge fan of 2nd-person narration when the narrator’s “you” is directed at me, but when the audience of the narration is not the reader but a clearly defined character who is listening to an oral tale, then I like it very much. I sometimes feel that a lot of modern fantasy storytelling has lost some of its connection with its oral past, and that we don’t write enough stories that are designed to be read aloud any more. (Having a 6yo means I spend a lot of time reading stories out loud.)

Not only does the narration capture the oral aspect of this thousands-and-one-nights-inspired story, the story itself works well not merely read aloud but performed; it would be a lovely choice for someone to recite around a campfire as the late summer sun is setting.

And it had a fabulous, vengeful ending.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Bone Poet and God” by Matt Dovey

Review of Matt Dovey, “The Bone Poet and God”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 175-186. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a fantasy story aimed towards adults (in the sense of “not a children’s book, rather than “containing ‘adult’ content”) where the main cast of characters were anthropomorphised animals. I found it an interesting narrative choice, for other than the ways in which the characters interact with each other as a result of disparities in, eg., size and strength, none of them seemed particularly animal. If anything, Ursula the bear felt more human than many of the other magical poets featured in this anthology. Ursula’s story is one of figuring out how one is supposed to be themself. Ursula climbs the mountain to find God thinking that only God can help her choose who she wants to be. In the end she finds God, but what else she finds is not what she expects.

This story comes with a somewhat heavy handed moral; but I don’t mean this as a criticism. The story is a vehicle for teaching a lesson; the lesson is overt; and the lesson is a good one.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Heartwood, Sapwood, Spring” by Suzanne J. Willis

Review of Suzanne J. Willis, “Heartwood, Sapwood, Spring”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 163-172. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is the first story in the anthology to be set in the future — a post-apocalyptic future where humanity has broken into factions and the enemy fears the power of the written word. In such a world, libraries become the bastions of rebellion and words tattooed upon skin provide one last barrier of protection — tattoos made from ink created from the ashes of the books that were burned, libraries filled with books made of word indelible not upon vellum but upon a different sort of skin.

This story in all rights should be horribly, terribly gruesome and macabre. But it just isn’t, and that is what makes it so magical.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Labyrinth, Sanctuary” by A. E. Prevost

Review of A. E. Prevost, “Labyrinth, Sanctuary”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 151-160. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Over centuries, Constance has built her sanctuary, stone by stone. But to the poet Daylily, the sanctuary is a labyrinth within which Constance seems trapped.

Indeed, both Constance and Daylily seemed trapped by constraints of their own making; Constance, caught within the stone walls she has built, Daylily, by thinking that the only way to save the poems is to keep them to themself. Each needs the other to find the way to break free, and leave the labyrinthine sanctuary. For “there is so much there, in the world beyond” (p. 160).

I found that this was another story where the presence of the author’s note at the end significantly deepened my understanding and appreciation of the story, and the ways in which Constance and Daylily fight both to protect and save themselves and to keep themselves at bay. It was a quiet story, more words than action, very apt for the theme of battling through and with words.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Words of Our Enemies, the Words of Our Hearts” by A. Merc Rustad

Review of A. Merc Rustad, “The Words of Our Enemies, the Words of Our Hearts”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 133-148. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

“A shiny new story with dinosaurs” is how the author’s note describes this story, and Rustad delivered exactly that — not only with dinosaurs, but also an Ever-Hungry Queen, the tomeslinger Yarchuse who uses a set of neopronouns I’d never come across before (“ae”, “aer”), which I found read surprisingly smoothly and easily for being unfamiliar, a forest fighting for its right to survive, and (tapping into all my own desires) an Unearthly Library that people pray to instead of a deity. There was a lot going on packed into this story.

Yarchuse is the focus of the story, ae and aer quest to find the Ever-Hungry Queen’s son Prince Aretas, and the greater quest to end the war with the trees, but it was the Ever-Hungry Queen that intrigued me the most. Why does she hunger? What does she hunger? Was she the Ever-Hungry Queen three years ago, before the death of her daughter the princess? She remained throughout stubbornly peripheral and absent; I would have liked to have had more of her.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Her Poems Are Inked in Fears and Blood” by Kira Lees

Review of Kira Lees, “Her Poems Are Inked in Fears and Blood”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 125-130. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

A plague of ill-fortune is besetting the emperor; five courtier-poets have been killed in the last year, and no one knows how or by whom. Under Minister Ushiwara is the most recent to die, and no eulogy poem in his honor is better-crafted than the one Uguisu composes, and speaks using Ushiwara’s own words and images and voice.

Lees’s story set in Heian era Japan is blood-thirsty and vivid. Uguisu is not fighting to defend her land or her people or even herself, but something even more fundamental: Her voice, and her right to be remembered. I particularly enjoyed the quite long and detailed author’s note for this story which emphasises how little we know of the lives of historical Japanese women, often not even their names.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “A Siren’s Cry Is a Song of Sorrow” by Stina Leicht

Review of Stina Leicht, “A Siren’s Cry Is a Song of Sorrow”, Apex Magazine 112 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

This story is intense, and deals with the sexual abuse of a pair of little girls. Consider this your trigger warning for the review.

The narrator and her little sister wish they could be mermaids. If they were mermaids, then nobody would be concerned with what lay between their legs, and they would never have to become women, no longer be soiled and concerned with being good girls who dress demurely and cover up and never disappoint a man or speak up.

The beauty of this story is so much in the story itself, that I find that I have to discuss specific plot points. If you are averse to spoilers, feel free to skip to the last paragraph.

The narrator is so devoted to the idea of mermaids, that when she discovers Hans Christian Anderson’s story, she tears it out of her book in horror and rewrites it for her sister. It should go without saying that her new version has a much happier ending. It says so much about the narratives that we accept about women that the original has had any staying power (and maybe to the magic of Disney). I loved seeing this little girl recognize the misogyny inherent in the little mermaid being willing to give up her literal voice and her body for the love of a man who didn’t know who she truly was.

Mid-way through the story, they find some real witches and psychics, and go to ask one to turn them into mermaids. When she touches their hands, she realizes what’s going on in their home. She tells them that changing what they are isn’t the answer, and that even if it were, that they are too young to make that choice. That their problem isn’t being in the wrong bodies, but being unsafe in their own home. The whole story broke my heart, but for me, this was the heart of it, the moment that drives home that these girls believe the problem is them and their bodies, and not the people around them. It’s not a shocking revelation or new information, but the way it’s framed punched me in the gut. (On a lighter note, I like the implication that it is possible for someone be born in the wrong body, and for those people, getting a spell to turn them into a mermaid is entirely acceptable)

This story is intense, but it’s dealing with issues that are a reality for far too many women. That said, it’s beautiful and it will break you open in the best possible way. It deals with it’s subject matter in such a tender, yet straight forward way. Please remember that this story comes with a trigger warning, so keep that in mind, and take care of yourself.

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