REVIEW: “Milk Teeth and Heartwood” by Kathryn McMahon

Review of Kathryn McMahon, “Milk Teeth and Heartwood”, Syntax and Salt #5, December 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Tiffany Crystal

This is another story I’m not really sure how I feel about. It has an interesting premise, but there isn’t enough substance. It feels like it could be so much better…almost like it was rushed. She put together this great idea, the bare bones of it, and then just…threw it out there for the world to see. It’s really disappointing. There’s so much more she could’ve delved into.

Like, why is it only the mother and daughter? If the trees protect them, what happened to the father? Did the mother leave like her daughter had, only to come back pregnant, and that’s why they’re alone? What does the girl’s lovers think of the red lace that covers her arms? Do they know about the trees, or is that a local thing? How long was she gone, for her mother to have tree trunks for legs? Did moving away do anything to slow the change? Did she buy the weedkiller to use on herself, or in case the trees tried to follow her?

The story isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just…missing something.

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REVIEW: “Mother Imago” by Henry Stanton

Review of Henry Stanton, “Mother Imago”, Syntax and Salt #5, December 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Tiffany Crystal

I didn’t understand this work at all. It has some beautiful lines in it, and I get the impression that the title is a play on words, “Mother, I’mma go (now)”, but other than that, I’m really not sure what the author was trying to play at.

What is the importance of those three guns? Did the shadow that appeared make the person walk further into the marsh? Or was it symbolic of them waking up to realizing that they didn’t mean anything to the world? They mention passing through “that circle of hell”, and shades, which gives the impression that they’re a ghost. Are they walking into the marsh because they’ve grown weary of their existence outside their mother’s shack? How did their mother summon them, anyway?

Don’t get me wrong, the writing is well done, I just wish for a bit more substance to the story.

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REVIEW: “In the Beginning, All Our Hands Are Cold” by Ephiny Gale

Review of Ephiny Gale, “In the Beginning, All Our Hands Are Cold”, Syntax and Salt #5, December 2017: Read Online. Reviewed by Tiffany Crystal

By now, if you’ve been paying attention to my reviews, you know that I hate unanswered questions. I like knowing the whys and the wherefores, I like having an ending, even if it’s just a simple “and they lived happily ever after.” When a story leaves too many questions, it’s like drinking a glass of water and still being thirsty. Or an itch beneath the skin that you just can’t reach.

The only thing this story had, out of all that, was an ending.

We have no idea why kids are born without hands. We don’t know if this is something that only happens to kids in this village, or world wide. We don’t know why the children change to fit the hands, or how the magic that keeps them young works. We don’t know if the hands call to the people they would be the best fit, or if the person picks the hands and their personality changes to fit the hands.

There were just so many unanswered questions…and I loved it.

The questions In the Beginning leaves, are like a cold cup of fruit juice on a hot summer’s day. It tastes great going down, and it leaves you wanting more, but not in a “I have the Sahara in my mouth” kinda way. It has made its way into my (very) short list of favorite short stories, and I am looking forward to reading more from this author.

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REVIEW: “A Priest of Vast and Distant Places” by Cassandra Khaw

Review of Cassandra Khaw “A Priest of Vast and Distant Places”, Apex Magazine 106 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Many people have observed that there is something mysterious about the liminal space of airports and of flight itself. Khaw takes that observation a step further, with a story about one of their clergy, a solitary priest of the planes, criss-crossing the globe to commune with the vehicles in her spiritual charge, listening to their stories and their woes.

But this isn’t simply a story about a nifty idea (though it is a wonderful idea, building on the real-world experience and wonder of air travel). This is a meditation on love and loneliness and humanity. On connection and isolation (feelings I think we very much associate with airports, and the separations and reunions that occur there) and how those opposing feelings weave together to form a tapestry. Most of all, this is a story about home. It holds all of the irreconcilable dichotomies inherent to that word, all of the mixed up emotions that it can stir up, and doesn’t try to resolve them. I am grateful for that.

This is a quick read (less than 3,000 words) that packs a lot of emotional resonance and some truly lovely moments and resonant images. Well worth reading and rereading.

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REVIEW: “Notes from an Unpublished Interview with Mme. Delave, Fairy” by Brittany Pladek

Review of Brittany Pladek, “Notes from an Unpublished Interview with Mme. Delave, Fairy”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When I first skimmed the table of contents for issue 33, I saw “Notes from an Unpublished Interview…” right after the editorial and figured it was a non-fiction piece and that I wouldn’t review it here. Only after I’d read a few other stories in the issue did I take a closer look at the title and go “Ooooh!” Because all it takes is that final word to hook me in and make me want to read this story.

The story opens with a little editorial note explaining the circumstances of this present piece taken from the archives. The note ends with a sentence that I could give my philosophy students to analyse: “Because unsubstantiated does not mean impossible.”

This was an absolutely lovely and engaging story, chock full of myth and history. “As Europe has history, so Faerie has change,” Mme. Delave tells her interviewer. But Faerie died. It did not fade, as Mme. Delave reprimands her interviewer for saying, but rather, it thickened. It became solid. It ceased to change. And as Aristotle tells us, “time is the number of motion in respect of before and after”, that is, with respect to change. Where there is no change, there is no motion, there is no movement, there is no time. And where there is no time, there is no life, only death.

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REVIEW: “The Last Shaper at The Witch City’s Waypoint” by Emily Lundgren

Review of Emily Lundgren, “The Last Shaper at The Witch City’s Waypoint”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story has a gorgeous opening line:

Ess sang he found me in the reeds in the heat of summer, my mother a crow lying dead.

(Even if every time I read it, my eyes see “cow” instead of “crow”, and I can’t help but think that that would also work, and perhaps be even more interesting.)

The rest of the story was as beautifully crafted, full of lovely language like a song itself, and the rhythm and pacing and descriptive imagery of a fairy tale. Except part-way through it shifts from a fairy tale into something more akin to science fiction. The story transcends boundaries and classification, and is just really good.

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REVIEW: “Of All Possible Worlds” by Eneasz Brodski

Review of Eneasz Brodski, “Of All Possible Worlds”, in Steve Berman, ed., Wilde Stories 2017: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2017): 223-236. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Warning: This story contains a rape.

Ehud. I had slept with him years ago. I had loved him for awhile. I should have known he would be found out. A stone flew from the crowd and tore his ear open. It bled black.

This story was a feast of detail — Romans and Jews, slaves and centurions, Colosseum fights, monstrous grotesque animals, a wizened wizard. To every animal, human or beast, that Marad sends into the Colosseum, he offers the following apology: “You must die so that I may live. I don’t ask your forgiveness; this is the way of life. But know I wish this world was different” (p. 225).

All the stories in this anthology make my heart ache, from sadness, from gladness, from a desire that the world is other than how it is. This one left me with a feeling of sadness and fear too complex to be articulated. The horror in it is shattering.

(This story was originally published in 2016 in Swords vs. Chthulhu, Jesse Bullington & Molly Tanzer, eds.)

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REVIEW: “Heart Proof” by Holly Schofield

Review of Holly Schofield, “Heart Proof”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There is a lot of world-building that has gone into this story — always a plus — but the flip side of it is that I’m not sure I got the details I needed to get when I needed to get them.

The story opens with a strong sense of anger and antagonism between the two main characters, Kamik and Techan. The tension is palpable, but I found it difficult to figure out where it came from. I feel like I’ve been dumped into the story a bit too precipitously and so I don’t know enough of their history to understand why their tempers are so short and why they are so angry with each other, because it is also clear that they have known each other for a long time and were, at least once, friends. It is only later that one very oblique comment makes me realise that they are — or at least once were — lovers.

The classic fantasy story involves a quest, and the quest in this story is one of pilgrimage — pilgrimage to make sacrifice, “a sacrifice to a god I no longer believe in!” (so says Kamik). We learn that the pilgrimage is one that every member of the village one makes, but it takes a long while to find out why Kamik and Techan are making the pilgrimage now, so late in their lives — it is nearly half-way through that I find out that the pilgrimage isn’t a one-time thing, but something that is done every time the god Welmit eats the moon.

So the story took me awhile to suck me in. But when Kamik reaches the edge of Welmit’s Maw and begins to contemplate heresy, then I was hooked. My only complaint by the end is that I wished the heresy had been a bit more heretical, a bit less orthodox.

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REVIEW: “We Head for the Horizon and Return with Bloodshot Eyes” by Eleanna Castroianni

Review of Eleanna Castroianni, “We Head for the Horizon and Return with Bloodshot Eyes”, Podcastle: 513 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

Somehow Greece–in this case, the Greek civil war shortly after WWII–seems the most appropriate setting for a tale of haruspicy (the divining of omens by the study of entrails). Nafsika has a talent for divining futures and presents in the bones and organs of the dead–a talent that her commanding officer begrudgingly values except when the fate that Nafsika sees contradicts her strategy and plans. The war provides the peril and hazards that make hard choices necessary, but as the author’s notes indicate, this is in some ways a symbolic exploration of the real-history hardships and consequences of the setting. Intertwined in the exploration of Nafsika’s talents is the dangerous love she shares with her female comrade and Nafsika’s desperate attempt to use her talents to find a path to survival for her squad.

For all the gruesome opening and looming disaster, I was riveted from beginning to end. This is a powerful story with an intense sense of place and time. The horrors are both supernatural and historical, and the framing story of the protagonist writing the events as a diary (based on actual historic examples) leaves the audience in suspense as to the outcome. I can’t say that I’d be eager to experience it again, but I’m glad to have listened the once.

Content warning for body horror and wartime violence.

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REVIEW: “Scar Clan” by Carrow Narby

Review of Carrow Narby, “Scar Clan”, Podcastle: 512 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

It isn’t often that a shapeshifter story comes up with twists I haven’t seen before. “Scar Clan” tackles the point of view of a veterinarian’s assistant in a clinic that reaches out to an unusual clientele, with the secondary task of keeping that clientele out of public knowledge. One of the unusual twists in this story’s version of werewolves is a resistance to death that goes well beyond issues of silver bullets. This is demonstrated in an extended opening scene that involves significant gruesome horror. But the meat of the story (if you’ll forgive the expression) is an exploration of the protagonist’s history of trauma and how it brought her to this particular job, with a consideration of the nature of monstrosity and personhood.

I’d classify this as a dark story, despite the central characters managing to escape perils great and small. It’s a story that assumes the world is a dark and dangerous place and that the best you can hope for is to have allies chance by at the right time. In technical terms, t’s a good story, though not really to my personal taste.

Content warning for violent dismemberment and sexual peril.

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