REVIEW: “Aurelia” by Lisa Mason

Review of Lisa Mason, “Aurelia”, Fantasy & Science Fiction 134, 1-2 (2018): 39-60 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Michael Johnston.

This one surprised me.  The first few paragraphs left me cold, seeming to be headed to a place I don’t like in my fiction.  But the moment the despicable-but-charming Robert meets Aurelia, the story had its hooks in me.

I’m not usually a fan of psychological horror, and this story bridges the gap between “dark fantasy” and “horror” quite deftly, but it’s more of an uneasy Gaiman-esque kind of thing than anything actually horrific.  The disquieting story of Robert and Aurelia seems to march on despite the reader’s uneasy feelings, and it ends up exactly where it needs to.

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REVIEW: “Windhorse” by Zhao Haihong

Review of “Windhorse”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #36 Early Autumn pp. 47-51. Purchase here. Review by Ben Serna-Grey.

This story has a couple footnotes, but they’re much appreciated, especially if you’re not familiar with everything about Chinese geography or Tibetan culture. The main character is traveling from China to the mountains of Tibet, where they will get windhorse pennants from the monks there in order to help them mourn their deceased lover.

“Windhorse” is short and sweet, a lovely tail about grieving and loss, acceptance, and it’s a great story to finish up this magazine.

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REVIEW: “Zilal and the Many-Folded Puzzle Ship” by Charlotte Ashley

Review of Charlotte Ashley, “Zilal and the Many-Folded Puzzle Ship”, Podcastle: 502 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

I was amused by this clever adventure story about a girl, her ship-building skills, and the lengths she’s willing to go to get some make-out time with the boy she likes. In an early modern, somewhat clock-punky alternate history, a gateway to another world opens on the ocean offshore from Mogadishu. Official powers are interesting in controlling access, but Zilal, whose clever ability to design mechanisms and ships with surprising features has already begun building her reputation, sees it as a useful place to slip away to with the object of her affection. When they find out why those official guards might be a good idea, Zilal’s “foldable” ship comes in very handy for rescue.

A great deal of the narrative sketches out the ship’s features and their mechanics, but it’s done with a light hand and interspersed with bits of romantic comedy. There is an amusing gender-reversal aspect to the story, as Zilal’s boyfriend fills out the role of somewhat naive “damsel” while Zilal is the genius inventor. As the podcast’s framing material indicates, the story is part of the worldbuilding for a shared-world narrative, but it stands alone quite well.

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REVIEW: “The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future” by Christi Nogle

Review of “The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #36 Early Autumn pp. 39-46. Purchase here. Review by Ben Serna-Grey.

Another story in this issue that is at least partly written in second-person, but this one works a lot better for me than “Children of Air” did. My instinct is that this is due to the story giving commands on what to visualize versus chronicling what I, the reader, am supposedly doing. There’s not as much of a hurdle to relating with the writing.

“The Best of Our Past” is a coming-of-age story about a young woman who falls in love with her step-cousin, chronicling life as they grow with and apart from each other, and a frightening power comes to light. It commands you to sit down and fall into its imagery, to see everything happening in the lives of these two young people. For me, at least, the command worked.

I wouldn’t say the ending is a happy one, and I’m not sure I’d say it’s a bad ending either. It just simply is, and sometimes that’s all you need. Another winner in a magazine that has so far had no duds. Quite an accomplishment.

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REVIEW: “Töpflein, Stehe” by G. Deyke

Review of G. Deyke, “Töpflein, Stehe”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 144-145. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Barely a page and a half, this is one of the shortest stories in the anthology, and as such, it is more a vignette than a story. We never know who the narrator is, or how they have found themself in the situation they have. One expects there to be a clue to the details missing from the story in the title, but alas, that title sheds little light on any of these shadowed facts.

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REVIEW: “Sin” by Karl Egerton

Review of Karl Egerton, “Sin”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 108-118. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

It’s astonishing how often SFF stories don’t seem to have any form of religion in them, given how major an influence that has been on pretty much the entire history of human culture. Without religion there really isn’t any kind of concept of “Sin”, so going into this story the question for me was: What kind of religion is it going to be?

Never did I expect it would centered around the goddess Perchta (whom I’d recently been reading up on, so to see her name was a sudden delight!), rather than classic Christian tropes. There is a visceral — no pun intended — delight in reading of the school children chanting:

“But we know that she was a Sinner because…?”

Albert and the rest of the class, in unison, practically sang the response.

“Because Perchta came and sliced up her guts!”

The teacher gestured to Albert.

“And then?”

“She filled her with rocks!” he chanted.

The children let out an excited giggle.

“And why did Perchta’s righteous knife disembowel her?”

“To save us all from Sin!”

Because when I read that, I know I’m in for something different, something fun.

Egerton’s story is an investigation of childhood, of sin, where it comes from, and how we rationalise it. “What sort of thing is a sin, really?” Albert asks the priest, and that question encapsulates the entire story. “It was absolutely necessary for actions to have consequences,” the narrator tells us, and in the end, we see that Sin and Perchta, transgression and punishment, are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other.

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REVIEW: “Breach” by Niki Kools

Review of Niki Kools, “Breach”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 122-133. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I love stories where the main characters are not like us, and where this is fed into the story in little bits and pieces. At the start, there is no indication that Vivion is other than human, until then, a few sentences in, we read “The air outside, swarming with little summer seeds, has hardened her scales on her way here.” Ooooh! I am now instantly intrigued.

And the story just keeps getting stranger, full of bits that are unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and there are so many beautiful little details. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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REVIEW: “The Bone Plain” by Karin Tidbeck

Review of Karin Tidbeck’s, “The Bone Plain”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 19 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

“The Bone Plain” is an evocative story about a young woman trying to escape a terrible incident from her past. Erika travels west until there’s no more west in front of her. By accident, she falls in with a group of pilgrims travelling ‘the trail’, and follows them on their pilgrimage because they provide company, distraction, and a sense of safety. As their journey continues Erika’s story unfolds. She is fleeing from her life with Aidan; an older man who pretended to be her friend, but actually wanted to be much more. She is running from ‘The hand reaching out from the foot of the bed. The moist lips on her foot,’ and from the uncomfortable sense that she has done something violent in order to escape.

At first glance, “The Bone Plain” seems to contain barely a hint of the science fictional or the fantastical. However, a few key differences from our own world clearly set it outside the realms of reality. Erika’s trail takes her to the cathedral of ‘Our Lady of World’s End’; an intriguing, fictional religious figure. Erika then travels on to the ‘plains’ of the title where ‘The bones lay scattered all over the plain, the smallest one the length of a bus.’ While the bones described could easily be dinosaur bones, establishing them as real (if extinct) creatures, our world doesn’t contain a huge plain of bones ‘supposedly arranged along leylines’ that pilgrims can visit. With these simple touches, the reader is placed kindly, but firmly, in a different realm; although one that still contains familiar touchstones like payphones, pastries, and knock-off trainers. At the end, a central unsettling mystery that has the potential to complicate the reader’s understanding of Erika is left hanging in the air, and this compliments the story’s general slightly odd and out of time feeling.

“The Bone Plain” illuminates the healing potential of a journey embarked on without a clear sense of purpose. It’s a story which presents an equally satisfying alternative to the driven, questing nature of many fantasy stories. The pleasure of this alternate structure creeps up on you as Karin Tidbeck deftly balances hard history and difficult questions alongside companionship and Erika’s growing sense of reconnecting with herself. A very gratifying story, and a second reading allows you to fully savour Erika’s slow development.

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REVIEW: “Learning to See Dragons” by Sarah Monette

Review of Sarah Monette’s, “Learning to See Dragons”, Uncanny Magazine Volume, 19 (2017): Read Online. Reviewed by Jodie Baker.

In Sarah Monette’s poignant story about a young girl’s grief and loneliness, much of the background is shaded in swiftly; leaving the reader clutching at tantalising details. The story revolves around one central event; the death of Annie’s grandmother. However, much of what informs Annie’s story is happening, or has already happened, off the page.

When questioned by her teacher about whether there is trouble at home, Annie thinks ‘The trouble was that she didn’t have a home anymore, just a house where she lived with her parents. Her home had never been there, and now it was nowhere.’ And, while it’s difficult to build a definitive picture of Annie’s home life, it’s obvious from little details in the text that Annie doesn’t feel much affinity with her parents. Her grandmother has been the more significant, and positive, force in her life.

The fantasy element of this story is quiet, but at the same time extremely surreal. “Learning to See Dragons” is one of those stories where magic seems to appear just because it’s needed; although the appearance of magic doesn’t guarantee a typical happy ending. After finishing the story, I was remind of Ali Shaw’s The Girl With Glass Feet and Lucy Wood’s collection Diving Belles. As with those stories, I was left feeling a little sad about Annie and her eventual transformation. And I felt sorry for her mother who seems to be feeling plenty of her own grief but can’t connect with her daughter at this important time. There’s an element of horror to the ending, but it’s hard not to also feel a sense of relief for Annie who has chosen and summoned her own fate. The reader is left questioning and reevaluating their response long after they’ve read the story’s last line.

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REVIEW: “The Christmas Abomination from Beyond the Back of the Stars” by Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt

Review of Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt, The Christmas Abomination from Beyond the Back of the Stars, Podcastle: 501 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

Humor is hard. And when it doesn’t work for you, it’s hard to know if it doesn’t work or if it just doesn’t work for you. I get the impression that this story is part of a continuing holiday tradition, with references to the back-stories of characters like the boy mummy adopted by the eccentric American family. This installment is a slapstick humorous take on Lovecraftian-style horror, complete with elder gods and uncanny rituals to summon or dismiss them. All as part of a Christmas trip to an isolated Pacific island. The humor relied in part on the premise that bratty misbehaving children are inherently funny and that adults are inherently incompetent, which is also funny. It isn’t a bad story. The writing hangs together perfectly well, it was the right length for the amount of content, and the clever twist was neither out-of-the-blue nor over-telegraphed. But in the end, it didn’t work for me as humor. And I think that’s mostly because humor is hard and very individual.

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