Review of Marisca Pichette, “How to Safely Store Your Dragons,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 21-23 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The “tl;dr” of this story is: Dragons are flammable buggers, don’t forget it; but the story itself is so much more than this, it’s cute, fluffy fun, something that you can read and feel happier about life afterwards.
Review of Stewart C. Baker, “Five Books from the Alnif Crater Traveling Library,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 16-19 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a series of vignettes (which nevertheless held together well enough to constitute a proper story) about life on Mars.
As much as I enjoyed the story, it did feel a bit of a strange choice coming, as it did, immediately after Rachael K. Jone’s “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention”. Both are structurally similar and use a conceit which I think works better in isolation, rather than in conjunction.
(First published in Nature Magazine, September 2021.)
Review of Rachael K. Jones, “Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a fun, funny, and touching story, which I liked quite a bit even if it is in 2nd person (my least favorite way of telling a story).
Review of Rebecca Harrison, “Little Pound Shop,” Flash Fiction Online 123 (December 2023): 7-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story was a little bite of candy-floss: Super yummy and desirable, completely insubstantial, and just a little bit too sweet.
(I am a huge fan of cotton candy, so this is not as negative a review as some might read it!)
Review of Chelsea Sutton, “Ursula the Monster,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 18-20 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
A short, sweet story of one woman’s revenge on every wrong that’s ever been done to her gender.
(First published in Orca Literary Summer 2022.)
Review of Katy Boyer, “Saint Woad and Sister Welwitschia,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 15-16 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
“We are a ghastly bunch, we who remain.”
This sentence perfectly encapsulates the grim horror of this story, which explores all the different ways the stillbirth of a child ripples outward.
Review of Lyndsey Croal, “The Constellations of Daughter Death,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
What a beautiful little story this was — both in the language it was told in and the content of the story itself. Reading it made me want to find glow-in-the-dark paints to paint it.
Review of Dylan Curry, “To Slay a Goblin,” Flash Fiction Online (October 2023): 7-9 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was about three-quarters hilarious and one-quarter sudden sucker punch to the gut.
Well. That’s exactly the sort of thing good fiction is supposed to be. I’m saving this one to show to give to students as an exemplar.
Review of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Aysel K. Basci (trans.), “Of Tales and Dreams,” Flash Fiction Online (August 2023): 19-21 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Death of a parent.
This is a meandering story, starting here and moving to there, and then to elsewhere, with no underlying sense of narrative, just the reflections of someone who grew up beside the Tigris and both cannot imagine ever leaving and yet yearns to be free. There’s a lot of lush imagery in it, and I felt I got to know the narrator quite well even in such a short excerpt.
(Original published in Hikayeler (Short Stories / Evin Sahibi), Dergah Yayinlari, Istanbul 1983.)
Review of Jennifer Hudak, “Little Fish, Big Fish,” Flash Fiction Online (August 2023): 15-18 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
“The daughters go; the mothers bring them back”: This fist-in-the-gut line encapsulates the essence of this story, about intergenerational trauma and one generation learning to trust the next generation coming to make their own choices, known their own minds. It’s a powerful story of a visceral circle of hate and need.
SFF Reviews