REVIEW: “Melilot Dreams” by EC Dorgan

Review of EC Dorgan, “Melilot Dreams,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 81-92 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Most post-apocalyptic stories lean heavily to the SF genre, but this one doesn’t wear that genre on its sleeve; if anything, it tends more towards horror, of a very reflective, personal, and introspective kind. We never learn much about the apocalypse other than that it was AI-driven, but quite a bit about the narrator, their life before and after, and the loneliness of trying to stay alive.

It is a deeply, deeply unhappy story.

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REVIEW: “Sour Milk” by Phoenix Mendoza

Review of Phoenix Mendoza, “Sour Milk,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 30-32 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: body horror; child neglect; femicide

That this is going to be a gruesome story is made obvious right from the start — there’s dead bodies right away in paragraph two. Jean-Marie likes to talk to these women, swollen and maggoty and slick with decomposition, because she has no mother of her own, no one else to talk to. And because this is a horror story, of course the Ladies talk back — they need her just as much as she needs them.

This is definitely not going to be a story for everyone, but if you like horror, it’s deftly crafted.

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REVIEW: “Yes, No, Goodbye” by LeeAnn Perry

Review of LeeAnn Perry, “Yes, No, Goodbye,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 26-28 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Suicidal ideation.

I’m never quite sure what to make of stories like this. It’s a ghost story, well-crafted and constructed, put together in a way that leads to a simple resolution and leaves few questions unanswered. But along the way it concentrates on the sad and the sordid and the unhappy, and whenever I read a story like this, I always wonder — what does the author expect me to get out of a story like this? I think sometimes I wish for a little more escapism from my reading than gritty realism stories like this provide.

(First published in The Dawn Review August 2023.)

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REVIEW: “Eight Legs of the Mother Hunted” by Brandon Case

Review of Brandon Case, “Eight Legs of the Mother Hunted,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 15-18 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Spiders (obvs); death of a child.

I love it when a story can get me to empathise with something that normally gives me the ick — it’s the mark of a quality writer when that happens. I’m not a huge fan of spiders, but I am 100% on the side of the titular mother hunted. Her pain is my pain, and her victory my victory. What a gorgeous little story.

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REVIEW: “Robot, Changeling, Ghost” by Avra Margariti

Review of Avra Margariti, “Robot, Changeling, Ghost,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 7-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death of a child; child abuse.

I’m always excited when I see an Avra Margariti byline, as I know I’m in for something satisfying and probably unusual. This story is particularly dark, bordering on horror, full of hurt and loss and longing. It’s also disconcerting enough that I’d like to say: Read with care.

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REVIEW: “Is That New?” by Rosamund Lannin

Review of Rosamund Lannin, “Is That New?,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 33-46 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There was something positively magical about how Lannin wove together the excessively mundane with the delightfully unexpected. At the end of a long train at the end of a long week which was the last week of a long academic term, this story broke through my exhaustion and made me smile, right up until it caught me by surprise. Fantasy with a twist of horror — what a fun read!

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REVIEW: “Thicker Than Water” by Aeryn Rudel

Review of Aeryn Rudel, “Thicker Than Water,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 26-28 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a gruesome little gem of a story, set in a apocalyptic world; or perhaps our own world, in just a few decades’ time — you decide how soon you think global warming will suck us all dry and leave humans competing not only with animals for water, but also with the trees!

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REVIEW: “One, Sorrow, Two, Joy” by Sarah Magaharan

Review of Sarah Magaharan, “One, Sorrow, Two, Joy,” Luna Station Quarterly 60 (2024): 37-54 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a weird, somewhat dreamy, slightly gruesome story, the dreaminess enhanced by the way it felt like a disjointed collection of incidents without any proper narrative thread. (This definitely felt intentional, not accidental!)

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REVIEW: “Granny’s Spider” by Wen Wen Yang

Review of Wen Wen Yang, “Granny’s Spider,” Small Wonders no. 4 (October 2023): 13-15 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Gwen has never known what happened to The First One, Granny’s first husband and the grandfather of Gwen’s husband, and this story is the story of how she asked and found out. I actually really struggled with this story for perhaps a silly reason: Granny knew that The First One was not a good one quite early on, already back when her kids were young. She says she went to a lawyer and was advised to go and ask for a divorce. But this is below the Mason-Dixon line, and Granny is 80, so assuming this was in the 1960s…lots of states didn’t introduce no-fault divorces until 1970 or later, and prior to that it was just not that easy for a woman to “go and get a divorce”. So would this really have been what a lawyer would advise her?

It’s such a small point to get hung up on, but get hung up on it I did (paused in the middle of the story to go trawling down wikipedia to confirm my hazy memory for dates), and while I love a story that causes me to wikipedia dive, I don’t like it so much when I feel the need to do it in the middle of the story as a fact-check mechanism.

(First published in The Arcanist 2021.)

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REVIEW: “Katya’s Microscope” by Monica Joyce Evans

Review of Monica Joyce Evans, “Katya’s Microscope,” Small Wonders no. 4 (October 2023): 6-8 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

It’s lovely to see a story that showcases a child with chronic illness; it’s not representation that I see very often!

It’s a tough story to categorize, because even though we’re given quite an intimate view of Katya and her best friend (the narrator), it’s all channelled through the narrator’s experiences; so we are just as ignorant as she is. But it’s fragile and chilling and speculative in just the right way to make for a very satisfying read.

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