REVIEW: “Dog and Pony Show” by Robert Jeschonek

Review of Robert Jeschonek, “Dog and Pony Show”, Clarkesworld Issue 180, September (2021): Read Online. Reviewed by Myra Naik.

Wow, what an insanely creative and unsettling story! A dog isn’t a dog, soft isn’t soft, what breakfast actually could be is unimaginable, and playtime is terrifying torture.

The details and descriptions were written so well, as was our narrator Beneathy. Fantastically paced with well-fleshed out characters, this is a memorable story. I read this twice – the second time simply for the unsettling beauty of the prose.

This month, Clarkesworld stories have all had an element of hope, and this one gave us a bit of that as well. However, the ending was unexpected and so much worse than I would have imagined. Fantastic story.

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REVIEW: “Glissade” by Lindz McLeod

Review of Lindz McLeod, “Glissade” Cossmass Infinities 5 (2021): Read or purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Sam learned how to walk through the woods in the Quiet from her father (a skill her brother Jamie never really understood). The Quiet is what allows Sam and her family to hunt, and at first, reading the story, the Quiet seems peaceful, tranquil, something good. It’s only as you read further along that you realise just what it is that Sam and her family are hunting…

An unexpectedly gruesome and vicious story!

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REVIEW: “Syrup-Tapping Season” by Laney Gaughan

Review of Laney Gaughan, “Syrup-Tapping Season,” Luna Station Quarterly 48 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When I think of tapping maple trees for syrup, the last thing I think is: “Ah, yes, horror.” And yet, Gaughan’s story is deliciously horrific, full of creepy uncertainty and spreading terror. Totally incongruous, the setting and the genre, and thoroughly satisfying.

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REVIEW: “Planet, Paper, Space” by Melissa Embry

Review of Melissa Embry, “Planet, Paper, Space,” Luna Station Quarterly 22 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Max Villafranca is an origami artist who has paid for two weeks’ visit to the orbiting station Gaia, where he is very much the bumbling tourist that the long-suffering crew puts up with because it pays the bill. This was such an utterly charming mixture of the strange and unfamiliar and the ordinary, almost mundane. Max was an extremely disarming hero, and I felt great sympathy for Captain Nguyen having to put up with him. And I loved the way in which this story was slightly more than science fiction, it also had a fantastical element that segued always into horro that I was not expecting.

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REVIEW: “After Colour” by Kiale Palpant and Oliver Herbort

Review of Kiale Palpant and Oliver Herbort, “After Colour”, in Around Distant Suns, ed. by Emma Johanna Puranen (Guardbridge Books, 2021): 63-72 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was such an unexpected story — unlike any of the other ones in the anthology. On the one hand, it’s probably as close to a horror story as this collection has; on the other hand, I want to describe it as “Exoplanets x ‘It’s a Beautiful Life'”. Even writing that feels like a contradiction! But it’s not, these competing descriptions really are the best way to explain this short, intriguing story.

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