Review of Louise Hughes, “Selling Chances,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 283-289 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Oh, man, what a beautiful story this was, about generational trauma, generational hope, the neverending desire of a parent for their child to have a better life, a better future, a better chance. Just the right length, and with a twist at the end that made everything more intense. Hughes has written a gem!
Review of Louise Hughes, “Practical Knitters,” Flash Fiction Online 139 (April 2025): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Anyone who has ever worked with yarn knows there’s more than a bit of magic in the craft. Hughes’s story is a warm fairy tale premised on making this point explicit. (But now I want the companion story about theoretical knitters — the ones who write the patterns that the practical knitters then knit!)
Review of Louise Hughes, “Look to the Future”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I love the premise of this story: In a world where ordinarily everyone can see the future, the narrator is one of those who can’t. The entire shape of people’s lives is different on such a premise, and the distress and bafflement at the narrator’s plight is genuine and believable: How can you plan for your future if you cannot see it? “Everyone worried. They narrowed their brows and clenched their teeth and fretted that I was making a Terrible Decision that would Ruin My Life Forever.”
What can you possible decide to do about your future when you cannot see it? Why, study history! And that decision is when the real magic in this story begins.
This story hit the perfect balance of making it all about the characters and their own world and story but leaving enough space within it to “read” the real world into it, almost allegorically. Big thumbs up from me.
SFF Reviews