Review of Laurel Beckley, “Love and War Aboard the Peregrine Zircon”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a lovely sweet wlw romance with the added bonus of more than one nonbinary character. With the addition of a dash of political intrigue and heartbreak, you’ve got a winner of a story here.
Review of Jennifer Shelby, “The Voiceless of Shalott”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I didn’t dare tell them that I wanted to be more than my virginity or someone’s wife.
Tasilinn is taken by her parents to Shalott where she will be kept under guard for the seven years of her adolescence, to ensure her purity is maintained. She has no say in the matter — literally, for before they leave her on the island, they fill her throat with scriptures and burn them until her voice is burned away as well.
I really enjoyed Shelby’s story of which focuses on how silence is used to control women. It is a sharp, harsh commentary on modern misogyny, and well written.
Review of Gillian Parrish, “City Light”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Drug addiction/abuse; death.
I liked the second half of this story, but not the first; I think I was not the target audience for it.
Review of Maeghan Klinker, “Mother Haskell”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I feel like this story needs a warning, do not read if hungry! Mother Haskell tends an orchard that always bears, and bakes the best apple pies from the fruit; and after reading all the descriptions, now I want pie! Pies so good, you could almost bribe Death with them…and that’s exactly what Mother Haskell tries when her trees start to die.
A fun, yummy, sweet, story. (I was a bit surprised, though, by “the sweet maple syrup she’d collected herself when the maples were vibrant and blushing with fall” — I thought syrup was collected in early spring!)
Review of E. A. Fowler, “Swallows (Or How the Men Lost Their Magic)”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The parenthetical in the title sums up the gist of the story: But what’s distinctive about it is whose viewpoint Fowler has chosen to portray the events through. The result is raw and powerful and more than a little disturbing. Thumbs up!
Review of J. Byrd, “The Notary of No Republic”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
“Lucy Carvell had a degree-shaped hole in her heart” is a great opening line — it immediately makes Carvell someone I want to know more about. How do you go about filling such a hole? In Carvell’s case, it’s through forgery, and forging her own diploma was the first step into becoming the titular notary: When the government collapses and the state fails, “it turned out people still needed their milestones marked” — even the milestones that haven’t happened yet.
This was such a fun, hopeful, helpful story, which an ending that made me go “awww”. Loved it.
Review of B. Zelkovich, “That Which Illuminates Heaven”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Are you looking for a very sweet, very cute queer romance set in space with a determined matchmaker AI? Then, oh, my goodness, is this the story for you! It was an utter delight from the first to the last, with just the right ending.
Review of Elizabeth McEntee, “Perihelia”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
It’s not often I read a human-meets-alien story that’s successfully told from the alien’s point of view. Too often, the aliens still feel all too familiar, too like-us. Not so with McEntee’s narrator, living alone on her comet, who is such that when a human arrives, the invader is so foreign, so different, that they are truly the alien. The ending was a bit trite, but the core of the story was solid.
Review of Hesper Leveret, “We Who are Left On This Dying Earth”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Reading recent climate news, it’s hard to escape the fact that we are already living on a dying earth; Leveret’s story is timely, then, in the sense that it could easily happen in our near future, maybe a generation from now — enough time for people on earth to figured out how to get off it.
Of course, even if that happens, we all know that not everyone is going to get to go, and “We Who Are Left On This Dying Earth” is the story of two who won’t be, one because she is too old, the other because he is too sick. Because of course it is the old and the weak and the poor who will get left behind.
You might think that this story would be an angry, unhappy story; but instead, there was just enough hope to make it happy, but not too much to make it unrealistic.
Review of Susan Jane Bigelow, “Traffic Circle of Old Connecticut”, Luna Station Quarterly 24 (2015): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Ever since the Kalo invasion, Tian has practiced forgetting — forgetting her younger sister, Asan, left with her grandmother back in the village; forgetting that she is Zaluat; forgetting that her Zaluat ancestors passed down their circle magic to her. But when her grandmother dies and Asan is put into the Training Institute, Tian can forget no longer. She attempts a daring rescue of her sister, and in their escape they both learn the truth of their ancestor’s circle power, in a very clever allusion to the title.
This was a story rich in magic, history, oppression, and strength, and was a very satisfying read.
SFF Reviews