REVIEW: “Sergiane’s Choice” by Melissa Ferguson

Review of Melissa Ferguson, “Sergiane’s Choice”, Luna Station Quarterly 26 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Murder, physical violence, threats to children, miscarriage, animal sacrifice.

There was something about this story that felt clumsy; too many, too strong feelings too quickly, in a way that was cacophonous rather than sympathetic. I also found the language of sex, conception, pregnancy, and miscarriage all a bit coy; I think Ferguson was rather aiming for the typical sort of “fantasy language” one uses when one doesn’t want to presuppose modern norms or modern science, but if so, she didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

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REVIEW: “Feeding is No Crime” by Patricia Russo

Review of Patricia Russo, “Feeding is No Crime”, Luna Station Quarterly 26 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Enslavement.

One thing I love about digging through journal archives is finding stories that feel specifically pertinent and present. Reading Russo’s story in the UK in fall 2020, in the wake of the British government deciding, no, actually, it doesn’t need to bother with feeding children during school breaks and holidays, the opening lines of the story hit with a special punch:

“If, as it is stated in the Code of Padrel the Great, that eating is no crime, then it follows by corollary that neither is feeding a criminal offense.”

When a forgotten punishment vault is discovered, revealing prisoners who have been sealed up for a thousand years, undying and crying out for food, Fonell, Canly, Vamma and the others are all faced with the question: What do you do? When Onjar says “You want to call the bloody government in? What’ll they do?”, it’s hard for both them and me, as the reader, not to agree. Fonell calls in his lawyer from Zerna, and Zerna is the one quoting Padrel. And then everything spills over into a dramatic conflagration of the importance of family, the value of a human being, and the fact that “No life is insignificant.”

This was a hard read, a good story. Really good. Chilling and bitter and hopeful and everything in between.

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REVIEW: “Sycamore Heights” by Josie Turner

Review of Josie Turner, “Sycamore Heights”, Luna Station Quarterly 26 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Sometimes all you need is a good opening line or two to utterly sympathise with a character. In this case,

The Masons would not have booked their beds in advance. They were not that organised.

Oh, Masons, I feel you. I am not that organised either.

The more I read about the Masons, the more I liked them (and identified with them!). When their foibles dropped them in the lap of something more sinister and my laughter turned to grim delight at Turner’s deft working of horror, I found myself enjoying this story a lot more than many horror stories I read.

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REVIEW: “The Garden” by Carlea Holl-Jensen

Review of Carlea Holl-Jensen, “The Garden”, Luna Station Quarterly 26 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Cruelty to animals.

The titular garden is the setting for an intimate glimpse into the life of Albie and Evelyn, two peculiar characters that I never really drew a bead on. Were they teenagers? Were they young children? Were they siblings? Were they lovers? At one time I thought one way, at other times, another, and given how inconsistent their characterization were (if they ARE 6-ish years old, why the heavy sexual tension at times? If they’re grown teenage siblings, why are they playing children’s games together?) it was a weirdly uncomfortable read.

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REVIEW: “The Save” by Nicole Robb

Review of Nicole Robb, “The Save”, Luna Station Quarterly 26 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The premise of this story is simple: Everyone gets one Save, to use as they will (though of course it’s easier to know how and when to use it if you have proper training, hence you practice Saving in elementary school; and of course many people will judge you if you Save the wrong person, or even for Saving anyone at all.) The execution is likewise simple: Janice has long known whom her Save would be for, until she is confronted with a situation where she must make a choice.

Simple, but by no means ineffective.

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REVIEW: “Rest Stop” by MJ Gardner

Review of MJ Gardner, “Rest Stop”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“If you had a problem you couldn’t fix, you moved on and left it behind.” This is a lesson Marcy learned from her parents, and she’s put it to good use more than once. Right now, the problem she can’t fix is Lenny, and the story opens with her moving on from him, leaving him behind without any reason or notice. Everything seems so very ordinary, up until the point at which nothing is ordinary at all and everything is extraordinary and weird.

I enjoyed the abrupt shift in direction that Gardner introduced with great effect, and felt the two halves — the mundane and the fantastic — of the story balanced each other nicely. I also appreciated Gardner’s choice of heroine — Marcy is in her sixties, fat and grey, and dealing with stress incontinence. In other words, she’s a real person, not a fairy tale. I like reading stories about real people, especially when they end up in unreal situations.

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REVIEW: “Mama Tulu” by Jessica Guess

Review of Jessica Guess, “Mama Tulu”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content warning: Drinking, gambling, domestic abuse.

This urban fantasy set in Jamaica centers around the titular character Mama Tulu, and Sasha, the young woman who goes to visit her to make an unspeakable request. I liked almost everything about it — but not quite everything. I have a deep ambivalence about the use of phonetic representations of dialect in written fiction; I am never sure how appropriate or successful they are. Reading them often feels like an uncomfortable caricature; but on the other hand, I think it’s important to recognise the varieties of ways in which people speak, and to recognise the legitimacy of, e.g., AAVE.

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REVIEW: “The Dragon’s Dinner” by Lindsey Duncan

Review of Lindsey Duncan, “The Dragon’s Dinner”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There was a lot of cliches in this story — the dragon-fighting knights trying to win the hand of a princess; the princess who didn’t want to be an object of conquest; the maiden aunt who provided the princess with the training needed — but ultimately, this was a fairy tale, and fairy tales are cliches, so it worked.

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REVIEW: “The Old Hotel” by Nicole Janeway

Review of Nicole Janeway, “The Old Hotel”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This reads like a series of beautiful vignettes — words carefully painting pictures for the mind’s eye — rather than a story with characters to be invested in, events to be concerned about, outcomes to celebrate.

But it is short, and it is pretty, so I can’t fault it too much.

(Originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, 2016.)

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