REVIEW: “And the White Breast of the Dim Sea” by Hilary Biehl

Review of Hilary Biehl, “And the White Breast of the Dim Sea”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is not your ordinary story of man-meets-mermaid and has a child. This is a story of the complexities of family relationships and prejudices, which just happens to be about an enchanter and a mergyndr and their daughter, and it is filled with terribly wonderful lines like

“I know very little about human magic. Possibly it molds to human prejudice.”

I enjoyed this story because it is an example of what stories can be at their best — a mirror on our lives and our actions. It’s not a moralising story, but it is also one you cannot read without thinking and reflecting on what it reflects to you.

All this, and a delightfully satisfying ending. More stories like this, please!

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REVIEW: “Flowers for the Moon” by Clio Yun-su Davis

Review of Clio Yun-su Davis, “Flowers for the Moon”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I’m a sucker for a good fairy tale. So when I get a story that starts off

There once was a girl who fell in love with the moon even though she knew in her heart that the moon could never love her back…

I’m already in love.

And this story lives up to the promise of its opening line. It is a classic fairy tale — a heroine, her beloved, an old crone who sends her off on a journey, a fateful quest, a snarky talking forest (oh, wait, that’s hardly a classic fairy tale element. But it should be. I want more snarky talking forests in my life) — and yet it is different from any other fairy tale I’ve ever read.

It’s hard to imagine a fairy tale where the happily ever after doesn’t involve two lovers living out their lives together, but this story manages such a happily ever after. Because, as the heroine says to her beloved, “My feelings for you haven’t changed. I, however, have.”

I adored this story, and intend to read it aloud to my 5 year old.

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REVIEW: “Below the River” by Rose Strickman

Review of Rose Strickman, “Below the River”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

It often seems like literature takes a very long time to catch up to technology. The advent of ubiquitous cell phones and smart phones has fundamentally changed the way we interact with each other and our world, and it feels — to me at least — that these changes have been so radical in their depth and scope that we are still struggling to articulate this in our writing without making reference to phones, etc., seem “gadgety”.

One of the things I really appreciated in Strickman’s story was the way in which contemporary technology was seamlessly interwoven into the story. None of the awkwardness that I so often see was present.

But that ease displayed there was not always reflected in the rest of the story, which was occasionally somewhat stilted. The opening scenes were filled with mournful portent without giving the reader a clear indication of what the portent was of or why we should be mournful, and the use of a dream sequence to convey memory is a somewhat overused technique. There are a number of places where I think what I wished for most was less vagueness and more distinctiveness. (Not just “ill”, but ill with what? Not just “medicine”, but what kind of medicine?) Lastly, the ending was pretty clearly telegraphed from fairly early on; now, this is not always a bad thing; sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than a growing suspicion of how things will turn out being vindicated when you reach the end of a story. But that vindication only comes if it is clearly possible that that ending would not be reached. Here, there was never really much doubt.

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REVIEW: “The Call of the Orbsong” by A. M. Matte

Review of A. M. Matte, “The Call of the Orbsong”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Dafenid is an Amphibian who steals orbs from the Pavlina, a Biped who either creates or collects them (it is not clear which in the story). Though Dafenid is not able to make the orbs sing, she still delights in them, for she sees having them as an act of defiance on behalf of the Amphibians against the Bipeds.

This we learn at the beginning, but much of what transpires after the initial opening scene is the filling in of back story, which suffers a bit from more telling than showing and a couple of awkward info dumps. We learn quite a bit about the relative power differentials between the Amphibians and the Bipeds, and of illicit attraction, but through the middle part of the story I kept find myself wishing for less history and more of the present.

There is, however, a fun twist at the end, which is no less enjoyable for the fact that about 1/3 of the way through, I suddenly had an intuition that that was where the story would go: It was gratifying to read the rest of the story and be proven right. (Half-way through, however, I did get a bit of a shock, when the object of Dafenid’s love was revealed, since earlier in the story (I had to go back and double check, but the implication was definitely there) I had gotten the impression that he was her brother!) All in all: A fun little fairy-tale interpretation, slightly hampered by presentation.

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REVIEW: “The Joy of Baking” by Holly Lyn Walrath

Review of Holly Lyn Walrath, “The Joy of Baking”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

WARNING: Do not read this story without cake on hand, or you will want cake by the time you’re done reading it.

“The secret to effective baking is patience,” we are told, which is why I am such a bad cook. “Timing is everything,” we are also told, and this as true of comedy as it is of baking, and this story has both cake and elements of delightful comedy. Heaven and hell provide much meat for stories, but how often do you get stories of purgatory? (Dante excepted, of course, and Beetlejuice). Whether purgatory is a waiting place before the ultimate destination, or simply a waiting place before moving on to the next life, a place one will come back to again and again, there is something comforting in thinking that perhaps it is a place where the waiting souls are fed and loved and comforted, where they may rest as long as they need, and where the caretakers have all the time in the world to perfect their baking skills.

Yes, I think I’d rather enjoy visiting Walrath’s purgatory. And now I want some cake. My great-grandmother’s sour cream coffee cake, I think.

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REVIEW: “Two Dimensional” by Kellee Kranendonk

Review of Kellee Kranendonk, “Two Dimensional”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was, sadly, not the story for me. Our first introduction to the heroine is a scene in which she takes psychotropic drugs. It’s not that I think all fictional heroines should be held to a high standard of conduct, or that drug use should be erased from the stories we tell, it’s just that such stories are not the stories for me. I say this even given that the drug plays an integral role in the plot — or even perhaps because of this.

Despite this, I think I may have been more disposed to positively review the story if the language were beautiful and well-crafted. Instead, I found it a bit stilted at times, and with a couple of rather abrupt info drops. I found the explanation of the relationship between the two races on the planet a bit strained; the concept is interesting, but could perhaps have benefited from being introduced slower and with more words, i.e., perhaps this would’ve been better suited to a novella than a short story. I also found the ending somewhat unsatisfying: I do not understand why Valo would take the risk that he did if he knew, in advance, that these risks would benefit neither him nor Binya.

It’s never fun to write a downer review, but the flip side of reviewing everything a journal publishes is that sometimes you get a story which just doesn’t measure up — by whatever measure is being used — to the other ones in the same venue. Alas, I think for this issue of Luna Station Quarterly, this story might be the one.

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REVIEW: “The Waiting Room” by Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin

Review of Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin, “The Waiting Room”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

When I was young, all the SFF protagonists were young, and I never even noticed, because I was young, and thus the world was young and their stories could be my stories and my stories could be theirs.

But then I grew older (and 35 is hardly old), and they all stayed young, they did not age, and I found myself becoming increasingly irritated by this. Young heros and heroines often do such stupid things, things that only seem stupid in hindsight. But more than that, there was this implicit assumption that to be a hero or heroine was to be young; once you’d reached my age, my stories were no longer their stories, and their stories could no longer be mine.

Once I realised this, I started making a point of seeking out stories where the heroine was not a young slip of a girl, but someone older, someone with a history, someone with a family, someone with a past. But I know that I am still young and will grow yet older, and that is where stories like Melkin’s “The Waiting Room” come into the fore: When was the last time that you read a story where the heroine was an old, dying woman? That long ago? Well, now is the time to fix it. Go on, click the link above. Read the story. You won’t regret it.

Sara L. Uckelman3 Comments

REVIEW: “Ten Thousand Sleeping Beauties” by Jocelyn Koehler

Review of Jocelyn Koehler, “Ten Thousand Sleeping Beauties”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

My first reaction was that I straight up love the title, with its evocation of both European fairy tales and 1001 nights. And while the story itself is not a fairy tale, it certainly involves one, albeit a darker, scarier one than we normally tell our children (even in Grimms’ grim tales, there is always a prince’s kiss to awaken the sleeper).

My second reaction was “how am I going to explain what is so poignant in this story without spoilers?” Let me try: Despite evidence to the contrary, despite the perennial moans throughout the ages that youth aren’t what they were like in our day, humanity as a whole is remarkably optimistic: We persist in thinking that, eventually, things will get better, they have to get better; or at least that they won’t get worse, not really. For example, the entire industry of cryogenics is based on the idea that the future will be better than the present.

But one day, the future will be the present. What then?

My third reaction was that the ending made me cry.

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REVIEW: “Far, Far From Land” by Jude-Marie Green

Review of Jude-Marie Green, “Far, Far From Land”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

One of the hardest parts about short SF stories is conveying everything that is distinctive about the fictional world in which the story takes places without spending all of the words doing so. It is hard to balance between explaining enough so that the reader gets a sense of what is science and what is fiction, but not so much that the reader gets no story, nor so little that the jargon seems mere window dressing and not deeply integrated.

Green’s story starts off too much on the “too little” side; a lot of technical terms and phrases are peppered throughout the opening paragraphs, but there is not enough context to know what an “xyz grid” is or how fractals can bounce, or be juicy.

That being said, I love the idea of big vessels trawling through space fishing for instantiations of mathematical concepts, and the casual ease the crewmates clearly display in their conversation with each other makes it easy to become invested in them, to hope for what they hope for and to mourn when they mourn as well.

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REVIEW: “In Strange, Far Places” by Julia K. Patt

Review of Julia K. Patt, “In Strange, Far Places”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

What happens when you fare forth into the stars, searching for a new home, but never find one? What happens when you no longer have the resources to go further — and you also no longer have the resources to get back to where you started? So much speculation about space travel seeks for the happy ending, that we will leave this planet and find a new one to make our home. But in truth, the endings of most space travellers will not be happy, they will be “left to live out their lives in the void until the synthetic atmos failed or the oxygenating phytos died or the food ran out.”

When your resources are used up, when you’re left to the mercies of the passing ships who might stop and pick you up and take you home, that is when this story starts. Em recounts her history and that of her comrades in simple, straightforward words; this is her life, and she knows that she is lucky. Not every story will have a happy ending, and yet this doesn’t mean that the story itself is not happy. But happy or sad, who knows what lurks behind the stars…

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