REVIEW: “The Gilded Swan” by Damon L. Wakes

Review of Damon L. Wakes, “The Gilded Swan”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 357-359. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The opening line “Once upon a time” never fails to exercise its power to thrill over me. I love fairy tales. I love the way those words tap into my entire reading history, and allow the story to draw upon decades of internalized expectations. I love the familiarity of fairy tales that is rooted in those expectations. I love it when my expectations are satisfied, when every aspect of the story could have been found in any of the classic fairy tales.

But what I love even more is when those expectations are dashed, and happily ever after turns horribly ever after. This was a delightfully satisfying little fairy horror tale.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Cuddles” by Ariel Ptak

Review of Ariel Ptak, “Cuddles”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 224-226. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Who knows what lies in the depths of the deep dark sea? Well, deep sea survey crews, for one, after all, it’s part of their job to know these things. Most of the time they stick to surveying and studying, but sometimes things go wrong and an animal is injured. That’s how Cuddles, “some sort of cross between squid and octopus, with hallmarks of both but belonging to neither” (224) comes to live at the Seaside Aquarium and Rescue Center, and when his life intersects with Sarita, the narrator’s.

Those who like Cthulhu will probably enjoy this. I did for the most part, right up until the very end when the story commits one of the cardinal sins of 1st-person narration — how does a person narrate their own story after they are dead?

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Reborn” by Petter Skult

Review of Petter Skult, “Reborn”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 204-207. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Note: If you don’t like spiders, don’t read this story.

This is an unsettling little investigation into the ways in which people can go “crazy”. Seeing God. Seeing things that don’t exist. Seeing things no one else can see. Seeing things that are real and true and are there, but which no one else believes you can see. And when no one else believes you, when everyone else thinks you are already crazy, then sometimes it is the attempts to heal your madness that finally drive you mad.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Onward Christian Soldiers” by G. H. Finn

Review of G. H. Finn, “Onward Christian Soldiers”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 187-202. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Four things I liked about the story from the very start: First, with a title like that, the story comes with its own soundtrack (hard for me not to read the story without a chorus of booming voices in my head singing out the song). Second, so much fantasy seems so afraid of interacting with religion in any form. Not this story! Third, prior to reading this story, I had no idea that Baring-Gould had also written a book about werewolves. The story’s epigraph was basically an informative footnote in itself, and you all know how much I love an informative footnote. Sometimes truth really is stranger than (or as strange as) fiction. Finally, like the narrator, “I am by nature neither a detective nor a hunter. At heart I am a scholar” (187), and I enjoy reading stories about scholars.

Vampire stories are, perhaps, the exception to the eschewing of religion in speculative fiction, because of the important role religious symbols play in vampire lore. The narrator makes the reasonable assumption that symbols that have power over vampires will also have power over werewolves, as being, presumably, demonic beasts of a similar origin. Unfortunately for him, the narrator is wrong. (Or—as the narrator himself worries—the symbols do have power, but he simply doesn’t have enough faith.)

As befits a story told by a scholar, the first part of the tale is academic in tone, a recitation of dates and places and names and facts. In the second half, the narration turns much more personal, and tells the story of how even a scholar can turn into a soldier for Christ.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Silver Noir” by Ariel Ptak

Review of Ariel Ptak, “Silver Noir”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 166-167. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story is a little vignette about werewolf hunting, centered around the expense of silver bullets and one man who uses up all seven of his in one night. There’s a big cost to pay if you are too profligate with your bullets, but the cost that the unnamed narrator has to pay is greater than the cost of any amount of silver. The story is quite short, but tightly written.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Penumbra” by Chris Brecheen

Review of Chris Brecheen, “Penumbra”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 168-177. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Brecheen’s story is urban fantasy, set in San Francisco, as we can tell from references to BART stations and other familiar aspects of the city. It’s a first-person story, and unlike many first-person stories which start off with a bunch of introspective maundering, here we were immediately introduced both to the personality quirks of the narrator (rather bitter and a bit sarcastic) and of the people the narrator interacts with, such as Dr. Cienica, who “pays lots of attention to how dirty her glasses are whenever she lies” (168).

I really enjoyed Brecheen’s use of language; there were turns of phrase every paragraph or so that made me smile. If you read for enjoyment, then this is a good story for you. If you read for a creepy feeling of displacement, and the sense that the setting of the story is shifted from our own reality by only a fraction, then this is also a story for you. It doesn’t take much imagination to wonder what it would take for people to be able to see the Penumbra here, in our own world.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Beauty Mortis” by Jaap Boekestein

Review of Jaap Boekestein, “Beauty Mortis”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 147-164. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The story starts off with a rather uncomfortable scene of a man exploiting a scantily clad young woman for his own purposes, sending her down to lie on the ice of a frozen stream. “What else could she do?” the narrator asks, and that one question encompasses all that is wrong with the power dynamics between men and women in much of modern society. In this story, we see a woman playing along with those dynamics because the alternate, because what would happen if she refuses to, is so much worse. Except it isn’t: Whether she refuses or she obeys, the end result is the same. She still ends up a corpse at the hand of a man.

If I were reading for pleasure, I probably would’ve stopped reading the story at this point; stories like this are simply not stories for me. I want to see stories that push back against these power structures, that criticise these dynamics, that try to subvert them. But I was reading for reviewing, so let’s plow on.

This is one of the longer stories in the anthology, and it pushes stylistic boundaries more than some of the others. The story is told through a series of numbered vignettes, but they are all out of order; as soon as one realises that one has gone from scene 1 to scene 8, and that the next one after is scene 2, one must face the question: Do I read the scenes in numeric order? Or in the order they are printed?

I opted for numeric order, but only got as far as 6 when I couldn’t find scene 7. So then I went back and reread it in printed order, 1, 8, 2, 3, 10, 4, 11, 5, 6. In the end, I liked the story; it was well executed. I just wish the opening scene didn’t have to play upon the horrors that it does.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Hansel and Gretel in the Wasteland” by Shondra Snodderly

Review of Shondra Snodderly, “Hansel and Gretel in the Wasteland”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 139-142. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is the first of Snodderly’s three fairy tale retellings in this anthology, and the longest. In this version of Hansel and Gretel, Gretel and her brother are uneasy partners in a post-war world where there were “no free rides. Not even for family” (139). In the end, Gretel happily betrays Hansel to the witch, sacrificing him for her own freedom. “Only the useful survive” (142), and Gretel is dead intent on making herself useful. The only question is, useful to whom?

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Töpflein, Stehe” by G. Deyke

Review of G. Deyke, “Töpflein, Stehe”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 144-145. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Barely a page and a half, this is one of the shortest stories in the anthology, and as such, it is more a vignette than a story. We never know who the narrator is, or how they have found themself in the situation they have. One expects there to be a clue to the details missing from the story in the title, but alas, that title sheds little light on any of these shadowed facts.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Sin” by Karl Egerton

Review of Karl Egerton, “Sin”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 108-118. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

It’s astonishing how often SFF stories don’t seem to have any form of religion in them, given how major an influence that has been on pretty much the entire history of human culture. Without religion there really isn’t any kind of concept of “Sin”, so going into this story the question for me was: What kind of religion is it going to be?

Never did I expect it would centered around the goddess Perchta (whom I’d recently been reading up on, so to see her name was a sudden delight!), rather than classic Christian tropes. There is a visceral — no pun intended — delight in reading of the school children chanting:

“But we know that she was a Sinner because…?”

Albert and the rest of the class, in unison, practically sang the response.

“Because Perchta came and sliced up her guts!”

The teacher gestured to Albert.

“And then?”

“She filled her with rocks!” he chanted.

The children let out an excited giggle.

“And why did Perchta’s righteous knife disembowel her?”

“To save us all from Sin!”

Because when I read that, I know I’m in for something different, something fun.

Egerton’s story is an investigation of childhood, of sin, where it comes from, and how we rationalise it. “What sort of thing is a sin, really?” Albert asks the priest, and that question encapsulates the entire story. “It was absolutely necessary for actions to have consequences,” the narrator tells us, and in the end, we see that Sin and Perchta, transgression and punishment, are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment