REVIEW: “Breach” by Niki Kools

Review of Niki Kools, “Breach”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 122-133. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I love stories where the main characters are not like us, and where this is fed into the story in little bits and pieces. At the start, there is no indication that Vivion is other than human, until then, a few sentences in, we read “The air outside, swarming with little summer seeds, has hardened her scales on her way here.” Ooooh! I am now instantly intrigued.

And the story just keeps getting stranger, full of bits that are unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and there are so many beautiful little details. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “What Lies in the Ice” by C. A. Harland

Review of C. A. Harland, “What Lies in the Ice”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 103-106. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I always knew mining was dangerous. But…

This story is told through a series of logs, or snippets of logs (we do not know if the entries we’ve been given are excerpts or complete). In fact, there is much we do not know. We never know the narrator, their name, their age, their background (other than that they have previous mining experience), there is nothing to make them feel similar or foreign or familiar or strange. The entire story rides on this narrative anonymity.

What lies beneath the ice? It would probably be no surprise that it wasn’t something happy and cuddly. But the obvious answer isn’t always the right one…

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Katabasis” by Petter Skult

Review of Petter Skult, “Katabasis”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 120-121. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The story is a mishmash of elements from a variety of sources — Biblical references to Lazarus, contemporary SF in the form of integrated human-machines, a sprinkling of Greek gods — providing a sense of familiarity and also a sense of a much wider scope than can actually be given in a two page story. This is generally quite an effective technique to use in flash fic, in that one can omit many details knowing that the reader will be able to fill them in themselves from other stories they have read. (This is what the philosopher David Lewis calls `interfictional carryover’. Interfictional carry-over occurs when readers import knowledge of certain types of tropes into a story where those tropes are not explicitly mentioned. [1, p. 45]) But predicating a story on the assumption that readers can all fill in certain gaps is a dangerous gamble to take; for if you’ve got a reader who, like me, doesn’t know who Adrestia is, all the import of the ending is lost.

Note

[1] Lewis, David. 1978. “Truth in Fiction”, American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 1: 37–46.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Nephilia clavata” by G. Grim

Review of G. Grim, “Nephilia clavata“, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 70-71. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Oh, this story was deliciously creepy! From the very first line —

So back in the day, there was this hipster trend for living tattoos.

to the very end, and through all the riot of complications and consequences of sharing your skin with someone else. The story is only a page and a half, and unlike many stories that length, it is perfectly complete as it is, and extremely well crafted.

Warning: If you’re not a huge fan of spiders, don’t do as I did, and look up nephila clavata in wikipedia. Utterly gorgeous, but they’re as creepy as their namesake story.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Flesh and Code” by Johanna Arbaiza

Review of Johanna Arbaiza, “Flesh and Code”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 276-305. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I’m always a bit worried when a story starts with a person standing alone, thinking to themselves, because most people tend to think pretty boring thoughts, and if that’s all that’s going to happen, I’m going to be bored — even if the person thinking these thoughts is the intriguely named Deathgleaner. In the end, I wasn’t bored, but I certainly was a bit confused.

It’s a slow building story. The initial world-building is done via a conversation that the Deathgleaner overhears, but there is little enough context to that conversation that the details that are provided are hard to make sense of; I felt as though I was being told quite a bit but that I had no way of understanding what any of it meant. There is (or was? or will be?) a war. There is (definitely is) a shortage of clean water. Probably these two things are connected.

Many of these questions are never answered, which I found frustrating — all the more frustrating because the characters are rich and complex, and excessively intriguing, and I wish that I could fully know and grasp their story.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Demon of the Song” by Ville Meriläinen

Review of Ville Meriläinen, “Demon of the Song”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 337-355. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is a nice, satisfyingly long story full of rich description and characters with complex histories.

Natalie and Siren are linked together in uneasy partnership that Natalie longs to escape. Vanderoy — perhaps — is the one to help her. But can Natalie accept Vanderoy’s help when she knows that Siren is waiting beside her for the moment that she can get Vanderoy in her clutches? Will Natalie save herself at Vanderoy’s expense, or sacrifice herself to save Vanderoy?

The story was finely crafted, with details fed to the reader at just the right pace, until the last of the pieces snapped into the puzzle.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Demon in a Copper Case” by Damon L. Wakes

Review of Damon L. Wakes, “Demon in a Copper Case”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 135-137. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

When times are hard, heresy no longer seems like such a bad idea. The people of Singstoat are suffering from a decline in industry, and many people are debt-ridden and struggling. In such a context, the temptation to call upon the demon in the copper case is too strong to resist…

This was a fun little story, quickly told but with plenty of detail and characters. It’s a classic plot line but there is something satisfying in reading a good retelling of an old tale.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “A Taste of Freedom” by Thomas Webb

Review of Thomas Webb, “A Taste of Freedom”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 375-378. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Warning: Probably not the story you want to read if you’ve suffered from abuse.

This story is told in shadows and secrecy, the story of She and of what He did to her. We never know who either of them are; this is because She doesn’t have enough sense of who she is in order to tell us more than what she does.

It’s not a pleasant story, and, to be honest, not the sort of story that I enjoy at all. I tend to think one must have a very good reason before choosing to write a story of abuse — to have some sense of what will be gained from doing so, and that this gain will outweigh any harm done by perpetuating, almost normalising, such behavior. If there was a gain in telling this story, I’m not sure I was able to see what it was.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Aliens and Old Gods” by Kimber Camacho

Review of Kimber Camacho, “Aliens and Old Gods”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 360-374. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I find I enjoy the longer stories in this anthology more than the shorter ones, in part because the length means there’s more meat to the story — and there’s plenty of meat in this one.

The story is constructed out of four different vignettes, of seemingly disparate events, happening in different places and different times to different people, with — at first — no clear connecting thread running through them. But by the time we finish the second one, it is clear that the titular aliens and old gods are the red thread that connects all the different events together.

A second thread that ties each of the scenes together is the narrative voice that tells them all, a voice that is clinical and almost journalistic. These scenes are told by someone who appears to be watching the events at arm’s length, almost always uninvolved and dispassionate (only sometimes turning passionate and interpretative), and who is someone who clearly knows a lot more than anyone experiencing the events. One of the aliens? One of the old gods? We won’t ever know…

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Passive Aggressive” by Narrelle M. Harris

Review of Narrelle M. Harris, “Passive Aggressive”, in Myths, Monsters, and Mutations, edited by Jessica Augustsson (JayHenge Publications, 2017): 270-274. — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

So much drama in fiction (and in reality, if we’re being honest here…) relies on people who say one thing but mean another, hidden, thing. In this story, Harris turns this technique on its head — people say one thing but what they mean is not hidden, it is known to everyone. As a result, there are always two layers of conversation going on, the what-is-said and the what-is-meant, and between this double layer is a layer of tension that continues to build and build until you know it must explode, and how it must explode, but not exactly how. Those exact details are a surprise that makes the story worth reading to the end.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment