REVIEW: “The Leap and the Fall” by Kayla Whaley

Review of Kayla Whaley, “The Leap and the Fall”, in Marieke Nijkamp, ed., Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018): 38-59 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Spoiler alert

I wasn’t expecting this story, the way it started off, to become a horror story! But that’s what it was, complete with ghosts, a haunted carnival, and two best friends, Gemma and Eloise, who can only save each other by admitting their love. This was another story with a definite romance arc in it, but Whaley used it to good effect, making it a necessary part of the resolution.

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REVIEW: Unbroken edited by Marieke Nijkamp

Review of Marieke Nijkamp, ed., Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was one of my WorldCon ’19 recs — a book that was mentioned during one of the panels I attended, where I thought “I want to read that”. I especially wanted to read it to see if it would be something that I could recommend to one of my nieces, who I have a suspicious would be interested in SFF, but hasn’t yet gotten the right route in.

Not all the stories in this collection are speculative in nature — some of them are straight up realistic fiction (including some whose authors are best known for speculative fiction, which was a bit of a surprise!). Both queer and non-queer romance arcs were strongly represented across the anthology. It was this perhaps more than anything else that marked this book out as a collection of YA stories; whenever one of the romantic developments felt a bit too much, too fast, I had to remind myself that I’m not a teenager anymore and that if I’d read these stories as a teenager, they probably would’ve felt more real.

The stories don’t shy away from the difficult subjects. The range of disabilities represented was wide, from wheelchairs to anxiety to terminal illnesses. The characters are confronted with not only the ordinary vagaries of romance and other aspects of teenage life, but also with the worry of burdening others, the anguish of never being enough, the guilt of it all. One thing I really liked about this anthology as a collection was the way in which so many of the narrators voiced these sorts of internalised ableism, and the ways in which the stories themselves pushed back against those narratives, made it clear that they were not the right narratives. On the flip side, one of the things that made me uncomfortable was how some of the stories were variants on “even though a disabled person might think themselves unworthy, they can still do things that are valuable to society!” in a way that felt, to me, like it bordered on inspiration porn. Such stories were, however, the minority, and loaded towards the front of the book, so that by the end such early impressions were mostly memories.

As is usual, we’ll review the stories individually, and link the reviews below as they are published.

Having read all of them, yeah, I probably will get this book for my niece. They may not all be to her taste, as they weren’t all to mine, but if she derives joy from even one of them, it’ll be a worthwhile purchase. (And I really hope she likes Benwell’s and Duyvis’s, the two outstanding stories of the volume in my opinion.)

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REVIEW: “When the Moon Fell Down” by L. Lark

Review of L. Lark, “When the Moon Fell Down”, Luna Station Quarterly 27 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story surprised me with the deftness that it balanced upon fine lines — the line between urban fantasy and something richer and more wild, the line between witchcraft and madness. There were many times when I was uncertain how reliable a narrator Jone could be, and this uncertainty and tension gave a depth to this story that a lot of LSQ stories strive for but don’t quite reach.

My only complaint with the story was the use of the present tense, which I found so clunky it kept yanking me out of the story.

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REVIEW: “Minor Mortalities” by EJ Sidle

Review of EJ Sidle, “Minor Mortalities”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

As the opening line of this story tells us, “Theo Everett is not a hitman”. His quarry, Alec Whitemore, is a werewolf — and having a panic attack.

I liked the way the story opened, and the way Theo conscientiously helped Alec through his anxiety. But then Sidle introduced the “wolves imprint on their soul mates” trope, and…I have to admit, I kind of lost interest.

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REVIEW: “Moonlight Plastics” by Rachel Brittain

Review of Rachel Brittain, “Moonlight Plastics”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I found this story a little too in the mind of the MC, Sana — there was a lot of reflection and recrimination and meta content that would’ve made sense if I were properly situated in Sana’s world, but unfortunately, I wasn’t. So I had a hard time putting together all the pieces to figure out who she was and what she was doing, and why it mattered.

I also struggled with the abrupt shift in tone: It started off as a commentary on our modern-day tendency to flood the ocean with plastics, and then suddenly it jumped left and became a mermaid romance.

All in all, not the story for me.

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REVIEW: “The White Place” by Dana Berube

Review of Dana Berube, “The White Place”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Berube’s story drew me in right from the opening paragraph. I felt the cold of the snow, felt Ti’s hunger, want to know more of how he ended up in Berron’s bed, who the Ordermen were and what sort of church law they maintained. It was the perfect balance of engaging characters, poignant description, and a heart-breakingly sweet and heart-breakingly sad plot that I enjoyed all the way through to the end.

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REVIEW: “Depth and Meaning” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

Review of Jennifer Lee Rossman, “Depth and Meaning”, Luna Station Quarterly 42 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Rossman’s stories appear in LSQ not infrequently — but after a couple of years of reading and reviewing LSQ stories, seeing her name attached to one of them is guaranteed to make my ears perk up, as her stories are pretty reliably good ones.

This present story is the story of Emi, a pictomancer like many others in her town, but unlike them, her paintings don’t take on the same magical life as theirs, the potential once seen in her (“People used to tell me I’d be an elder by the time I was twenty.”) trapped and inaccessible.

No one, least of all Emi, talks about what happened to make her this way. But even before she finally articulates it to her sister, it’s easy for reader to fill in the gaps, at least for anyone who has experienced how depression can prevent you from exercising your creative outlets.

That being said, I wasn’t especially keen on the way depression was treated in this story. Dex, Emi’s sister, tells her that it’s a good thing she’s depressed, that suffering is what gives art depth and meaning. Emi’s friend Ronaldo warns her against taking medication for it. Parts of the story felt heavy-handed and preachy at parts, and I’m not sure I liked the message.

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REVIEW: “The Honey of the World and the Queen of Crows” by Dimitra Nikolaidou

Review of Dimitra Nikolaidou, “The Honey of the World and the Queen of Crows”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 304 (May 21, 2020): listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

Ever hear the one about the nun and the soldier who enter a bar and can’t see their reflection, or that of the bartender, in the mirror on the opposite wall? Neither had I until I read this wonderful story. Magdalene is the nun and Leandros the soldier. He and a fellow soldier he loves (Yiorgos) have just suffered mortal wounds in battle and now Leandros finds himself on what Magdalene describes as “the border.” While they sit there, drinking honeyed raqi (him) and whiskey (her), Magdalene offers him a chance to live again and escape the war with Yiorgos. Leandros can’t help thinking of the offer as a bargain with the Devil. To convince him otherwise, the nun magically stops time and tells him the very unnunlike story of her life and death and the price she paid for the opportunity to tell it to him. It’s a remarkable story, told in a compelling narrative voice, marred only slightly by the somewhat jarring, though ultimately satisfying, point-of-view shift toward the end.  

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REVIEW: “Fox Red, Life Red, Teeth Like Snow” By Devin Miller

Review of Devin Miller, “Fox Red, Life Red, Teeth Like Snow”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 303, May 7, 2020: listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

In this brief but interesting story, a changetroll named Hryggda is returning home to her wives shortly before dawn with a human baby she secretly “traded” a changeling-babe for. Along the way she meets a wolf hungry for more than animal prey. Somehow, “wolves have been hunting the sun since her autumn waning, but she has escaped, hidden herself in a den to sleep until spring like a bear. And now, it seems, the forest’s hunters aim to eat the moon.” Hryggda is determined to protect the moon, much as the moon protects her during her late night excursions. She is, however, hampered by her even greater need to protect the newborn she carries. 

I won’t tell you what happens, but I will say that the story ends too quickly and too conveniently for my taste. It would have benefited from a deeper examination of the lives of the changetrolls and the world they inhabit.  

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REVIEW: “Who Goes Against a Waste of Waters” by Eleanna Castroianni

Review of Eleanna Castroianni, “Who Goes Against a Waste of Waters”, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 302 (April 23, 2020): Listen online. Reviewed by Richard Lohmeyer.

On the surface, this story portrays the struggle of the titular narrator and her brother to survive while living on their own in a dead giant’s skull in a graveyard located in a war zone. The kids are barely hanging on. Their parents, without explanation, have long ago departed, “headed eastward, to the Deep Night. No one fully alive knows what lies there.” It’s a brief, strange, dream-like story which, toward the end, seems to hint at delusion. Regardless, the story has an ominous, rather nightmarish quality. It’s certainly not a fun piece, but it’s worth reading. 

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