Review of Keira Reynolds, “The Black Hill,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 191-213 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a simple story (albeit long): There’s some magic, some Irish mythology, some lesbian love, and not much more — well-enough written, but nothing extraordinary or unusual or unexpected.
Review of L. Fox, “Oathbinder,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 303-319 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There was something about Fox’s use of language in the opening pages — how the words sort of slipped and rolled sideways — that was purely magical. The feeling of the prose translated, for me, into a feeling of the world itself, slightly strange, slightly confusing, full of depths that I definitely couldn’t quite understand. This is probably my favorite story of the entire issue.
Review of Ana Wesley, “Ends and Means,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 261-281 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
It’s another post-apocalyptic story, two women desperately running and trying to stay safe, never sure where they will sleep, what they will eat, who will betray them next. There’s been a lot of these such stories lately, it feels like, and one thing I’ve realized lately is how few post-apocalyptic settings ever really go deep into worldbuilding. The apocalypses are rarely articulated, the enemies often feel interchangeable, the central characters — while varied and interesting in themselves — too seem like they could be swapped from one setting to another without their stories fundamentally changing.
All this to say: There’s been so many stories of this ilk in recent years that it’s now going to take something special for one to stand out for me. It took Wesley’s story a good five pages to get going, but then I finally started getting glimpse of something at least a little bit different: post-apocalyptic fantasy, rather than SF.
Review of JM Cyrus, “A Bedtime of Fire, Alchemy, and Ice,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 243-258 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Solo parenting a gaggle of young kids while you’ve got experimental research notes you need to write up is never an easy thing — whether or not your research is magical! But Morwedd’s wife is away, so she’s got no choice but to make the balance work.
What I loved most about this story was its portrayal of the sheer *joy* of parenting young children. Yes, under-5s are exhausting and relentless and complicated to parent, especially when there’s more than one of them; but so often it feels like people don’t talk often enough about how much fun it is to be a parent, how joyful it is. So this story just made me happy.
Review of Ziggy Schutz, “Through Glass,” Luna Station Quarterly 62 (June 2025): 49-51 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
It’s quite incredible how much metaphor and allegory Schutz is able to stuff into three pages. I’m torn between loving this story for what it is and what it does, and wishing it had so much more.
Review of Nicole Lynn, “Entropy in a Fruit Bowl,” Flash Fiction Online 140 (May 2025): 11-14 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Death of a parent, physical violence.
Apparently the trick to learning necromancy is: Start small. But love that only existed asymmetrically can never be resurrected once it is dead — these are the two lessons of this short, exceedingly sad, story.
(First published in The Arcanist October 2022.)
Review of Rebecca Washburn, “A Flame At the Edge of Darkness,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 361-383 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The story frames itself as being about the Darkness — a phenomenon that isn’t quite natural, isn’t quite artificial — and the Flames — the young girls who are the only predators of the Darkness; but in truth it’s much more a story of love and estrangement between mother and daughter. I had some sympathy with Maggie, the mother (from whose point of view the story is told), up until her thinly veiled homophobia was revealed, as well as the way she pretended her religion was “love”, and then I lost all sympathy for her. I spent the rest of the story desperately hoping that she wouldn’t get resolution, that there wouldn’t be redemption, wouldn’t be a happy ending, because that seemed like it would just be too easy. Having reached the ending, I’m not quite sure if I’m happy with it or not.
Review of B. Zelkovich, “The Secret Ingredient,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 154-165 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
If you love either “queers unable to recognize flirting when it stares them in the face” genre stories or stories about love over coffee, this is a story for you! Sweet, light, and entirely happy.
Review of Mae Juniper Stokes, “A Collections Librarian of the Slow-Flying Nautilus,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 91-110 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Book burning (not in the censorship sense, but in the literal sense. Still hurts to read about).
I regularly see my philosophical friends and colleagues asking for recommendations for SFF stories relevant to various topics that they can suggest to their students; I think there’s a good chance at some point in the future I will recommend Stokes’ story for the way it engages with the ethical implications at the intersection of resource management and cultural heritage (with a side dose of immigration and colonisation). This isn’t a topic often explored in story form, and I found this an interesting take!
Review of Phoenix Mendoza, “Peace,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 197-201 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content warning: War.
The narrator (who’s name we never learn) and her partner, Lorna, are trapped in a war that seems unwinnable, fighting ever since the aliens arrived, three years ago. Despite this, Lorna still believes in peace, and tells the narrator that one day, she will too.
Reading such a story in the present climate, where there is so much war but the participants involved are ourselves and not aliens, was a strange experience. There’s something that feels almost safe about imagining battling against aliens: They are alien, after all, it’s okay for us to read about fighting them, killing them, murdering them. But the very fact that this feels okay, just because they are aliens, is a deeply uncomfortable feeling, because that’s exactly the same excuse people use for making war against other people.
SFF Reviews