REVIEW: “There is a Cottage by the Woods” by Rebecca Burton

Review of Rebecca Burton, “There is a Cottage by the Woods,” Luna Station Quarterly 51 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story started off with a long enough pre-amble in italics that I actually quit reading and scrolled down because I wondered if the formatting in the story had gone wrong and an <i> tag hadn’t gotten closed. But, nope: There’s just a really long info-dump pre-amble in italics at the very beginning.

What came after that info-dump was a lovely pleasant read, though; it makes me wish an editor had suggested just getting rid of it altogether and starting the story at the point where it really started.

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REVIEW: “The Prince & the Raven” by Rebecca Burton

Review of Rebecca Burton, “The Prince & the Raven,” Luna Station Quarterly 48 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I would have liked this fairy tale-esque story better if it hadn’t taken all the frustrating bits of fairy tales instead of the good ones: The woman who sees a prince from the distance and falls hopelessly in love; the prince who has to marry or lose his lands, but cannot find a woman interesting enough. I love fairy tales, both traditional and modern, but cis-normative patriarchy-enforcing ones always end up disappointing me. This one tried to subvert those stereotypes, in the end, but not soon enough for it to be convincing.

But there was one very beautiful line in it, when the Moon tells the Raven-Maid: “Don’t lose your self as well as your heart.”

Good advice.

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REVIEW: “No Place Like Home” by Rebecca Burton

Review of Rebecca Burton, “No Place Like Home”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Saffi and her wife moved North so her wife could escape the city and a job that was slowly killing her. Now, Di wants nothing more than to leave the countryside behind and return home.

There’s a good layer of tension in the story, as it is wholly unclear until right at the end whether Saffi will go with Di or not, but that alone wasn’t quite enough to elevate the story from ordinary to extraordinary.

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