Review of Callie S. Blackstone, “Break Fresh Ground,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
The narrator’s grandmother has died, and bequeathed to her house, her two apple trees, and her store of herbs in the pantry. We the reader get to explore all three of these along with the narrator in this beautiful story of love and loss and memory, and the entwining of ancient Irish myth with modern Catholic ritual.
Review of Katrina Carruth, “The Beginning,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
There’s a nice mythological feel to this story, which is set “before the earth was your Earth and the heavens were your heavens,” and tells of a tree, born from a seed that fell from the stars and grew to be the mother of all life. It had the potential to be a neat story, but it was told in a rather heavy-handed and didactic way, which wasn’t entirely to my taste, and ended rather abruptly. It felt like a strong first draft, not quite honed to its best form.
Review of Ali Miller, “The Trimming of the Branches,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story was deftly written in order to allow two readings, one where it’s a straight-up dryadic sort of fantasy, and the other (which is how I preferred to take it) as a metaphor of the love between men and women and the land, a love that crosses and shifts and mutates over generations. It was a really lovely read.
Review of Sarah McPherson, “Shadow and Ash,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This story combined two narrative techniques that I generally dislike — 2nd person POV with a vagueness of setting and characterisation — with the result that I never really found anything to sink my teeth into. This one just wasn’t for me.
Review of Elana Gomel, “The Mother Tree,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content note: Non-consensual sex, non-consensual pregnancy.
This was definitely not the sort of story I was expecting, veering off from fantasy to flirt with horror — the horror of pregnancy as your child takes over your body and then your life; the horror of losing a mother; the horror of being trapped in one place, unable to speak, unable to escape.
I loved it.
Review of Keira Reynolds, “The Wee Folks,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was a proper fairy tale, where the wee folk are armed and dangerous and ready to laugh at human suffering, with a good dose of folk knowledge in the background.
Review of Maria Paige Brekke, “Beech, Please,” Luna Station Quarterly 52 (2022): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
After a decade of running a body-carving shop for dryads (basically the tree equivalent of tattoos), Rhiannon comes to realise that she’s become…normal. ordinary. part of the establishment. the “safe” option. Better that than burning childish designs into their bark like her competitor Eric, or so she tells herself. Anything is better than leaving her customers to Eric’s services. So of course, we the readers are not surprised at all when Rhiannon and Eric get thrown into a fix that they can only solve together.
This story wins the “best title” award for this (tree-themed) issue of LSQ, so of course I had to start with it. I’m delighted to say the story itself lived up to the promise of its title — snappy, full of humor, putting a smile on my face in every paragraph.
Review of Fiona Moore, “Mnemotechnic,” Cossmass Infinities 8 (2022): 56-75 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I love a story where the main character is described as having used to be a computer, and I genuinely cannot tell for the first page whether the word is meant in hardware or the human sense! The initial scenes leave it genuinely open to going either way. Of course, in a story as long as this one, the matter does get settled, but by the time it is, I’m already hooked enough that I don’t care which way it goes.
I was reminded of another story recently reviewed,
Review of Owen McManus, “All Legacy Hardware,” Cossmass Infinities 8 (2022): 7-21 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Kara Liu is just weeks away from the Olympic 10k qualifying meet when a terrible accident severs her spinal cord. The story opens on her three weeks post injury, still in the throes of recovery, reconstruction, and rebuilding of her future. The quality and precision of the scientific detail in this story is such that it made me — not a doctor! — wonder how much of it was fiction and how much already reality. I loved it. (I also really, really loved Dr. Dawson, who doesn’t know how to talk to people, who finds her research vividly exciting, and who appreciates the importance of getting a PhD thesis or two out of a new project.) This is McManus’s first published story, and all credit to him: I hope he writes lots more like this.
Review of Megan W. Shaw, “A Song Before I Say Goodbye,” Cossmass Infinities 8 (2022): 96-98 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
This was an unusually short story for Cossmass Infinities, but I’m so glad the editors took a punt on it. It’s a beautiful little epilogue to a great issue. (Warning! May cause tears.)
SFF Reviews