REVIEW: “Jinli Yu” by Ai Jiang

Review of Ai Jiang, “Jinli Yu”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The narrator’s father never had a chance to teach her jinli magic before he was captured, wanted for his own jinli magic. Now she is faced with attempting to rescue him without the first clue of how to go about doing it.

This was a very philosophical story, about struggles and goals, of freedom and constraint, and how to make sense of death, told in a distinctive and powerful voice. Definitely worth a few read-throughs to get all the nuances.

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REVIEW: “Relapse” by Phoenix Roberts

Review of Phoenix Roberts, “Relapse”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Eating disorders.

Katherine is recovering from an eating disorder, and is making a table. The spectre of her ED haunts the earlier part of the story, so that it takes awhile to piece together the offered clues to see that that’s what happened to her. After that, it becomes quite a frank account: I cannot say how accurate because I do not have the experience, but the way her recovery shapes her life smacks of authenticity.

It’s hard to isolate and explain the speculative — almost horror — element in the story, and how it weaves through the more mundane details, so I won’t try; it is best understood by experiencing it, by reading the story yourself.

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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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REVIEW: “Skipping Back” by Jeannine Clarke

Review of Jeannine Clarke, “Skipping Back”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content warning: Mention of eating disorders; marijuana use; casual racism.

This was very much a story of two parts. In the first, not even the addition of time travel can make a story of a man’s serial philandering any less sordid. In the second, the philandering is left behind and the time travel comes to the fore. This second half was a bit trite, but overall this was a pleasant story.

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REVIEW: “A Recipe for Trouble” by Aimee Ogden

Review of Aimee Ogden, “A Recipe for Trouble”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content warning: masturbation.

Leah loves to look at every book in the booksale, wanting them all but knowing only some will her mother allow her to purchase. But what could be more harmless than a cook book?

“A Recipe for Trouble” is more a series of vignettes than a proper story, and yet Ogden still manages to provide a solid setting with sympathetic characters. The undertones of oppression and repression of women in the story give it a weight that the premise alone would not have managed.

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REVIEW: “The Good Girl” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

Review of Jennifer Lee Rossman, “The Good Girl”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

In this story, the main character undergoes two important transitions: one from AFAB to trans man, the other from human to vampire. It’s a pretty blunt metaphor, and while the story of how “the good girl” got turned feels raw and real, I’m also a little bit uncomfortable with the equation of transitioning and becoming a monster.

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REVIEW: “Look to the Future” by Louise Hughes

Review of Louise Hughes, “Look to the Future”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I love the premise of this story: In a world where ordinarily everyone can see the future, the narrator is one of those who can’t. The entire shape of people’s lives is different on such a premise, and the distress and bafflement at the narrator’s plight is genuine and believable: How can you plan for your future if you cannot see it? “Everyone worried. They narrowed their brows and clenched their teeth and fretted that I was making a Terrible Decision that would Ruin My Life Forever.”

What can you possible decide to do about your future when you cannot see it? Why, study history! And that decision is when the real magic in this story begins.

This story hit the perfect balance of making it all about the characters and their own world and story but leaving enough space within it to “read” the real world into it, almost allegorically. Big thumbs up from me.

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REVIEW: “Bluebell Song” by JL George

Review of JL George, “Bluebell Song”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Death.

To listen to the song of the bluebells “was to succumb to a slow madness,” but this doesn’t prevent Old Woman Achan from going out every morning to listen to them, trying to escape an even worse fate. In the end, it almost feels like she’s taken the coward’s way out, and for that reason I found the story emotionally unsatisfactory.

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