REVIEW: “Assyrian Machinery” by Anne Elise Brinich

Review of Anne Elise Brinich, “Assyrian Machinery”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The setting of the story in ancient Assyria appealed to me from the start (I have a fondness for the ancient Near East, and I once did some intensive research on ancient Babylon for a story of my own, and I could tell, while reading this, that Brinich has done a similar amount of research, as I recognised a lot of the telltale details), but the story itself was what impressed me: Characters I cared about from the first paragraph, moments that pierced my soul, two threads of building/making and family/sisterhood entwined together in a beautiful manner, and sharp, sudden, unexpected ending. This was another first-rate publication in this month’s LSQ.

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REVIEW: “Giant Beach” by Amy Porter

Review of Amy Porter, “Giant Beach”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Oh, this was a lovely story! As global warming increases, and more and more icebergs melt, the remains of a long-extinct species come to light, parts of their bodies washing upon the shores of Iceland. One day, an eye, whole and perfectly preserved for so many millennia, washes up — and “After weeks of nothing in my life mattering”, the narrator tells us, “suddenly something did”. The story of their journey to the giant beach, and their experience of looking into the giant’s eye, is both tender and intimate; Porter’s beautiful writing makes it feel like we’re there beside the narrator, watching without intruding. Beautifully crafted.

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REVIEW: “Vó Úrsula’s Magical Shop for Soul-Aches” by Victoria V.

Review of Victoria V., “Vó Úrsula’s Magical Shop for Soul-Aches”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This issue of LSQ is full of good titles — intriguing ones that draw me in and seem to tell almost as much of a story as the story itself — and this is another one of them.

The titular shop is the backdrop for the lives of cousins Benjamin and Berenice dos Santos — students at the local university involved in all the usual student activities, geometry, activism, surreptitious publication in the free press. The story is a mixture of otherworldly-fantasy (the world they live in could be any world, not ours) and descriptions (such as “The government had promised to fight crime, but much of the violence and fear that haunted the cities came from the so-called law enforcement, as well.”) that feel very much like pointed comments on our own current society.

And I’m also a sucker for the first shy blushes of a queer romance, so thumbs up from me for this story! I would totally read a longer/novel-length story based on these characters.

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REVIEW: “The Space Beyond Cubicle Twenty-Nine” by Chelsea Sutton

Review of Chelsea Sutton, “The Space Beyond Cubicle Twenty-Nine”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This story was a fun mixture of time travel and space exploration. About two years ago from the present day was when humans were first visited by Humans, our own race from the future, come back to the here and now to rescue humanity from a dying earth, so that one day Humanity might still exist. All that humans need to do is follow the Humans — taking flight from earth and heading into space.

Sutton’s recounting of what had happened over the last two years, told through the experiences of Lucy who works at Earth Interface Publishing, was fun and engaging, and full of likeable characters.

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REVIEW: “For God is in Sleep Also, and Dreams Advise” by D. L. Podlesni

Review of D. L. Podlesni, “For God is in Sleep Also, and Dreams Advise”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: suicide.

It’s a testament to the quality of Podlesni’s story that I didn’t even realise it was a “little green aliens arriving on earth” story until I was flat out told so. The Immigrants that came to Matewan were presented so thoughtfully, and so intriguingly, that stereotypes were entirely avoided. And the rest of the story continued smashing stereotypes — for the most part; I’m not familiar enough with Deaf culture to know what the import of Podlesni’s choice to not capitalize ‘deaf’ throughout is. That caveat aside, this was a lovely story that foregrounds friendship, and I enjoyed it.

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REVIEW: “Yolk” by Morgan MacVaugh

Review of Morgan MacVaugh, “Yolk”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The story had a strong fairy-tale quality to it; it’s the sort that I could see myself reading aloud to a child not for the strong characters or fast-paced plot but for the beautiful language and the pictures it draws, of a little girl who makes friends with a man who walks the line between day and night, and shares some toast with him dipped in the yolk of the sun.

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REVIEW: “10 Spells the Glasbläser Family Is Not Sharing With Each Other, In Order of Secrecy” by Elisabeth R. Moore

Review of Elisabeth R. Moore, “10 Spells the Glasbläser Family Is Not Sharing With Each Other, In Order of Secrecy”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Abortion.

First off, I love this title. It’s basically a story all on its own!

Second off, the story lives up to the title. It’s 10 little vignettes, each centered on a different member of the Glasbläser family, saying something about the spell each won’t share, where it comes from, what it does, and — perhaps more importantly — why each individual considers their spell so precious. In the end, the story says just as much about what we need from our family as it does the secrets that we keep from each other.

Loved, loved, loved this story. Sweet, sad, funny, pragmatic.

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REVIEW: “Dead Katherine” by Victoria Zelvin

Review of Victoria Zelvin, “Dead Katherine”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Everyone fears the mine-owner William Dawes but the only thing that Dawes fears is the outlaw Dead Katherine. Everyone, that is, but Dead Katherine herself, who has returned to the mine to exact her revenge.

But revenge for what? And why is she called Dead Katherine? These were the two questions that drove my reading of the story, but it took long enough for them to be answered that I read less in anticipation and more in frustration because I couldn’t understand how she had ended up where she was and doing what she was doing. When the answers did finally come (but only to the first question, not the second), it felt a bit too late.

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REVIEW: “The Family Recipe” by Alexandra Grunberg

Review of Alexandra Grunberg, “The Family Recipe”, Luna Station Quarterly 43 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Though the title of this story talks of the family “recipe”, in truth, it’s recipes: The star of the story is a cookbook collated and then handed down from generation to generation. Some recipes get lost through sticky mishaps; others are written down and added; the entire life of the cookbook a repetition of losses and additions. I liked the cyclic structure this forced onto the story, which was otherwise remarkably devoid of plot in a way that did not make the story feel deficient. My only complaint is that I found the ending weak; I would probably have stopped with simply “Everyone knew that it was never just a cookbook.”

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