REVIEW: “Talking to Cancer” by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

Review of Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, “Talking to Cancer”, Apex Magazine 112 (2018): Read Online. Originally published in Fiyah Magazine 2 (2017). Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

A woman who can cure cancer by talking to it comes to terms with the fact that she can also cause it. This is a rich story about responsibility and gifts, but also forgiveness and acceptance.

Whens she was a girl, Layla learned that she could talk to cancer when she asked it not to kill her mother, and it listened. But it turns out that this gift is double-edged, and in moments of anger, she can also cause cancer to begin growing in a person. As far as premises go, this is a great one. It’s simple, but powerful. Cancer inspires so much fear and so much pain, that the stakes are automatically high.

Layla is a gloriously rich character, someone who has dedicated her life to healing, but also has darkness within her. She’s not an angel, but is instead a real woman with real struggles and real emotions, who is not always her best self. The twists of the story challenge her, forcing her to decide who she wants to be. That kind of internal experience is exactly what I love to see in a short story, so I was not disappointed here.

This is a masterful, engaging story, and I highly recommend heading over to Apex to check it out!

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REVIEW: “Coyote Now Wears a Suit” by Ani Fox

Review of Ani Fox, “Coyote Now Wears a Suit”, Apex Magazine 112 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

Kupua is not thrilled when her family asks her to come down to the courthouse to get somebody she didn’t even know out of jail, but when the person in question turns out to be Coyote, things get downright weird. For starters, what is Coyote even doing in Hawaii?

This is one of the best takes on Coyote I’ve seen in ages. He (or is it she? Tricksters are so hard to pin down, much like our narrator) breaks Kapua’s life open with chaos that is anything but innocent. Sometimes, depictions of Coyote lack bite, but not here. This Coyote isn’t concerned about pain, or a bit of collateral damage. He isn’t being cruel without reason – everything he destroys, from Kupua’s relationships to her secrets, needed to end for her to move forward – but I got the sense that this was a test as much as a kindness. If Kupua hadn’t risen to the challenge, Coyote would shrug and walk away.

This story is jam-packed. It not only has one of the most popular trickster figures in literature, this story takes a cold, hard look at the discrimination faced by native Hawaiians, stares down issues of gender and sexual orientation, and pulls no punches. All that, and the story is a roller coaster of excitement from start to finish.

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REVIEW: “River Street” by S.R. Mandel

Review of S.R. Mandel, “River Street”, Apex Magazine 112 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

You stumble upon River Street while looking for something else, but it draws you in, and soon you are strolling along its hills, drawn inexorably onward by curiosity and frank enjoyment.

This is a weird little piece, the sort that makes me wonder if I’m missing something. But the description of a meandering street that pulls you in and then pushes you to an unknown destination stuck with me long after I’d finished reading. Is the street good or bad, is this about being trapped or being freed? Maybe those are the wrong questions.

If you don’t consider plots and protagonists to be critical parts of a story and are in the mood for something a bit more experimental, give this bite-sized story a try. You may be pleasantly surprised.

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REVIEW: “Escape” by K. G. Anderson

Review of K. G. Anderson, “Escape”, Luna Station Quarterly 35 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Shulamit Pelz is on her way from New York to Santa Fe, golem in tow. Ahead of her is a fiancé she’s never met; behind her, two “crazed Kabbalists” tracking her golem. When robbers set upon her carriage, Shulamit is forced into the company of Billy McCarty, “a city boy’s dream of a New Mexico cowboy” for all that he, too, was born in New York, not far from where Shulamit lived. Can she keep the secret of the golem from Billly? What secrets is Billy keeping from her?

Half-way through the story, we find out at least one of Billy’s secrets, and the revelation had me grinning until the end. I very much enjoyed this Jewish speculative Western — the first I’ve ever read of such a genre. One thing that has really become impressed upon me, the more diversely I read, is just how boring lack of diversity is, what a distinct lack of imagination it shows. I’m really glad we have stories like this and journals like Luna Station Quarterly to make it easy for everyone to read diversely.

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REVIEW: “What the Dead Are For” by Terry Grimwood

Review of Terry Grimwood’s, “What the Dead Are For”, The Future Fire Volume 2, 2005: Read online. Reviewed by Elliott Baye.

In “What the Dead Are For”, when someone dies they wake up in a mysterious graveyard, and there are two paths to consider. They could head to the forest and river to rest, or they can make the climb up the looming hill freckled with gravestones. Pastor Bob Williamson, as a man of strong Christian faith, believes that heaven is surely earned by climbing the hill, and thus tries to make his ascent.

This is a really interesting piece. It takes a proud, devout character and challenges him physically and mentally, making him rely on his own choices rather than a prewritten scripture. His ideas and morals began to conflict, and doing good became a different concept than doing “the right thing”.

Religion can be quite tricky to write about, since a lot of people can become defensive when their faith is questioned. I’m not as passionate about my religion as a great many of people, but I still think that Terry Grimwood did a pretty good job of not stepping on toes and more than necessary to tell the story. The story, to me, didn’t feel pro- or anti-religion. It was more of a “what if” scenario, and I found it fascinating.

I enjoyed the way the story ended, as it concluded Pastor Bob’s story, but I have a suspicion it will frustrate certain readers that like definitive answers to all the questions. Still, I recommend this to readers that like to wonder about life after death, as I do. Just read it with an open mind, and I think you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised.

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REVIEW: “A Dream of This Life” by Andrea Blythe

Review of Andrea Blythe, “A Dream of This Life”, Luna Station Quarterly 35 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Drug use.

This was a grey, dismal story, of insomnia, of drug-use, of the wretched dullness of life. The narrator (never named) used to be a dreamer of dreams — and, more importantly, a seller of them too. Now she dreams no longer, at least, not any dream that anyone would want to have, because

No one wants to buy a dream that leaves them with the same unsettling boredom they experience every day of their lives.

Blythe describes the experiences of the narrator in painfully evocative language: Very well written, but what’s being written is not necessarily something you want to read. What I found most interesting, reading this story, was how much reading the story felt like experiencing one of those dreams. No one wants a dream that resembles the dullness of their life; but few would want to read a story that is full of the boredom of life, either. In sum: The story was well-written, but I am unsure that it is a story that people would want to read.

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REVIEW: “Words in an Unfinished Poem” by A. C. Wise

Review of A. C. Wise, “Words in an Unfinished Poem”, in Aidan Doyle, Rachael K. Jones, and E. Catherine Tobler, Sword and Sonnet (Ate Bit Bear, 2018) — 1-21. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The gunslinger waits in the saloon for the one person who can help them find the final word that will finish their poem. Sewn into their coat are the shell casings of every person they’ve ever killed, each inscribed with a single word, a poem ever changeable and rearrangeable.

We never learn the gunslinger’s name in this story, but we learn so much more about them…the curse that haunts them, the grandmother that raised them, the memories that they cannot escape. This is not a “pen is mightier than the sword” story but rather a “the pen is the sword” story, as for the gunslinger their words and their bullets are one and the same, each as deadly as the other.

This was a beautiful and sad story, told with glittering words.

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REVIEW: “The Whipping Girls” by Damien Angelica Walters

Review of Damien Angelica Walters, “The Whipping Girls”, Apex Magazine 110 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

After her mother’s death, Erika decides to leave Kansas and everything she’s ever known, and drive to California for a new start. She wants to prove her mother wrong, prove that she can move past fear and a childhood of abuse. To do so, she learns that she will have to encounter her past selves in a very literal sense.

I have a soft spot for stories that directly externalize an internal conflict, and that deal with mental health issues, so it’s no surprise that I connected with this one. Erika has to destroy what came before, and is now holding her back, in order to move on and be whole. I’m not sure that is good therapeutic advice (at least not for every survivor of abuse), but it strikes an emotional chord of truth. Maybe not everyone’s truth, but certainly a truth.

This is a beautiful, simple story about the painful journey to hope and healing, and I highly recommend it to those who like quiet, psychological stories set in the real world, but of course with a touch of the speculative.

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REVIEW: “Not Quite Taken” by KL Pereira

Review of KL Pereira, “Not Quite Taken”, Lamplight Volume 6 Issue 2, December 2017.  pp. 6-10. Purchase here. Review by Ben Serna-Grey.

 

A grim little story written in second person about someone–you–decomposing. Evidently this is something you’ve done before, as it talks about your rituals, as well as painful memories from when this first started. Lamplight does label itself as a magazine of dark fiction, and though I’ve submitted stories in the past this is actually one of the first issues I’ve ever read. KL Pereira is the featured author for this issue so there is some more work from them, and I’m eager to see what else they’ve got for me.

A very good story, but as I’ve said in the past, second person rarely works for me as well as first or second. Still, I’d definitely recommend a read if you want some short and punchy body horror.

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