Quick Sips - Anathema #11 [part 1]

Art by Bex Glendining

It’s time for a new issue of Ananthema! I’m breaking the issue up for I’m-very-tired reasons, but that still means I’m looking at two stories and a poem (I’ll be back for the other three stories and a poem next month). The works are vivid and full of characters willing to take chances. It might be to pursue their dreams. It might be to escape an abusive situation. But the characters are motivated, pushing themselves to exhaustion and beyond, and reaching for something affirming and beautiful. It’s never easy, but getting to the future never is, and the works explore how these characters survive and thrive despite dangers and those that want to see them fail. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - PodCastle #622-623

PodCastle has two new stories this month, and show some very different flavors of alt-history fantasy. One is a post-disaster magical resurgence story (paradigm shift story?) about love, true and otherwise. The other is a historical fantasy featuring a couple living in the shadow of the Vietnam War. Both deal with our world and how magic might shape it, though, either a magic that has always been present and is now being twisted for war, or a magic that was absent and is now returned in the form of dangerous new rules, creatures, and hardships. The characters are in turn shaped by the conflicts that magic creates, struggling to find love and build families amidst the ruin and devastation. To the reviews!