Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers October 2018

It’s another novella live at The Book Smugglers, this time a political fantasy all about fate and fighting against it as part of their Awakenings themed short fiction. About sins and defilement and cleansing. About how a society can be arranged in order to codify imbalances in power. Where some people are born to rule and others to be crushed under the boulder of history rolling always downhill. It’s a complex and exciting read, full of death and magic and a main character just starting to figure out what she can do, never given much time to think but rather learning to run before she walks. To the review!

Art by Autumn Evelyn

Regular Sips - Between the Firmaments by JY Yang

Okay, so I always appreciate the hell out of the serial projects that The Book Smugglers come out with. Two years ago it was the Spindle City stories, and last year it was Hurricane Heels, and now there’s the serial novella, Between the Firmaments. And it lives up to the fragile beauty and persistent will that drove the previous worlds. Here a planet has been subjugated and stripped of almost all of its gods, their divinity used for the wealth and comfort and grandeur of the alien invaders. And one god, laid low but uncaptured, must walk the line between annihilation and lust, between hope and despair. Through a gauntlet that seems impossible to survive he has to run and hope to fate and luck and the strength of the bonds he’s built between those he loves that when the smoke clears there’s still something left to salvage. So yeah, let’s get to the review!

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers September 2018

September brings a new short story to The Book Smugglers’ Awakenings season of short SFF. And it’s a striking and difficult piece about bodies, identity, and perfection. Or perhaps about the push to perfection, both the reaching for it and the way that for some people the world seems to demand it. Extort it. And how people can become ground to dust by the pressures to succeed and be flawlessly successful. It’s a powerful story, and I’ll get right to my review!

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers August 2018

There’s two new Awakenings season novelettes at The Book Smugglers! The first evokes and complicates fairy tales and specifically a fairy tale romance, and is cold and in some ways very cruel. As cruel as reality, at least, which it turns out is quite cruel indeed. It’s a story that in some ways embraces what it means to be a fairy tale, full of darkness and magic and hope. But at the same time, it seems to me to hesitate short of providing a completely expected experience. Instead, it challenges the reader about their assumptions about what these kind of stories look like, and how they should end. And the second looks follows a young girl growing up, reaching for an adulthood where she can finally take control of her own life after years and years of dealing with waiting, abuse, and a pressure to conform. Both stories do a lot of interesting things, and build maintain very different styles while still pairing well, showing the world in all its complex, beautiful cruelty. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Jennifer Johnson

Regular Sip - Girl Reporter by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Returning to a beloved setting and checking in with its characters and world is always a treat, and one of my favorite speculative worlds from the past few years has been revealed in the Australian superhero stories of Tansy Rayner Roberts (starting with “Cookie Cutter Superhero” and further expanded in “Kid Dark Against the Machine). Now, the setting has a new(ish) novella thanks to The Book Smugglers’ novella initiative and I could not be more excited to dive back into the world of superheroes and villains and people young and old whose lives have been impacted and shaped by the machines from space with the power to give people powers. To make superheroes. So without further ado, the review!

Art by Emma Glaze

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers June 2018

June brings a new...novelette? novella? to The Book Smugglers, and people, you’re gonna wanna buckle up for this one. Combining aliens and friendship with trauma, horror, and compulsion, the piece took my expectations, froze them in nitroglycerin, and smashed them with a hammer. The piece does not pull its punches and while it centers a fourteen-year-old black girl, this isn’t what I would consider “for kids.” Instead it’s a brilliant and wrenching look at hope, abuse, and the way that toxic systems poison everything they touch. So yeah, to the review!

Art by Kristina Tsenova

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers May 2018

The Awakenings season has begun at The Book Smugglers! The theme is perhaps the vaguest of their guiding ideas so far, but if this first story is anything to go by, it’s going to be another amazing year of short SFF. Because kicking things off is a story about magic and about portals. About escape and about bodies. And yes, about awakening, not to this secret world where everything is perfect, but rather to the knowledge that the world is complicated, and often corrupt, and magic and happiness are things that must be worked at, especially if you’re one of those who don’t want what the world wants for you. It’s a lovely and inspiring read, even as it doesn’t put much stock in escape fantasies. To the review!

Art by Emma Glaze

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers October 2017

Just when I thought the season was over, The Book Smugglers return for a special Halloween story. It's...well, it's not incredibly Halloween-y, but it is a rather touching and ultimately dark story about utility and purpose and humanity. The story does a great job of building up a weird, slightly magical science fiction setting with a great hook and a devilish ending. It does have something of a ghost story aesthetic going for it, too, so I suppose you can consider it fit for the season. In any event, it's unsettling at times and decidedly creepy and before I give too much away let's just get to the review!

Art by Desirina Boskovich

Regular Sip - "Bearly a Lady" by Cassandra Khaw

I’m back looking at the Book Smugglers Novella Imitative, this time with a paranormal rom-com featuring a werebear, the London fashion scene, and the trials and tribulations of magical dating. In the past, Book Smugglers certainly have not avoided romantic stories or plot lines, and this piece revels in the high tension, high drama world of dating within the supernatural population, full of strange abilities, powerful appetites, and occasional blood-lust. It’s a fun story, wrapping as it does some of the difficulty of dating while large, dating while bi, navigating an industry and world where toxic men seem most insulated from harm and already marginalized women are most at first. To be powerful in this setting is itself an aggressive act, one met often with cruelty and abuse, and the story does a fair job of balancing that. But before I give too much away, to the review!

Art by Muna Abdirahman

Regular Sip - "Reenu-You" by Michele Tracy Berger [Book Smugglers]

Okay, so I’m a little behind in my novella reading, but I’m making a start of things with this, the second of the Book Smugglers Novella Initiative releases. It’s a story that revolves around hair and community, injustice and identity. Hair is something that is not politically neutral, after all, carrying with it a slew of expectations, prejudices, and exploitations. And, of course, these pressures and pitfalls fall along racial, gender, and social lines, explored in this novella to sharp and shocking effect. As a bald white guy, it’s something that both is hard to understand as well as incredibly easy to see. After all, if someone started poisoning hair products aimed at white men like me, desperate to retain or regrow hair, the reaction, I imagine, would be immediate and intense. But of course, likely things would never have gotten that far. Testing and science already favor white cis men as research subjects, skewing most data about health risks, and that’s not even mentioning what happens when corruption and systemic racism mix to fail to regulate products and services aimed at people of color. So yeah, sorry, I really should just get to this review!

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers August 2017

I’m very sad that the Gods & Monsters short story season is over at The Book Smugglers with these two short stories. It has been an excellent run and the pieces have consistently been among my favorite every month they’ve been out. But even good things must come to an end. At least for this year. To close things out there are two new stories exploring youth and education, love and responsibility. The stories aren’t that similar on the surface, but digging deeper finds narratives that are very concerned with consent and with fostering an environment where young people can explore who they are and how they want to live. They mix humor and magic, emotion and stress and frustration. But they also imagine characters taking control of their situations, negotiating their ways past the forces trying to crush them. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Ira Gladkova

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers July 2017

It's another busy month at The Book Smugglers this July with two new Gods & Monsters short stories! And really the stories are very different takes on the central theme, the first looking at faith and how it's constructed, how it's framed, and how it can take on a life of its own. The second visits much more the monsters side of things to present a gothic horror that is full of gasps, fainting, and things lurking in the dark. Both stories take a close look at the characters first, and on family. They examine the ways that family can be a burden, or a great strength. And they both provide moments of action, moments of quiet contemplation, and moments of staggering horror. So yeah, let's get to those reviews!

Art by Jennifter Johnson

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers June 2017

Book Smugglers is back for its 2017 short story season! This year’s theme is Gods & Monsters and the two first stories up are a science fiction tale that definitely leans on some tropes surrounding gods—well, more like goddesses, and a contemporary fantasy full of heart and dark magic. These are stories that unfold across a galaxy rich with life as two women discover the joy of experience even as they run up against the limitations of it as well, or inside a world quite familiar, full of middle school dances and carrot cake as two sisters and their dads find out that there is more than dust bunnies lurking in the shadowy spaces of the globe. Both are stories about change and about moving on, about discovery but also autonomy, and they are a great way to kick off another year of stories from one of my favorite publishers. To the reviews!

Art by Sparrows

Regular Sip - "The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist" by S.L. Huang [Book Smugglers]...Plus Giveaway!!!

This comes a little late as my last review from 2016 (probably), but I really didn't want to miss out on reviewing this novelette from The Book Smugglers. I'm all about fairy tale retellings, especially ones that complicate (and queerify) classic tropes and ideas. Here the story of "The Little Mermaid" becomes something quite different. If you're looking for something that conforms to the Disney version, look elsewhere (though I love this version of Ursula, fwiw). If you're looking for a layered narrative that is dark, emotional, and imaginative as fuck, then sit down as I get to this review!

This is also the very first time that I'm running a giveaway for a story (I'm really stretching my blogger wings now). So definitely check out the link below the review because FREE BOOK! Seriously, the book looks beautiful and the prose itself more than lives up to it. Do it!

Art by Kristina Tsenova

Regular Sip - "Hurricane Heels" by Isabel Yap [Book Smugglers]

So it's officially novella season over at The Book Smugglers and this is the second that I'm looking at from the end of the year. It's still technically the Year of the Superhero, too, so this is very topical and just a really. Damn. Good. Story. About magical girls and friendship and fighting monsters and scars and love and it's just wow… So the novella unfolds over five parts, each one from the perspective of one of the main team. As such, I'm looking at each story quasi-individually, so that (like the story) the review will grow with each section to work toward one massive review. Which means, as well, that there will probably be SPOILERS after the first section. Be warned.

Art by Denise Yap

Regular Sip - "The Convergence of Fairy Tales" by Octavia Cade [Book Smugglers]

Today I'm looking at the latest novella from The Book Smugglers. This is part of a new initiative that they are running and if this work is anything to go by, it is going to be awesome. The piece overall unfolds across five chapters. Five sections. Five fairy tales. And as that is the case, I decided that my review would look at each section in turn. Be warned, because of the linked nature of the story, SPOILERS ABOUND after the first section. So yeah, to the review! 

Art by Kristina Tsenova

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers October 2016

The Year of the Superhero at The Book Smugglers might be winding down, but that doesn't mean there isn't a few more surprises in store for 2016. Which is why I hesitate to post this review. Not because I didn't love the story (spoiler alert: I did!), but because I worry that there might be a release later in the month to coincide with Halloween and I'm worried by posting this I'll miss it. But these are the risks of a reviewer. What is here is a story that sets up the fourth and final book the Extrahuman Union series. These stories are always gripping and this one brings in action and angst and identity, the main character stuck between being broken and being...something else. It is a profound story that makes me quite excited to read the novels, but until then I should really get to that review!

Art by Kirbi Fagan

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers September 2016

The Year of the Superhero officially comes to an end at The Book Smugglers with this story. At least as far as original short fiction is concerned. It's a good thing, then, that it's a longer piece, and that it's a bit of a departure from the other superhero offerings the publication has put out so far. Instead of capes and cowls, this story looks at the idea of being a chosen hero, of having some role to fill in a larger story. And what happens when, for most, the story ends. What happens to the primary character? It's a fascinating and poignant work and it's time to review it! 

Art by Jenna Whyte

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers August 2016

The Year of the Superhero keeps on soaring at The Book Smugglers with two new stories, one set in a novel universe and one all new and all adorable. These are stories that mix hope and fear, buried pain and the hope of healing. These look at powers but also powerlessness, about clawing to try and get what power you can and maybe finding that it's not enough, or it's not what you really wanted after all. These are stories with a nice depth and an uplifting stubbornness, and they are definitely worth some time and attention. That said, to the reviews! 

Art by Sparrows

Quick Sips - The Book Smugglers July 2016

The Year of the Superhero continues at The Book Smugglers with a story that complicates the idea of the superhero. That looks at invulnerability and pairs it with a very aching sense of vulnerability. Both of the physical sense, because the main character is not unable to be very injured, and the emotional kind, which is even more complex and moving. The story weaves together the ways we think of strength and provides a touching and great narrative about a failed super soldier and love and family. Time to review! 

Art by Melanie Cook