Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #276

Art by Vicky J. Bawangun

The two latest short stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies provide an excellent one-two punch of women with power dealing with ghosts, family, and hope in settings touched by devastation and twisted magic. Both stories find characters on journeys who come across situations that maybe they should have just left alone. But, drawn into the intrigue, danger, and violence of them, they choose to move forward and through, fighting their way to a place where maybe justice can mean something again, where they can be helped and healed by family (even those not related by blood). These are some thrilling and epic reads, and I’ll get to my reviews!

Quick Sips - Lackington's #15 [Diseases]

Lackington’s is back with a new issue, and this one’s all about diseases. Ick. And yet for an issue devoted to sickness and corruptions of various sorts, the stories are as beautiful as I’ve come to expect from the publication, with prose that sings and stories that provide some complicated and lovely views of disease and those effected by disease. As much as the stories are about sicknesses, too, they are also about conventions, about the ways that we are taught to treat disease, and how effective (or not) those treatments can be. Often times, the stories show that diseases are but symptoms themselves of deeper maladies, ones that cannot be easily excised, that must be confronted and dragged into the light, dissected and examined and exorcised. My diagnosis? Review time!

Art by Gregory St. John