Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #288

Art by Ferdinand Dumago Ladera

Well the anniversary issue is over and it’s back to business as usual at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which in this case means back to two stories about distance and isolation, memory and transformation. In one, a man looks back on his life and especially his youth, preparing himself for a new kind of adventure. In the other, a boy finds that he can’t remember his life, and that as a ghost he only gets to interact with the living world one day a year. Both are slow and winding stories, serene but ruled by sadness and yearning. Both find characters who are looking to move on, and might finally have found a way to do just that. It’s a somewhat sorrowful issue, and I’ll get right to reviewing it!

Quick Sips - Clarkesworld #154

Art by Axel Sauerwald

There’s A LOT to get to in the latest Clarkesworld, with seven new stories including three different translations (from Chinese, Korean, and Spanish). These are stories that tend to focus on relationships, on whether the world is worth saving, and on how to live in bleak times. The stories approach those ideas in many different ways, sometimes hopefully, sometimes...not. But they offer a lot of interesting worlds to explore and futures to imagine. Or pasts. Or alternate dimensions. It’s a nicely balanced issue that shows the beauty and tragedy and joy of humanity, and doesn’t really have any easy answers, but often finds comfort in the small connections people make with each other in the face of the giant and annihilating forces of the universe. There’s also an editorial on the state of short SFF that is well worth checking out. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #262 [part 2/2]

I think this is it for this year’s anniversary shenanigans from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, with another two novelettes that explore corruption and tragedy, friendship and betrayal. And really, I think the pair do a great job of examining where friendships can fracture and break apart. They show the great pressure that comes from people growing and living and trying to pursue their dreams amid cruelty and corruption and violence. Tyranny and war. They show two pairs of women who begin the closest of friends, so hopeful of what the future will bring, and then follows the trajectory down into despair, into hurt, into betrayal. It’s a difficult issue, but very much worth grappling with. To the reviews!

Art by Mats Minnhagen

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #241

With its last issue of the year, Beneath Ceaseless Skies delivers two very dark fantasy stories about expectations and rules, curses and sacrifices. In both characters find themselves playing out roles that have been laid out for them, having to find ways to exist in stifling situations. In both, the main characters must contend with the weight of tradition and expectation. In both, the main characters are faced with strong willed women who want to change things. Who want to break the Rules. And in both stories the main characters have to face what the world is like, what their life might be like, should those Rules shatter. It’s an interesting issue that asks some very difficult questions and reveals some visceral hurts. To the reviews!

Art by Dimitrije Miljus

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #219

Beneath Ceaseless Skies specializes in second world fantasy as well as some historical fantasy, so it's no great surprise to find that the two stories in this issue build up some incredibly original and visually stunning settings that twist expectations and conventions. From a world that is an enormous cliff to an ocean plain where aquatic-dinosaur riders roam and cause trouble, readers are treated to journeys through strange and at-times unsettling places where violence lurks in every shadow. These pieces feature characters hoping to return home and unable to do so, balancing their weariness at the constant travel and struggle with their resolve to keep going, to keep pushing forward. These are some great stories that mix moments of action with quieter moments of contemplation and grief. So let's get to the reviews!

Art by Florent Llamas