Quick Sips - Lightspeed #82

The March issue of Lightspeed Magazine certainly isn’t the cheeriest of reads. Though spring is showing signs of wanting to arrive these are stories still heavy with the chill touch of winter. Death and loss pervade, revealing a universe that is often cruel, that is often unfair. Characters move through situations made more and more unbearable because of intolerance, fear, apathy, and despair. And yet for all that these stories feature some heavy themes and sinking situations, they are also very much about hope and about taking something from the jaws of grief. Of finding the strength that can only really be honed by strife and stress. Of perhaps escaping the pain and the isolation and finding some peace, community, and freedom. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Reiko Murakami

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #213

People looking for a happy, uplifting read, turn back now. This issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies might be the darkest and most horror-laced of all the issues I have read of the publication. These stories are well paired but fuck are they not entirely appropriate if what you want is to curl up in a warm sweater and enjoy life. These stories are pits of darkness taunting you to look inside. And if you do, if you answer to the voice calling out from the black, there is no real light at the end of the tunnel. Just a growing and gathering darkness that consumes and destroys, that twists and turns. That asks: in a place where justice is dead, what will grow from the rotting remains of its corpse. So yeah, with that warning in place, let us descend to the reviews! 

Art by Raphael Lacoste