Quick Sips - Anathema #11 [part 2]

Art by Bex Glendining

And I’m back to finish up my review of the August issue of Anathema Magazine, this time looking at the second half--three short stories and one poem. And there is a sense here of broken connections. Of characters whose ties have been severed in important ways. Ways that leave them seeking things. Revenge, in a few cases. Or closure, at the very least. To break free from cycles of violence. Or to continue them. To push back against silence, but also to express grief and loss and all the messy, complicated emotions that people can feel. It’s a wonderful collection of SFF work, and I’ll get right to my reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark Magazine #34

A pair of weird stories anchor the original fiction from March’s The Dark Magazine. Full of the oppression that places can bring, that cities can nurture and let fester. In both, the main characters find themselves trapped. For one, by a relationship. For the other, by a city. But for me, in both, the focus is on how toxic environments can perpetuate cycles of violence, abuse, captivity, and death. These are not the easiest of stories to read, both because they come with interesting styles and because they are unsettling and (if the name of the magazine hadn’t tipped you off) very dark. These are stories of the ways that hurt leads to hurt, that victims seem to be interchangeable, separated by time but linked by their common plight and common location. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Laura Sava

Quick Sips - The Dark #25

June’s The Dark Magazine brings two stories of women living with the realities of their own vulnerability. In each, the female protagonist is unsafe. They are different, threatening because they have power or simply because they don’t fit in well enough in their society. And in both this vulnerability opens doors that should perhaps have been left closed, provides them with layers of tragedy and victims, death and skin and magic. The stories are very different in the SFF they reveal but both also show the hunger and the violence that being under constant threat can create. The sharp edge that these women hone within themselves, becoming in their attempts to not be prey a new sort of predator. So yeah, let’s jump right into the reviews!

Art by Lonely