The Monthly Round - August 2017

The Monthly Round is live right now at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together. Do please go give it a read. It features my favorite short SFF reads from August 2017 and pairs them with tasting notes, drink pairings, and reviews. It's quite fun. Anyway, for those wanting a taste of what this month's list features, here's the run down. Cheers!

Tasting Flight - August 2017

"The Library of Lost Things" by Matthew Bright (Tor)
"Avi Cantor Has Six Months To Live" by Sacha Lamb (Book Smugglers)
"The Wanderers" by Ian McHugh (GigaNotoSaurus)
"unfurl/ed" by Jes Rausch (Strange Horizons)
"If a Bird Can Be a Ghost" by Allison Mills (Apex)
"Our Secret, In Keys" by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Fireside)

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus August 2017

It’s a longer release from GigaNotoSaurus this month, with a long novelette that warms the cold, lonely chambers of my reviewer-heart. There is something to be said about a story that just embraces being an adventure, that features characters striking out into the unknown wilderness for the joy of it. And it reveals a world of striking beauty and harsh reality. Of danger and mistrust and old hurts, but also the possibility of new growth and new hope. Of healing. It’s an absolutely gorgeous story that is well worth the time and effort, and I’ll just get to the review!

Quick Sips - Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #32

It’s a new issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and it’s a rather full one with two short stories, two novelettes, and two poems. And everything has a lot to do with violence and cycles. Again and again we see settings that have been torn apart by war and strife, by carnage and murder, trying to find some way forward. Sometimes that means descending down into the muck and mire of killing, but sometimes that means being able to rise up and do something new and different. Sometimes that means finding hope in unexpected places and finally bringing destructive cycles to an end. Whatever the case, it makes for some great reading and I’m going to get to the reviews!

Art by Mark Molchan

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #185

I have climbed the mountain of October SFF short fiction, and at it's peak is the third issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies out this month. Released just before Halloween, the stories are full of monsters and people, and sometimes monsters who are people and sometimes people who are monsters. The two tales offered up are filled with things lurking in the night, shadows that might be innocent but rarely are. Halloween might be over, but these stories do a nice job of pointing out that monsters don't go away just because the holiday has passed. To the reviews!

Art by Feliks Grzesiczek

Quick Sips - Urban Fantasy Magazine #5

I'm taking a look at a new magazine (for me) today with Urban Fantasy Magazine. I heard about it some time ago but never really got over there, something that I will likely rectify now. It's quite a bit of fun and the two stories that I'm looking at this month are well worth reading. Plus there's more stuff that I'm not going to be looking at (at least not in this review...might be back to peek at the nonfiction but unfortunately it's not out yet). Still, it looks like here is a new market that I'm going to be stopping back at. Which is always a good find.