Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #283

Art by Artur Zima

This issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies brings two stories that embrace the weird and magical. That find characters struggling with their desires of freedom and peace even as they are a part of a military system that thrives on order and, most importantly, the sacrifice of the “expendable” so that those with power can maintain it. Both feature monsters to fight against but also to twist in service of the state, and characters trying to use those creatures as a tool to do some actual good. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #258

These two new stories from August’s Beneath Ceaseless Skies turn the action up to eleven with stories of teamwork and fighting against horror and oppression. In both works, the settings are defined by loss, by conflict. In one, people must live above a storm that ravages the ground below because of a war that involved separation and enslavement. In the other, a world must sacrifice its future to an alien creature in exchange for a twisted taste of immortality. And in both, people find that talking doesn’t work, and so resort of fists and blades and magic and flight to fight back against the tyranny and reach for a future that people tell them is impossible. To the reviews!

Art by Piotr Dura

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies # 231

August at Beneath Ceaseless Skies starts out with blood and war and cruelty. With two stories that look squarely at corruption and the specter of overwhelming power and corruption. The two stories show very different scopes of a similar core conflict between...well, not exactly good and evil, though if you squint it might seem that way at first. More like between cruelty and compassion. Or between freedom and enslavement. The stories show just how similar these sides can be at times, in their methods and their results, and how it can seem incredibly pointless in the face of the limitations of hope. And yet both still leave room for the characters to strive for something they might never reach, that they will probably never reach, because in the striving there is something beautiful and rewarding and valuable. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Jordan Grimmer