Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 07/20/2020 & Samovar 07/27/2020

Art by Mateus Manhanini

So it seems that Strange Horizons had a surprise in store for me this month, as it stepped back and a new issue of Samovar dropped instead of a regular issue. So instead of one story and two poems, I’m looking at three stories (one of them a long novelette) and two poems, and that’s not really a complaint. Because the works are interesting and deep, with an eye on history and quiet desperation. Oppressive environments wrought by human intolerance and corruption. And people trying to make their way through it, trying to find some beauty amidst the danger. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #10 [poetry]

With the fiction done yesterday, it’s time to look at the poetry from the latest Mithila Review! And wow, there’s a lot of it. Seven poems and all flesh out themes of cycles and birth and death, family and resistance and war. These pieces together seem to me to speak to the strengths of language and poetry—to capture the mercurial and the non-literal, to evoke sensation and meaning, and to make brilliantly alive all those things that might be obscured by darkness. Poetry is often a light to shine on truths otherwise too difficult to face, and even in the storms of violence and tragedy, poetry can find beauty, and hope, and connection. So yeah, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Tor dot com March 2018

It's a relatively light month from Tor dot com this March, with only two short stories to look at. The pieces excel, though, at building worlds that are gritty and yet border on the magical. That feature characters struggling with difficult moral decisions and having to make choices that might help them sleep at night but might lose them everything. The pieces are a mix of genres and styles, but they look at people making unexpected connections and contemplating doing things that might be out of character. Because they don't want to lose more. So yeah, let's get to the reviews!

 

Art by Brent Hardy-Smith

Quick Sips - Tor dot com May 2017

Well, Tor dot com continues to put a nice amount of SFF short fiction this June, with two novelettes and three short stories. Mercifully for yours truly, the novelettes actually came out first and not on the last day of the month, so I got to do a reviewer happy-dance. And luckily for yours truly, these are some interesting and at times intensely dark stories that show the ways that the darkness swirls around us and takes shape. The way that it whispers to us. The way that it pulls at us and begs to be let in. These are stories of mutants and aliens, ghosts and shadows, and a buried sense of loss and violence. These are stories about the repressed returning, about alternates and news ways of thinking, and they are both beautiful and terrifying. So yeah, to the reviews!

Art by Robert Hunt

Quick Sips - GigaNotoSaurus April 2017

It’s a longer piece this month at GigaNotoSaurus, though still very firmly in the novelette category. Things get a bit historical as the piece pulls the reader back into the age when opera houses were huge draws and ghosts roamed the land. Wait, that didn’t actually happen? Well in this world it did, and exorcists are in high demand. It’s a historical paranormal fantasy with an interesting take on the time period and history and general, keeping things moving and fun even when touching on some decidedly dark and complex themes. It’s another great month of long-ish SFF from GigaNotoSaurus, so let’s get to that review!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 03/20/2017 & 03/27/2017

Strange Horizons has a treat to close out March. That's right, Samovar has officially arrived, and with it a pair of translated stories and a translated poem. Plus, you know, the other outstanding work from the regular issue (which also includes a translated story). Sadly, for time reasons, I am skipping the reprint, but I do encourage everyone to go and check that out. What's here is gorgeous, though, at times bleak but with an unrelenting current of hope and empathy and reaching out. These are pieces that ask us not only to survive but to stand up. To preach. To inspire. And what results are some amazing pieces of SFF. So yeah, without further ado, the reviews!

Art by Sishir Bommakanti