Quick Sips - Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Q35

The first issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly has landed and brought with a trio if fantasy novelettes and a trio of poems. The stories are a mix of historical fantasy (with a new Carvajal story and what could be the beginning of a series of Victorian-era investigations) and second-world fun. The poetry is rather narrative, revealing battlefields of various sorts, whether literal or more symbolic. There’s dragons, monsters, demons, and usurpers to deal with, and the pieces as a whole show characters trying to make things right, trying to lead and to follow their own hearts. It’s a nice mix of pieces, and before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Jereme Peabody

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 02/20/2017 & 02/27/2017

The end of February brought a rather light release of content from Strange Horizons, with one story and two poems that I’ll be looking at today. There’s a selection of nonfiction as well, but I felt I lacked some requisite knowledge/experience to really get into those pieces, though I definitely recommend people check them out. There’s actually a very interesting discussion in the essay on Moore’s novel about writing and reviewing but I’m not sure I have my thoughts together enough to address that, so instead I will focus on the fiction and poetry, which focus on bodies and on trauma and damage. That look at the ways that people seek to escape the confines of their situations, of their cages, of the judgments that people place on them and their forms. These are pieces that carry with them a definite darkness and do a great job of complicating gaze and intent. And before I ramble on too much I should just get to the reviews!

Art by Kathleen Jennings

Quick Sips - The Sockdolager #8 Women of War

February has decided that it's going to be very full of fiction, and contributing to that is a special Women of War issue of The Sockdolager. Now, the issue actually contains eight stories, but three of them are reprints and because of time I'm not going to review those, though I do very much recommend people check them out. As it is, there are five stories seeing their first publishing and they definitely capture the theme well. Women are front and center here in all aspects of war—as soldiers definitely and as revolutionary, as monsters and nurses and victims and mothers. These stories focus on family and love and conflict and blood, and they are at times difficult to read because of the unflinching look they take at war. At what it means to go to war, especially for women. It's a wonderful collection of stories, and I'm going to charge right into my reviews!