Quick Sips - Uncanny #22 [June stuff]

The May fiction and poetry from Uncanny Magazine has something of a yearning quality to me. The pieces deal with desire, and with longing, and with reaching both backwards in time and forward. Memory and comfort, lust and power all mix and mingle here with characters who want to find something that seems to be missing in their lives, some vital spark that can’t seem to light in the environment they find themselves in. So they must move, or seek aid, or change their environments to better suit their needs. The stories are on the short side, the poetry very concerned with myth and women, and the issue as a whole is a wonderful way to usher in the arrival of warmer weather. Let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Julie Dillon

Quick Sips - Flash Fiction Online August 2016

This month's stories at Flash Fiction Online do a nice job of capturing in bite-sized servings the charm and potential of SFF. Both in how they handle classic tropes like time travel and the Fae and how they innovate through novel uses of narrative, plot structure, and voice. The stories manage to do a lot in the short confines of their flash lengths, and they provide compelling tastes of these various settings, these various genres. What results are three stories that are at turns tragic and touching, hellish and hopeful. So yeah, let's get to the reviews! 

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Sips - Shimmer #28 (December Stuff)

The final Shimmer stories of the year certainly show off a nice depth and a strong darkness. From a story about a girl who can find anything lost to a story about historical erasure and discovery, these stories thrive on balancing moments of subtle art with moments where message takes center stage, unavoidably and unwilling to disappear. Both feature characters striving to regain something. Their place in history, the people they have lost, the things that gave their lives meaning. What results are stories that creepy like frost, sinking into the bones of the reader, slow but with a weight that sits on the chest like a twenty pound cat napping. And now, to the reviews!

Art by Sandro Castelli