Quick Sips - Lightspeed #115

Art by Grandfailure / Fotolia

The last Lightspeed Magazine of the year is a rather challenging one for me, full of settings defined by exclusion, oppression, and conflict. These stories are grim, and unsettling, and for me personally mostly upsetting. Not that they don't have hope, or moments of beauty, or skill in wordcraft. But perhaps because I'm in the start of what already is a rather trying winter, I found it hard with some of the pieces to achieve the distance from some of the stories that would have been required to enjoy them more. Still, there are some definite bright spots in the issue, and I'll cover it all in the review.

Quick Sips - Lightspeed #105

Art by Grandfailure / Fotolia

The February issue of Lightspeed Magazine runs a little long with two novelettes and two short stories that look at confinement in a lot of different ways. That look at freedom and what happens when people’s freedoms are taken away, by an outside force, by nature, or by fate. Each piece finds people struggling with systems that limit them. That might mean man-made systems of criminal justice, or social convention, or something a bit more divine, like fate or death itself. The stories show how characters either try and fight back against these systems (where they are corrupt) or learn how to accept or embrace them (where they are just). It’s an interesting bunch of stories with a slower, more ponderous feel to the issue, and I’ll get right to the reviews!