I want to concentrate on the ways that I like the stories from this month's Tor dot com offerings. There's a lot here, especially for fans of a certain kind of epic fantasy. For my money, though, the stories that shine are the ones that step back and witness the meetings between worlds. The ties that bind people together across species and across space. Stories that imagine humans seeing something completely different from themselves and not recoiling in terror. Or at least not entirely. This is something of a mixed month for me, personally, but I'm sure that there will be lots of people who find something valuable in each of the stories. So yeah, to the reviews!
It's the first full month of spring and at Lightspeed Magazine it means a mix of superheroes and dragons, half-alien births and knobby giraffes. The issue is filled with new beginnings and happy endings, or at least the hope of happy endings. The stories have a fair amount of darkness but also a rising brightness, a sort of defiant laughter against the lingering feelings of winter. The results are a bit of a mixed bag for me personally, but there's still a lot here to like and certainly a lot of ambition in tackling some big issues and ideas. So get ready for some reviews!
Because apparently I missed a story that came out in (very) late May, this month's Terraform features six stories, most of them under 2k and a few breaking guidelines to be more than that. Personally I find it just a little funny because the "hard" word limit was praised in some corners (that I didn't really agree with) as being conducive to creativity, and yet here Terraform shows that for the right story the limits have to be eased. But yes, a very good mix of stories, all little glimpses into what might be and all worth giving a look at. So to the reviews!
