Quick Sips - Lackington's #20 [Birds part 2]

Art by Kat Weaver

And I'm back looking at the most recent and oversized Bird-themed Lackington's #20! Apparently I kinda went out of order when I read the first "half" so my apologies there. It actually rather worked out, thematically, though, as this "half" of the issue really holds together thematically, involving kinds of hauntings, kinds of festering historical wounds that need to be addressed and healed. Often those wounds are brought about by abuse, maintained through silence and contempt, and made worse by time and the constant pressure and pain those wounds cause. But in standard Lackington's fashion, these situations are rendered in lyrical, vivid prose and a sense of surreal beauty that make it all a joy to explore. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine #61

Art by Satu Kettunen

November’s Fireside Magazine focuses on relationships. Mostly romantic, where people are learning to navigate this shared space with their partners. Where each of them bring to the mix something wonderful and alive and warm, but also some damage. Something that makes it tricky sometimes to know what to do or say. The stories follow the ways that these people can hurt each other, and how they can set each other free. They are at turns beautiful and tragic and excellent, and I should get to reviewing them!

Quick Sips - Strange Horizons 09/05/2016 & 09/12/2016

With two stories and four poems*, Strange Horizons has kicked off their annual fund drive with these two weeks of content. There's announcements galore and, oh right, some SFF to read and enjoy. The fiction offerings are decidedly different, from a longer piece deconstructing the idea of art and death and sentience to a cute little story that looks at loss and fantastical cooking. There's certainly a lot to digest between the stories and the fiction, though, and a great many reasons that giving to Strange Horizons is a great idea! So yeah, time to review!  (*well it was two and then bonus content happened so now it's four, hurrah!)

Art by K. C. Garza

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 - Strange Horizons 06/27/2016, 07/04/2016, & 07/11/2016

It's probably no real surprise that in the pieces for the first half of Strange Horizon's Our Queer Planet there is a sense of longing. A hunger. To see and be seen, to comfort and be comforted. To reach out and act on desires that are dangerous, to fly in the face of convention and doubt. These stories and poems and works of nonfiction are affirming and powerful. Beautiful and refined and raw and bleeding and staunched and just so good. These are stories that I as a reader am hungry for, poems that I want to see more of, nonfiction that helps me both think about my reading and writing and also about my queerness. There's so much good here and I'm going to get to those reviews! 

Art by Alex Araiza