Quick Sips 12/31/2021

The slowdown continues, though at this point it’s much more about the holidays than about my other deadline, which has now passed. There’s good news associated with it, too, but I’m waiting on word on when I can actually share it. Until then, more reviews! I’m doing my best to hang in there and not fall too far behind, but there’s a bit of a mountain of works to get through this month and this is already the last post that will land in 2021. Still, I did get through Nightmare, The Dark, and GigaNotoSaurus for monthly content, and the quarterly Future Science Fiction Digest, as well as some weekly/biweekly issues from Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Strange Horizons. Lots more to do yet, but I think I can I think I can I think I can.

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 11/19/2021

So it’s another busy week of reviews, if not quite so full as the week before. But I’m done with October for the most part so it’s all November issues I’m looking at today. I start with Lightspeed and things get grim as I look at Nightmare, The Dark, and Apex one after the other. Things get a little brighter (though there’s perhaps a death theme moving through the field this month) with Uncanny and Fireside Magazine. There are all issues that send my review copies, which I super appreciate, and which means I can get to them a little earlier. Next week I’ll try to hit the latest Clarkesworld as well as catch up on Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, the Escape Artists, and more. Stay tuned!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - 10/22/2021

So when you all read this, I’ll technically be on vacation. Technically, because let’s face it, I suck at taking vacations, so you’re still reading this. But that aside, I’ve been very much pushing myself to get “ahead” far enough in my reading to take a week off from most reviewing activities. Most, because again, I suck. But I do plan on relaxing, spending time with my husband, and trying to maybe have fun. We’ll see how it goes, seeing as how covid hasn’t really…stopped. But I’ve packed in another full week of reviews. Perhaps not so many as last week, but I’m still covering the monthly Clarkesworld, Fireside, GigaNotoSaurus, and The Dark content, as well as quarterly Baffling, irregular Constelación, biweekly Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and two weeks of Strange Horizons. Be impressed! It’s a lot to get to, so buckle up for some serious short SFF coverage!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 09/17/2021

I swear I will catch up someday! Okay that’s probably not true, but at the very least I will make it through this year hopefully only a bit behind schedule. So I’m at least fully into September work this week, looking mostly at some monthly issues plus I managed to squeeze in the first Strange Horizons of the month. In full issues, I look at Lightspeed and Nightmare, which completes the triumvirate I started with Fantasy two weeks ago. I also look at Flash Fiction Online, The Dark, and the latest Uncanny Magazine, which features the single novella that was promised as part of last year’s funding campaign. So yeah, lots to get to!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 08/20/2021

So August reading is officially well underway, and I sort of jump around a bit to start things off, in part because a lot of different places have already had a few releases. So I hit Flash Fiction Online and The Dark, as usual, and then grab two issues of Strange Horizons (looks like there will probably be a special issue dropping at the end of this month there) as well as individual issues of Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Pseudopod. Then it’s checking out the new Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Clarkesworld. I had kinda wanted to get the latest Beneath Ceaseless Skies, too, but alas, it was not in the cards. As it is there’s still lots to get to, including a few novelettes and a novella, though only a few poems. Still, it’s a full week!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 07/16/2021

So no new publications this week. I swear I’m trying to reign myself in. We’ll see how well it goes. There’s still a lot to get to, and Flash Fiction Online is back on original fiction after taking June to focus on reprints. Uncanny and Apex both have their bimonthly issues, and Fiyah their quarterly (and themed this time!) issue. Which leaves The Dark as the other monthly publication I’m covering. I’m taking a quick break from weekly publications and will likely double up my Strange Horizons coverage next week and catch up on what I might have missed from the Escape Artists podcasts. We’ll see, though. Still a punch of issues to check out, including July’s Baffling Magazine, The Future Fire, and Kaleidotrope, and regular content from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Diabolical Plots, Mermaids Monthly, the Deadlands, and more. Also kinda expecting Translunar Travelers Lounge to drop a new issue. And catching up on Decoded Pride and ahhhhhhhh. Whoops, gotta bottle that back up. Anyway, I am determined! Next week will probably be a big one if life can stop getting in the way!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 06/18/2021

And like always, there’s a lot to get to this week. Most of it is regular monthly/weekly stuff, though there’s a new issue of Hexagon as well as a new Driesch story that I had missed from earlier. The week is almost entirely short stories, too, which isn’t incredibly odd but two poems (and only 2 novelettes) means that short stories are far and away the majority of what I’m covering. Taken over the year so far things are a little more balanced, with 554 short stories, 49 novelettes, 8 novellas, and 174 poems. I have a few more novellas to read (mostly from Neon Hemlock) coming up, but otherwise I think the mix is about right. Honestly I think it would be difficult to really increase novelettes and novellas without taking on more of the digests, and at this point I’m not in a place to do that. I don’t have flash fiction marked out, either, though I’m sure that’s pretty well represented as well, given trends. Indeed!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 05/14/2021

Welcome to May proper, at least here at QSR. Yes, the month is about half over, but with all that came out in April I might be a little behind. Eep! Anyway, Not too much incredibly new about today’s post, as I’m covering venues that I’ve covered previously, and most of the ones I take care of first every month. Most of these are monthly, though Apex is bimonthly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies is biweekly, and Strange Horizons is weekly. There’s a lot to get to, though, including a lot of short stories, a few poems, and a decent amount of novelettes. The works skew rather grim for a lot of these, too, though I feel that Apex in a bit of a twist has a few really hopeful stories that were fun. Anyway, onward!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 04/09/2021

March is dead. Long live April! Or something like that. This week I am hoping to close out my March reads, at least (unless I have completely missed something, which happens). There was a bit of activity late in the month what with the release of a special issue from Strange Horizons, but mostly now I’m moving into stuff from April. Now that we’re entering into the second quarter of the year, it means that all the quarterly publications I’ve been following (many of them new to my coverage this year) will be putting out new issues. Luckily they seem spread out enough that I shouldn’t be too buried, but we’ll see how this goes. Yay. Anyway, I expect to stay busy, and I’m glad that I got to cover Baffling, because it’s fairly large and always amazing, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the month is going to bring!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 03/12/2021

Well the year isn’t really slowing down. Eff. But that’s mostly okay! I’m staying busy, at least. This week I’m moving through a bunch of publications, catching up on some that I’ve not exactly missed but needed to get yet from February. As a peek into my process, most of these are from places where I receive review copies, which helps me get to them promptly (F&SF and Apex, which I covered last week, are also in that boat). The rest are irregular/weekly releases that I try not to fall too far behind on. I try. Again, eff. I still have one or two review copies to get to, afterwards I’ll move to regular releases like Clarkesworld that are out in their entirety for free early in the month. Irregulars and issues that release a little at a time by necessity get moved back further in the month. So yeah!

NOTE: This will be a recurring note that will run with every Quick Sips. First, please note that I don’t necessarily mention every story or poem out in an issue. I am giving myself permission to either DNF stories, or else finish and just not comment on them. Please don’t assume it’s because I disliked the work! There are many reasons I might chose not to comment on a piece, and I reserve the right to do just that. Second, you might notice the notations at the end of the micro reviews and wonder what the [c# t#] is. These are for the Scales of Relative Grimness and a full explanation of them can be found through the tab at the top of the page or through this link. With that said, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips 02/05/2021

The year just keeps right on rolling! Up today is a told at eight different publications. Some are very short (just one poem in the latest Strange Horizons and just one story that I review from the latest Fireside Magazine) and some are a bit longer. Some are from January, some are from February, and the anthology is actually from last year (but ICYMI it’s very very good!). In general, I can say that I’m reading a lot more this year, and that the “a lot more” is coming generally in the form of short stories rather than novelettes and novellas. I’m going to have to figure out ways to try and mitigate that, but it’s an issue in that there are just way more short stories put out in a year than otherwise. Still, I’m really liking that I’m able to get to more things.

As a scheduling note, and along the note from above, these posts will cover recent stuff, but not always from the month noted in the title of the posts. Just because there’s a mix of stuff and I get some things early and some I have to wait for like the last day of the month to cover, so apologies if this is all something of a mess. But I’m trying! Anyway, to the reviews!

Quick Sips 01/22/2021

Hi and welcome back! Today I’m doing a quick look at 7 recent publications/issues, including the latest Kaleidotrope, which is relatively new-to-me (I did review an issue in late 2015 but didn't add the publication to my regular schedule). Part of my decision to shorten my reviews, after all, has been so that I could widen what I read and cover. So far, the balance is actually working out quite well, I’d say. We’ll see if I get myself into trouble adding too much (more on that at the end of this post), but I am very happy to be able to look at publications outside of the list of those I fully reviewed (it was always a time limitation that prevented me from adding more).

Now, I’m hopeful that these very short reviews are still helpful. It’s very hard to give an idea of what a story is about in such a small space, which is part of why I stayed away from this kind of format. Trying to balance giving readers tools necessary to guide their reading with trying not to immediately default back to my lengthy reviews is rough for me, especially after having spent so long doing longer reviews. I’m managing at the moment, and apologies if the reviews are less useful in guiding reading or provoking further thought. I’m not going back to what I did, but apologies all the same.

Anyway, maybe some people like these even more than what I was doing! To you, you’re welcome! Also, you’re in luck, because here’s another round of quick sips!

Quick Sips - The Dark #67

Art by grandfailure

December brings more to a close than just the year at The Dark Magazine. It also represents the final issue with the editorial input of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who has been co-editor for a few years now. I’m trying hard not to think of it as a loss, as her participation on editorial has in my opinion led to a stellar few years, where the magazine has been competitive in terms of quality with any publication out there (at least going by the number of stories that have landed on my recommended reading lists). And while this doesn’t necessarily mean that without her there the quality is going to slip, what I do know is that I’ve greatly appreciated what she’s managed to do there, the stories that authors have trusted her with to bring out into the world. Especially with a venue like this one, where the stories are so often grim and difficult, I find that trust is often an important thing, and I can only hope that the level of trust authors have in the publication to handle their stories compassionately and professionally will not falter. At the very least, I would like to thank Silvia Moreno-Garcia for her work and for the amazing range of stories she’s help put out, and to wish her all luck in future endeavors. It’s another bittersweet moment as well, as this will be my final complete review of an issue from the publication (though I will definitely still be reading). Luckily, it’s an extra-big issue in terms of content, with four originals, most of them spinning out from and taking place in Nigeria. So let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #66

Art by chainat

November brings two stories of homes and roommates to The Dark Magazine. Not roommates you’d want, though. Mold and insects. Depression and anxiety. The pieces find characters who are dealing with trauma, with burn out, with the pressure to somehow just get over it, just be better. And not being able to. And finding that there is no help and no way to stop or even slow their accelerating descent into a dark place. It’s a visceral and difficult issue, but one with some absolutely stunning stories, and before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #65

Art by chainat

October brings a special treat to The Dark Magazine--an extra original story! And all three of the works in this issue are wonderful, are full of characters pushing back against the oppressive worlds they find themselves in. Not always able to do much. Sometimes able lto escape. Sometimes able to create change. Rarely able to avoid loss, though. Never able to avoid grief. The works offer complex views of delicate situations, and people hoping to get by or else willing to bring it all down around their head. But before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #64

Art by Vincent Chong

The latest issue of The Dark Magazine focuses on monsters, on beings who might be gods, beings who are making some unfair bargains and fully expect to get away with it. And, well, they’re not necessarily wrong to think that, as the stories are also visceral and intensely grim. They offer no real relief from the crush of injustice and the descent of time. But then, the publication isn’t called The Happy. So it’s a rather appropriate issue, if also a rather devastating one. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #63

Art by John

The original stories of August’s The Dark Magazine provide two very different looks at guilt, remorse, and penance. In the first, a young woman deals with her isolation and her shattering exit from that isolation. Deals with her own actions and tries to make right something that can’t really be. Similarly, the second story also finds a person trying to make something right that really can’t be. A loss that can’t be reclaimed. A wound that leaves a deep scar. In both, the characters must navigate their own roles in death, and try to find ways forward despite a world that is dangerous and full of violence and wonder. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #62

Art by Vincent Chong

It’s a rather strange issue of The Dark Magazine this month, with two new original stories that are all about isolation. That find characters who can’t seem to be seen by the people they want to connect with. For the first, it’s not being able to get people to see her pain, her truth that is killing her because of the things that are happening to her. In the second, it’s not being able to be seen at all, being alone through a history that slowly turns but remains mostly locked in the same old cycles of loss and violence and grief. In both, the characters want to break through their isolation, but there are patterns of force and abuse and violence that keep them separate, alone. And before I give too much away, I’ll get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #61

Art by grandfailure

The June The Dark Magazine brings a pair of stories that revolve around objects that come to carry a certain kind of power. That link our world with...something else. The first involves a bowling ball--and while that might seem like a setup for a joke, I assure you it’s not a funny story. The second centers a zoetrope, an old kind of moving picture device, and one that seems to be reaching across the mortal plane. Both stories feature people who feel helpless in the face of a hungry violence they witness. Both feature people who have to decide what to do, and how much they can do to escape, or fight back. To the reviews!

Quick Sips - The Dark #60

Art by denissimonov

The two original stories in the May The Dark Magazine have some pretty heavy content warnings to them (perhaps to be expected given the publication). They both also find women dealing with abusive relationships and having to navigate their own shame and feelings of culpability for their pain and harassment, their oppression and fear. The situations they find themselves in are wrenching, dangerous, and dehumanizing, and the women are left having to make some impossible decisions. Accept the course that the men around them have laid out, even when it contains their own annihilation...or stand against them, and take whatever power is possible to smash the walls threatening to box them in. It’s not an easy month of stories, but it’s some moving and powerful horror. To the reviews!