Quick Sips - Lightspeed #102

Art by Galen Dara

It’s an issue of return in this November issue of Lightspeed Magazine. Two short stories and two novelettes make the issue a bit heavy, and for me a big theme running through the pieces is the idea of cycles and returns. Returns to childhood dreams, to classic books, and to familiar settings. There’s a look at childhood and how children are often confronted by some very upsetting things that they can’t quite handle, that they certainly shouldn’t have to deal with. And it’s a rather dark issue, centering death and abuse and trauma and a shift of the familiar for the strange, for the new and dangerous. Even so, there’s a beauty and a light that shines through a lot of these stories, where children can find their way through the darkness to someplace safer and free. Where even if there is loss, that loss can be honored, and remembered. And yeah, let’s just get to the reviews!

Quick Sips - Nightmare #65

February brings a pair of stories to Nightmare Magazine that deal with violence and with magic and with women. With adaptation in the face of oppression and the threat of violence. It’s a very nicely paired issue that sees characters who change in the face of the difficult environment where misogyny is a force stalking them, hoping to devour them. In both stories, though, women find ways to take a power to themselves, to embrace perhaps a different way of being, a different way of organizing and valuing the world. In both, the pressure begins to become whether or not these women will betray each other, if men can convince them to embrace a system that has only marginalized and destroyed them. They’re not the easiest of reads, poised as they are between erasure and freedom, but I love the resonance of the issue and let’s get to those reviews!

Art by Kevron2001 / Fotolia

Quick Sips - Beneath Ceaseless Skies #229

It’s something of a treat from Beneath Ceaseless Skies this issue as there are two longer stories to sink your teeth into. And okay, one of those is a novella which is only half-released (though the entire piece can be listened to via podcast), but people, it is so good. So so so good. And both stories explore themes of difference and violence, systems of violence and learning and possibilities of freedom and escape. These are works that feature young people starting to come into their powers and finding that they have a lot to learn. But these are also characters who have been hurt and who are not quick to trust for very good reasons. Both have found or find that the world they live in is often unfair and brutal, and that provokes something equally intense in themselves. The stories are deep and expressive and offer up fantastic worlds to explore, though many carry within them dark shadows. But before I give too much away, let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Jeff Brown