Quick Sips - Tor dot com October 2020

Art by Jon Foster

While Tor already had a large release in October in collaboration with Fiyah Magazine for Breathe Fiyah, there’s still the matter of Tor’s regular releases to get to, which include one short story and two novelettes. These stories definitely lean on the spooky side, I think, and seem rather appropriate for the season. There’s a ghost story, a nested narrative about erasure, reclamation, and the nature of storytelling. And there’s a heartwarming story about witches. All in all, it’s a powerful collection of mostly fantasy, and fantasy with some grim ornamentation. So let’s dive right into the reviews!

Quick Sips - Nightmare #74

Art by Christina M. / Fotolia

Nightmare Magazine throws a bit of a curveball this month with not a pair of stories but a single longer work. And wow, it’s a creepy one, unfolding like a boulder rolling downhill, set to crush all unwary enough to be caught in its path. The story combines cosmic-level horror with much more visceral and grotesque beauty and brutality. It’s a story that looks at possession, and in some ways at addiction, that circles an abyss like water circling a drain, moving incrementally closer and closer until the inevitable plunge. So let’s get to the review!

Quick Sips - Mithila Review #1

I'm pleased to look at the debut issue of the Mithila Review today, which is a home for fiction and poetry from the margins, from the borderlands of imagination, experience, and justice. The issue is a mix of original stories and poetry with reprints of both as well, and as such I have to make a decision about what I'm going to be looking at (my normal policy is to not look at reprints because of time restraints). But as I seem to have a moment and this is the debut issue I'm going to be looking at the reprint fiction and poetry (except the one I already reviewed last year) as well. And, after all, it's all quite good, moving and deep and dense, about resistance and place and violence and resolve. It's all worth checking out, and so that's what I'm going to do. So hold on tight, it's time for some reviews!

Art by Steve McDonald

Quick Sips - Tor.com April 2015

Sometimes I wish that the stories at Tor.com would be shorter. Because even intrepid readers might have a little difficulty fitting in some of these stories in the otherwise packed month. None of these stories are quick, none of them light. But they are all rewarding, all interesting and deep and worth wading into. Or diving into headfirst. Most of them have a longing quality about them, circle around a lack that might or might not be filled by the end. The most successful of the stories seem to leave the question open, leave it to the reader to fill in, but all the stories are interesting and compelling. Another excellent month from one of the few non-print/free publications that will put out novellas. So let's get to it!