Quick Sips - Apex #104

Apex Magazine kicks off the new year with a continuing tradition—treating readers to an extra big issue as thanks for the success of last year’s subscription drive. Which means six original stories (including a fantastic translation) and the return of poetry (for this issue only)! The prose runs the gamut of what Apex puts out, giving people an excellent sampler platter of dark SFF that leans a bit sci fi but still has an eye for the strange and magical. The stories range from hopeful to abyssally bleak, but even when the stories lack hope, they tend to reveal something compelling and devastating. Gladly most of the works _are_ hopeful, pulling progress and healing from the jaws of predation. There’s a whole lot to experience in this issue, from monsters in the Wild West to twins in the farthest reaches of space. So without further delay, to the reviews!

Art by Daniele Serra

Quick Sips - Nightmare #59

August brings a pair of rather short short stories to Nightmare Magazine. In both, characters find a bit of magic lurking at the edges of the mundane. The two stories differ sharply, though, in how the main characters approach that magic. In the first, the magic is familiar, grown out of the land where the character is from, as much a part of him as not. In the second story, though, the magic springs forth from something quite foreign, for something dark and alluring that turns out to be incredibly dangerous. These are both stories about a loss, about a disappearance, but they take very different paths to that final moment when someone realizes they’ve been left behind. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Chorazin / Adobe Stock Art

Quick Sips - Apex #79

It's December and this year it means the results from the Apex Magazine Christmas Invasion microfiction contest. As well as, you know, an issue of fiction that is incredibly dark and rather disturbing. The stories are mostly dealing with the line between the perceived and the real, the line between how people are interpreted and how they interpret themselves. It makes for a very strong issue, one that is quite difficult to read at times. Trigger warnings abound in this issue, so that should tell you something. For me it means that these are stories that might require more than one sitting to take in. But they are very good. Now to the reviews!

Art by Irek Konior

Quick Sips - Farrago's Wainscot #16

Ahh! Apparently I completely forgot about Farrago's Wainscot, which came out in October (curse you OCTOBER!!!). Instead of skipping it, though, I'm just going to treat it like a December release. After all, it has a rather trippy Christmas story, and all the stories deal with the ways in which fiction can effect the real world, the ways in which art make reality. And, of course, there is more weird than you can shake a stick at. What fun! To the reviews (and sorry I missed this in October)!