Questing in Shorts, January 2022: Saturation Part 1

This month, I attempted to read all of the short fiction.

Well, no, not all of it all of it, but I decided to get as close as I could to reading all the back issues of the stuff I was subscribed to in 2021. As I didn't read much short fiction at all in the first six months of the year, and I don't tend to get through everything I'm subscribed to, this ended up being 205 stories across 42 issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Augur, Strange Horizons, Apex, Giganotosaurus, Uncanny, Constelacion, Fantasy, Mermaids Monthly, The Future Fire, Fireside, FIYAH, and Anathema Magazine, and a bit of cheeky anthology reading on top.

As with any arbitrarily reading challenge, the first thing I have learned from this intense period of taking in new material is: reading is supposed to be fun, and anything that detracts from that fun by overloading you, causing anxiety or otherwise pulling you away from other priorities is actually not a very good idea. There are no medals for quantity of short stories read, and I can't even say I now feel "well read": what I choose to read is such a tiny proportion of the genre as a whole, and I know I'm missing gems from places like Escape Pod and Podcastle, stuff I've taken "out of rotation" like The Dark and Clarkesworld, all the print magazines I don't have time for, and a whole heap of venues I'm not familiar with at all. I physically can't do much more reading than I do right now, and so it is up to me to accept those gaps, just like I accept that there's plenty of novels that are, by all accounts, amazing, but which I never get to read, because time sucks.

The second thing I have learned is that I'm pretty happy with my "pull" list. I'm sad that Mermaids Monthly is not continuing, so that won't be on my 2022 list, but otherwise I feel like I'm getting a great balance of the stories that I like, told by new-to-me and favourite authors whose work I like being exposed to. I think I have a gap for a science fiction publication focused on big ideas by diverse authors (if you have recommendations, go hit me up on Twitter - Clarkesworld is an option but I want to explore alternatives first). More generally, I'm happy with my reading model of "subscribe to a few things and read most of what they put out", and I rarely find myself reading a story that I just don't like. Sure, I know there's a lot more out there that I'm missing, but... see point 1.

The third thing I have learned is that, WOW, there is a lot of great writing out there. Kind of... too many to write in a single column. So, this is going to be a two-parter! I'm going to cover stories from Apex, Augur and Strange Horizons here, and follow up next week with some of highlights from the Unfettered Hexes anthology, top stories from the rest of the publications I read, and probably a bit more navel gazing too.

Let's go:

Apex Magazine, Issues 123 and 126

Apex Magazine wins this month's prize for making me cry too much, thanks to some powerful stories in Issue 123 and 126. Issue 123 has "Throw Rug", by Aurelius Raines II, which throws out one of the most powerful final lines I've ever come across: fitting, for a story about a scrawny Black boy taking up wrestling and learning to become a champion, despite the obstacles - including racism - thrown in his path. There's a riff on Samson and Delilah, a ton of exploration of race, masculinity, success and perseverence and a really interesting documentary framing that gives different characters - including the young wrestler himself - space to offer perspectives. The issue also contains "Mishpokhe and Ash" by Sydney Rossman-Reich, the story of a Hungarian Jewish family and the golem their daughter creates, trying to survive the influence of Nazi Germany over their country and create rules for survival in a world that is seeking only their destruction. And "This is the Moment, or One of Them" by Mari Ness really captures that "vaguely dystopian technology but make it wistful" vibe that Apex does so well, featuring someone using a time altering device to try and change past events around a former lover, working out which moment needs to change to keep them safe.

The Indigenous Futurism issue spans from luxury space station resorts with substandard working conditions, to Coyote shenanigans during a St Patrick's Day celebration, but the story that smacked me in the face most effectively was "Marked by Bears" by Jessie Loyer, a story about reparations by humans towards different intelligent animal groups after human society collapses. Somehow, Loyer balances the "red in tooth and claw" aspects of this new accord with some very human meditations on justice and balance. On the one hand, the actions that take place in the story feel monstrous, but on another... it works? Certainly one to read the content warnings for: but if you can handle it, it's thought provoking stuff.

A bonus mention here for "O2 Arena" by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, originally published in Galaxy's Edge and reprinted in Apex 129. Ekpeki's story (the 2 in "O2" should be subscript, and no, for Londoners, it's not about the Millennium Dome) provides a scathing dystopian future where the speculative elements only serve to underscore existing inequality. It's firmly grounded in Lagos, in a world where climate change has killed off phytoplankton and made the oxygen in the air unbreathable, forcing humanity to rely on filters and gas cylinders or, for the rich, comfortable climate-controlled sealed environments. Its protagonist is a student just about making things work on the edge of wealthy society, but his best friend's illness forces him to seek less savoury methods to put together the oxygen credits that will allow her to survive. While the first person narration occasionally becomes a little too perfect (I struggle on principle when male characters are able to see through patriarchy when their female friends can't, even though I know it does happen), on the whole it's a really powerful look at just how extractive capitalist society can become.

Augur Magazine, Year 4

I like that I can sit down and appreciate Augur's entire 2021 output in one dedicated afternoon. I would like this even more if they offered more reading options than just PDF: yes, this enables some interesting typesetting for a few of the stories ("In the Shadow of the Field" by Anastasia McCray uses it to great effect in issue 4.1), but I struggle to read on a computer screen and it would be nice to at least have the option to read more flexibly on an e-reader, you know?

But we're here to read stories, not whinge about file formats. Augur does a great range of diverse fiction with an emphasis on Canadian authors, and a lot of stories really capitalise on their sense of place, whether that's Canada or further afield. "African Meeting House" by Kate Foster (Issue 4.1) features two Black sisters who move back to their small town, and put the ghosts of their antecedents to rest in the house where they grew up, and the latter is a diaspora story in which a girl buying stuff from a convenience store gets told the story of a mango which turns out to be more relevant to her than she expects. In "The House at the End of the World" by Ashley Deng (Issue 4.1), protagonist Yi and her family have what they need to survive provided to them by their magical house, even as the world falls apart and starves around them: when she disobeys a directive to never go into the attic, Yi figures out the secret behind the house's generosity and her family's code when it comes to maintaining it (it's grim, but not gratuitously so, and I appreciate that.) I also really enjoyed the weird world and the meaty takes on power from L. Chan's "It Takes a Village" (Issue 4.2): in a world where the rich can create sentient dolls, a travelling magistrate with a reputation for dealing with doll-related cases is sent to the village where unwanted ones live to deal with a strange murder case.

Finally, let's talk about "Purgatory is High, Low and Inside me" by Emily Carrasco-Acosta (Issue 4.1), about Mariana, a young woman with diabetes who has to deal with being able to see ghosts when her blood sugar is too low or too high. It's a meditative story, one which delves into the feelings of its protagonist around her life and how precarious being chronically ill can feel, especially when that illness comes with such a weird direct link to death. We follow Mariana as she deals with her gift, and the relationship she builds with another woman, and when that turns out to be impermanent we feel the ache of that loss even as it changes Mariana's perspective on life into something, tentatively, for the better. Really good stuff.

Strange Horizons, May - December 2021

Art for All Us Ghosts: Johnny Anger

While I moan about having to read Augur in PDF, I must also lament not having had an ebook edition of Strange Horizons to read since last May, but this minor inconvenience was no match for my will to read good stories and I have therefore read some more things on my computer. Please send my medal soon, OK? (Also, because I read these in one big glut and did not take good notes of dates, the initial version of this post is not going to include dates - if you're not reading this sentence, it's because I've gone back and edited them in later.)

Anyway, it was fine, because it's Strange Horizons and Strange Horizons does some of the best stuff out there. Of particular note was their sexy interactive fiction special, Strange Lusts, featuring two hypertext games by Natalia Theodoridou and Anna Anthropy. "Pockets", a game about post apocalyptic survival centring a queer couple, is excellent, but "Heat from Fire" by Anna Anthropy is something else: a super steamy choose-your-own-tentacle adventure (I think the tentacles are optional but I did not feel the need to explore the no tentacle branch) featuring a trans witch alienated by her TERF-y coven and seeing comfort by summoning (and sexting) a very hot lady-shaped version of Asmodeus. It's sexy and it's also a really fantastic story about belonging and what gets treated as transgressive. Like all hypertext fictions, playing through more than once is encouraged.

Moving on from the sexy stuff, Kola Heyward Rotimi's "An Exploration of Nichole Otieno's Early Filmography" blew me away with its travelogue-as-academic-text framing and its take on colonialism and academia and how one studies something that resists the idea of permanence. I'm really into travelogue stories at the moment and this is really, really good. Also amazing? "The Constellations are Unrecognisable Here" by Andrew Joseph White, set on a medical spaceship that picks up survivors in decimated colonies in the aftermath of a galactic war. Amavon is a trans boy, trying to deal with the aftermath of terrible injuries and trauma as well as trying to convince his caseworker to approve top surgery; while travelling, he builds a relationship with Jenea, another trans survivor and burn victim, and the two end up affecting each other in an intense and not entirely healthy way. White's story tackles really difficult stuff in a light touch, generous way, and I found myself really rooting for both kids even as Amavon, in particular, makes some painful decisions. And there's some great anti-capitalist stories: "Thread Count", by Cynthia Gomez, is about a mysterious spate of deaths among the Fortune 500 rich list, in ways which turn out to be powerfully tied to the exploitation that made their fortunes. And then there's "All Us Ghosts" by B. Plade, whose protagonist Jules is a gig worker for a company that allows parents to invent and control all of their young adult children's social connections through virtual university. Jules divides his time between being every adult friend and girlfriend that rich kid Cam has ever had, dealing with his actual IRL crush on Cam, and campaigning for greater rights for the workers who have to take on this kind of labour; when the streams cross and Cam becomes involved in activism against the company, the gulf between the exploitation Cam perceives and the exploitation Jules has lived through throws the entire clusterfuck of a system into relief.

Also, I can't talk about Strange Horizons without talking about the highlights of its sister publication Samovar: the undisputed highlight of the two issues I read was "Ensign", by Soyeon Jeong, with its take on spacefaring indenture. The colonists of the planet where the story is set are bound to a deal made by their grandparents' generation, which says that they can choose whether to stay on the world, even as its infrastructure starts to crumble and life begins to get harder, or they can sign up to be relocated when the company that settled the planet needs them elsewhere: whether that be in the next week or in 40 years' time. Hajeong and Yuna are partners, but when it comes time for each of them to set their decision in stone by their 30th birthday, the gap between what each of them wants becomes an enormous strain on their family, and Hajeong, as the one who wants to stay behind, tries to live with her partner's inexplicable choice and the uncertainty it brings to their life together.

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Questing in Shorts: December 2020

I'm back - on a scheduled Thursday no less - with the last Questing in Shorts of the year, and possibly the last column in this format, at least for a while. It's been 2 years since I started my quest to explore short fiction reading and reviewing more seriously, and while I absolutely love the new fiction and perspectives it's brought my way and have no intention of slowing down, the last few months have shown me that this particular monthly roundup format doesn't really play to my strengths, and too often (for example, at the time of writing) leads to last minute sprints to pin down reactions that never feel like they're as fresh as they should be. I'm going to take a bit of time to figure out how I can work my reviewing around my reading more organically, and what that means for a potential schedule. For now, though, let's round up what short fiction I've been reading in the last month:

Sunspot Jungle Volume 1 (Rosarium Publishing, 2018)

The first of Rosarium Publishing's two volume "mix tape" of science fiction and fantasy from around the world, is a 500 page chonker filled with fifty one stories, curated to an extremely impressive standard. If you've been paying attention to the current SFF scene, you're bound to find some of your favourites in here: the first story is "Walking Awake", a chilling alien colonisation story from N.K. Jemisin (one of the few stories in the collection I'd read before); the last is "The Day It All Ended" by Charlie Jane Anders; and the likes of Sarah Pinsker, Mame Bougouma Diene, Amal El-Mohtar, Malka Older, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and R.B. Lemberg are also in here among lots of others, including plenty of names that were new to me. It all comes together, as per the introduction, to form a celebration of the potential of genre right now, and particularly the multitude of voices accessible to English speaking readers. If you only have one short fiction anthology on your shelves, Sunspot Jungle would be an outstanding choice for that spot.

Reviewing 50 short stories in 300 words is not a task I care to take on, and the quality here is so high that it's hard to even highlight favourites (OK, if you must know it's "A Good Home" by Karin Lowachee, a quiet, moving story of personhood and rehabilitation between an engineered soldier and a disabled veteran). As you'd expect from an anthology which sets out to be as inclusive within the genre as possible, there's quite a range of literary weird and slipstream fiction alongside the spaceships and robots and glimpses of secondary worlds, and there are plenty of stories that feel like they end abruptly, before the narrative has had a chance to close. This is not my favourite form of short story telling but when the stories are good, I can hardly complain. It adds up to a book that is best savoured: left on a bedside table or read, a couple of stories at a time, on a train commute (remember those?) - a trusted source of quality fiction for as long as you need it.

Consolation Songs ed. Iona Datt Sharma (2020)

This anthology contains a dozen stories about hope in times of crisis, and its subtitle is explicit about its purpose: this is "optimistic speculative fiction for a time of pandemic", and the stories here absolutely deliver on that promise (plus, all proceeds are being donated to the UCLH charity, supporting COVID-19 work by the University College London Hospitals NHS trust). Some are more overtly optimistic than others: Aliette de Bodard's "A Hundred and Seventy Storms" is a Xuya universe tale about a mindship set to work in harsh conditions on a backwater planet, trying to survive the latest storm that threatens to tear her apart with the help of her Cousin Lua.  The Snow Like a Dancer has little to look forward to beyond further decay and desperate survival, but de Bodard's story makes that feel, for a moment, like it just might be enough in the circumstances. Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Low Energy Economy" also takes a person in an almost impossible situation - Tobler, one of a generation of miners sent out into space in individual capsules that, decades later, are slowly failing around them as they keep up their lonely work - and only at the very end twists it into something that makes that survival worthwhile. These are not stories that justify the decisions that caused their protagonists to be in their awful circumstances to start with, but which offer weight to the resolve to simply keep on going: to fix the red alert lights we can fix, file a maintenance request for the rest, and move forward with whatever we have.

Most of the other stories are more lighthearted than this, running from lighthearted whimsy (like Stephanie Burgis' "Love, Your Flatmate", about a human and a fae stuck together during lockdown who eventually start to learn they might have things in common beyond a predisposition for passive aggressive note passing) to gentle wistfulness. Characters make quiet decisions, like whether to move into assisted living on Mars in "Seaview on Mars" by Katie Rathfelder, or to pursue a new queer romantic relationship at 50 while also caring for sufferers of a mystery coma-inducing disease in the middle of a major climate shift and the appearance of mysterious travellers from another world (as you do) in "St Anselm-by-the-Riverside" by Iona Datt Sharma. The star of the show, however, is "This Is New Gehesran Calling": by Rebecca Fraimow the ever shifting tale of a pirate radio show, put on by refugees from an invaded planet, and the fellow citizens who discover it and try to build their schedules around these snatches of entertainment from their former home. The snatches of worldbuilding from multiple angles and the way it builds up little pieces of the lives of its refugees and the struggles they face make for a perfect, deeply human tale, and its eventual ending caught me, as they say, right in the feels.

Reconstruction by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Small Beer Press, 2020)

I'm very uncertain why Reconstruction has been on all my lists as a 2021 release when, in fact, it seems to have come out last month, but here we are! Alaya Dawn Johnson's debut collection spans work from the breadth of her career, from 2005 to this year, and there's some impressive gems within it. "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i", a 2015 Nebula Award winner, is definitely one of them (and it's a story which feels familiar, though I'm fairly certain I've not read it before): the story of Key, a human worker at a feeding centre for vampires, after vampires have taken over and herded the remaining humans into their camps. Key is nearing the end of her usefulness as a worker and is desperate to find escape, but when she's reassigned to a high-grade facility to look after a group of teenagers whose relative privilege doesn't make up for their situation, she is forced to examine her own decisions about collaboration and the option to potentially become a vampire herself, while trying however imperfectly to make life bearable for her young, grieving charges. Its a great novelette with a gut-punch of an ending, and it's a great way to start off the collection.

Through whatever accident of curation, my other two favourite stories also happened to be right at the start of this collection: "They Shall Salt the Earth With Seeds of Grass" is about survival in a future Chesapeake where humans survive alongside strange, alien "glassmen", present in their lives through robot drones that are prone to dropping bombs and abducting people for strange and nebulous reasons. When Tris becomes pregnant, she and her sister make a desperate journey to find somewhere that can offer a safe (though illegal) abortion, kicking off an entertaining, action packed tale that packs in a lot of worldbuilding and a very satisfying strand of resilience in adversity. Then there's "Their Changing Bodies", a bizarre but wonderful YA-esque summer camp story where a trio of girls find themselves on the menu for a group of sleazy boy vampires. The fourteen-year-old sexual awkwardness jumps off the page in this one and it won't be for everyone (especially as, incompetent as they are, the boys' intentions are fundamentally about sexual assault) but if you're up for exploring some of the kind of gross body stuff that only early teenhood can provide, the take on vampirism here - very different to the first story! - is absolutely perfect. All in all, although it fell off for me a little towards the end, this is a really solid collection from a great author.

Augur Magazine Issue 3.2

A themed issue of Augur this time, based around "A Multiplicity of Futures": science fiction stories which explicitly focus on the paths our world might take. This being Augur, a lot of those directions are strange and sad, as in "The Truth at the Bottom of the Ocean". Maria Dong's story blends the experiences of a seafaring community displaced onto the open ocean by climate change with the love of a mother for a son who has grown up with that displacement and found ways to survive that alienate him from her, and the reality of a capitalist future dominated by climate change with fantasy coping mechanisms: a boy sprouts wings, while a woman's skin becomes made of stone, letting her dive into the depths of the ocean without consequence. "Are We Ourselves" by Michelle Mellon feels almost old-fashioned in the detached, matter of fact tone with which its protagonist tells us about the world she inhabits, and the historical events which have led to a future where Black bodies are co-opted (in a manner which directly relies on the legacy of slavery) to house the consciousnesses of white people who would otherwise die of a climate-change related illness. Make no mistake, though, this is no detached golden age story of scientific progress, and by the end, the protagonist's lived experience, and the individual horrors she has gone through are inescapable. Her ending invocation directly drawing attention to the importance of her human experience, her individual story, when weighing up the moral harm of what has been done to her, and generations of her people before her.

And so the losses of our possible futures mount up, from unsurvivable shipwrecks to worlds where food itself is processed to be poisonous without the right tech installations. As the loss builds up, though, so too do the moments of quiet calm and discovery: "Moon Gazing", by Michelle Theodore, is a very welcome visual rest stop, a comic about a child and their Dad talking about their respective dreams of travelling to the moon. I also loved the poem "When I Could Draw a Sun in the Sky", by Manahil Bandukwala, which offers a very personal spin on the experience of playing the video game Okami, and "X.O. Tempo," in which a woman finds her own deeply cool spacefaring alter ego through a process of quantum entanglement, and gets to shake up her own life a little while she's at it. Once again, Augur demonstrates it is not a publication to be ignored.

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Questing in Shorts: September 2020

Over the past month, I've found myself struggling to get much reading done again, as the various stresses of trying to live through Interesting Times have continued to take their toll. However, what I have found this month is that short fiction has come into its own for me: even when I'm not able to get myself motivated to read a novel, I've been able to pick up a story or two and my magazine folder is looking much healthier for it (on the other hand, let's not talk about my ARC folder...). It's not where I wanted to be at with my reading at this point in the year, but I'll take what I can get these days. So, let's see what's been on the menu this month:

Giganotosaurus July - September

I read the last three months of Giganotosaurus stories this month, all of which were excellent if very different in tone and outlook. "Miss Bulletproof Comes out of Retirement" by Louis Evans (August 2020) is an intriguingly meaty deity-superhero type setting with a main character taking on One Last Job which brings her into a conspiracy of the kind she's no longer as prepared to deal with as she used to; the worldbuilding here is first rate as are the relationships between the main characters. "The Pandora", by Stephanie Charette (July 2020), is unpleasant and claustrophobic, dealing with a girl who has been taken in by an abusive older man to shape her into a "perfect wife". Stripped of everything up to and including her own name, "Portia" (Jane) finds a lifeline in a doll which turns out to be sentient and able to enact a body swap, leaving Jane safe inside the Pandora's body while the Pandora withstands the various punishments and trials she is subjected to. The creepy doll trope is cleverly deployed here, leaving us, like Jane, uncertain about the Pandora's motives and unable to decide where to place our trust.

Then there's September's story, "A Wild Divinity" by Rebecca Schneider. This is the tale of Nassa, a woman who is dedicated to the god of reason, until he starts turning up in unexpected places and trying to impregnate her. She ends up taking refuge in the temple of the god most opposed to hers: the Queen of Delight. Initially worried and uncertain about her new situation, Nassa starts to appreciate this new divinity and particularly to forge a bond with Eidel, one of the devotees of Delight. Beautifully paced and set in a world that feels like it could support a whole lot more narrative, Nassa's specific journey, with Eidel and with her gods, is a delight from start to finish, giving space to her growth and tying everything together extremely satisfyingly at the conclusion.

Homesick by Nino Cipri

I've been meaning to read more of Nino Cipri's work for a while and this collection, bringing together 9 of their works, did not disappoint. As the title and the gorgeous cover suggest, this is a collection that's very much about homes: having them, leaving them, and what happens when we are set adrift both emotionally and (this is a speculative anthology after all) in the fabric of reality. Insofar as this collection has a centrepiece, it's the outstanding "The Shape of my Name", originally published on the tor.com website. This is the story of a family in possession of a time travelling device, narrated through the perspective of someone navigating a relationship with their mother as they both work through different points in time and the protagonist comes to terms with her trans identity. The way the time travel affects the relationships here is beautifully done and it's a story that weaves its fantasy and mundane elements together to offer a wonderful, heartbreaking experience.

It's difficult to pick other favourites in here: I enjoyed the novelty of "Which Super Little Dead Girl(TM) Are You", told in the form of a multiple choice quiz about a fictional doll franchise with exactly the premise you'd think; I also highly enjoyed "Not an Ocean but the Sea", and the weird, minor hauntings of "Presque Vue", whose protagonist keeps pulling keys out of their throat and is otherwise trying to live as normal a life as possible around that, as those around him deal with haunting circumstances of their own. All in all, though, this is one of those collections that just works as a whole, and I definitely recommend picking it up to appreciate Cipri's brilliance in this form.

Augur Magazine Issue 3.1

This is my first issue of Augur! And its an interesting, if rather grim place to start: this is an issue themed around "grief, giving and gateways". There are a ton of great poems, stories and even a cute comic, and all in all it was well worth overcoming my usual aversions to PDF for. The issue opens with "Prism" by S.D. Brown, which really sets the tone for what's to come: this is the story of a woman who has a child in prison who is taken away from her, and her attempts to take herself out of her grim reality and find ways to seek him out in the outside world. The horrors of the protagonist's treatment in prison, and the heartbreakingly small glimpses she gets of her son as he grows up under the care of another family, make for a grim but effective exploration of the brutality of the prison system and the racism inherent in the system. One to read the content warnings for, but very effective. Similarly affecting for me was "What Lies Within" by Isha Karki, the story of Swarna, a migrant woman married to a man from another country, who misses the chickpeas cooked by her mother in a way that seems linked to her inability to sleep in her new home. The "princess and the pea" overtones are evident, but this is no story of sensitive royalty and Swarna's experiences are of abuse, forced assimilation and mistreatment at the hands of the doctor brought in to treat her, all leading up to a sudden, devastating ending which feels deeply fitting even as it pulls the rug from under the reader.

My other favourite from this issue was "She Lies an Island", by Michelle Payne. In it, woman who returns to Ireland to see the body of a slain giant which has become a tourist attraction; she is going on the journey for her grandmother, who claims to have met a giant in her own youth. The story juxtaposes the tragedy of the giant's story and the protagonist's grief around her grandmother with an excruciatingly good representation of a sordid tourist experience. From the sleazy tour guide who ended up being the protagonist's uncharacteristic one-night stand from the previous evening, to the awkward behaviour of the other members of the tour group, to the awful activities organised for them when they get to the giant (the done thing is to take a bow and arrow and shoot at its face), it's evocative in a way that only enhances the inherent beauty and mystery of the dead giant herself. In a way, the ending (and yes, this is another grim one) comes as a release, a point of escape from the utterly cringey, miserable situation of the characters even as it ends in total disaster for almost everyone involved. The giant gets a fitting ending, though, and that's sort of all that matters.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 35

I'm behind with my Uncanny reading - in fact, it's possible my subscription has lapsed without me noticing, because those are the kind of times we live in now, folks - and some of the stories in this next-most-recent (I think?) issue worked better for me than others. Firmly on the "yay" side of that equation was "The Inaccessibility of Heaven" by Aliette de Bodard, a story of fallen angels and the humans who live alongside them (I'm not sure if this is in the same universe as The Dominion of the Fallen, though it definitely doesn't feel the same or contain any characters I recognise). It's a tight, intriguing murder mystery that puts its human protagonist in the centre of magical happenings which the Fallen in their life would prefer they stayed out of. Also fun was "The Ruby of the Summer King" by Mari Ness, a fable about the titular character trying to woo the Winter Queen and getting himself, and the entire seasonal realm, into a bit of a pickle over the whole thing. It's a story that takes fairly well-worn tropes and makes something that feels fairly timeless, but which nevertheless had me feeling that I genuinely didn't know how everything was going to turn out. And then there's "A Pale Horse" by M. Evan MacGriogair, which makes up for the sin of having my least favourite story ending line (please, please, stop telling me how much work the characters have to do as you close out your stories, I'm begging you, it drives me up the wall): a story whose plot hasn't stayed with me, but whose evocative sense of place and culture on the West Coast of Scotland, the relationships it forges between its characters, including a protagonist who is seeking belonging across different communities and languages, and the overall sense of an overwhelmed, dying near-future world which nevertheless is full of hope, all adds up to an excellent experience.

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy