2022 read #47: Robbergirl by S. T. Gibson.

Robbergirl by S. T. Gibson

191 pages

Published 2019

Read from October 25 to October 28

Rating: 4 out of 5

An exquisitely realized sapphic retelling of the folktale of the Snow Queen, brittle with winter chill and thrumming with heart-deep warmth. The sense of place is perhaps less precisely realized than in The Bear and the Nightingale, but Gibson makes up for that with the aching realness of her central characters' loss, fear, and desire.

I can't tell if this book was self-published or went through an extremely tiny press. Either way, it's one of the finest self-pubbed or small-press novels I've read so far. It has its share of typos and typesetting errors, especially in the later chapters, but that comes with the territory; I note that more for my own reference than anything, something to be mindful of when I go forward with my own self-publishing adventures.

2022 read #46: Apex: World of Dinosaurs Anthology, edited by Jonathan M. Thompson and Alana Joli Abbott.

Apex: World of Dinosaurs Anthology, edited by Jonathan M. Thompson and Alana Joli Abbott

289 pages

Published 2020

Read from October 20 to October 25

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I'm jonesing so hard for new-to-me dinosaur fiction. Hell, I'm on the verge of tracking down some paperback copies of Crichton's Jurassic Park and The Lost World -- both of which I read dozens of times as a youth, and last reread in 2011 -- just to try to scratch that dino itch.

Luckily, I found this anthology, in part because one of my favorite up-and-coming sci-fi writers, Jennifer Lee Rossman, has a story in it. (One of their other stories, set in the same universe as "Joan of Archaeopteryx," is featured in my own anthology, The Mesozoic Reader. Please get a copy!) I'm not sure what to expect from the other stories here, but I guess we'll find out!

(Also, when I bought it, I had assumed Apex: World of Dinosaurs Anthology was associated with Apex Magazine, seeing as both involve short sci-fi stories. But no, it's tied into some sort of game company and a dino deck-building game.)

"Smile" by LaShawn M. Wanak. Writers, I've noticed, tend to struggle with making good stories out of dinosaurs. I like my dinosaur fiction to fit one of two very broad categories: either the dinosaurs are just an ordinary fact of life in the setting (such as in Dinotopia, Raptor Red, or many of my own stories), or the dinosaurs fit into the role of movie monsters, albeit constrained to a rough approximation of "realistic" behaviors (such as in the first three Jurassic Park movies, which stop just short of giving raptors mustache-twirling-villain intelligence but still present them as animals, something that could conceivably have evolved on Earth). Some stories, like Dinosaur Summer, excel by combining a bit of both. My least favorite dinosaur trope involves turning them into unconstrained movie monsters, unstoppable creatures with absurd, biologically impossible powers. (Jurassic World comes to mind.) This tale crosses Jurassic World with Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, presenting us with raptors that can sample DNA from other creatures and utilize those traits for their adaptive advantages. At that point, why make it about raptors at all? It's an alien invasion trope given a dinosaurian coat of paint. The story ends with the reveal that a humanoid raptor is telling us how the ascendency of the raptor over the human world came to be. D-

"Just Like Old Times" by Robert J. Sawyer. I originally read this story (first published in 1993) when it was reprinted in Martin H. Greenberg's Dinosaurs anthology. In that review, I griped: "Transferring the consciousness of a human observer into a gigantic theropod -- Michael Swanwick did it best in 'Riding the Giganotosaur' in 1999. This being the early '90s, however, the transferred consciousness is of course going to be that of a serial killer. The innate silliness and datedness of the premise sinks this story." I don't feel the need to revisit it here. D-

"The Day" by August Hahn. Speaking of dinosaurs as movie monsters, this story takes all the raptor pack-hunter tropes hammered into pop culture via Jurassic Park and cranks them up to 11, giving us a "nature red in tooth and claw" scenario from a raptor's-eye view. The very first story I ever submitted to a magazine, back in 1998, was a piece of Raptor Red fan-fiction; I wrote from the perspective of giant raptors roaming the Maastrichtian in search of new territory. Both my ancient tale and Hahn's story here could have benefitted from a bit more ethological science and a bit less of the pop culture killer-claw cliché. Like, I'd be 100% down to read a dino's-perspective tale about an ordinary day where we all laze in the sunshine and take care of our hatchlings and no one has to fight a rex. I feel indifferently about this one. D+?

"Rebuttal" by Andrew J. Lucas. "[By 2135], the gradual effects of climate change reached a crescendo; sweeping forest fires [had destroyed the forests of western Canada]." Oh, you sweet naïve thing. If only we'd been that lucky. Anyway, in the climate-ravaged future, ancient DNA is a valuable resource utilized to rebuild ecosystems resistant to the plagues unleashed by the thawing permafrost. Herds of ankylosaurs graze the hot desolate plains of Alberta, taking the place of beef cattle. Those dastardly Russians cobble together a weaponized Yutyrannus with a mishmash of cloning and 3D printing and unleash it upon the poor Canadian rangers. Like the cyborg Yutyrannus, this story is a mishmash that doesn't quite cohere. It's an interesting revamp of the classic "dinosaurs in the Old West" trope plus a dash of Dino-Riders, but there's no substance to the story. D+

"High Wire: A Horizon Alpha Story" by D. W. Vogel. Military sci-fi in which a batch of blankly interchangeable soldiers, officers, and kids land on a new planet after something went wrong in their ark ship. The planet is populated with vaguely dinosaurian wildlife. There's simply no characterization to be found here, not even a trace. That's almost impressive in its own way. Worse, literally every named character is male. Every single one. No redeeming value to this story whatsoever. Somehow, this is a reprint; it was previously published in a sci-fi anthology back in 2016. F

"A Boy and His Dog: A 'Dinosaur Protocol' Story" by Jonathan M. Thompson. One of the editors of this volume has graced us with a story set in one of the game settings the book was meant to promote. It's a clunky piece, written stiffly and clearly never proofread. (A young Triceratops is described as weighing "13,000 tons.") A deep-time colony, presumably from our far future, suddenly receives a bunch of soldiers displaced from something approximating the modern day. There's an EMP, soldiers fanning out with M4s, and a kerraaazy misunderstanding between the two groups! This story reminds me of "The Cretaceous Colony," a story I wrote when I was 11. That is not a compliment. If anything, "The Cretaceous Colony" featured a deeper plot and richer characterization than this dud. F

"Joan of Archaeopteryx" by Jennifer Lee Rossman. Oh, thank god. It's such a cliché to say this, but I genuinely mean it: this story is like a breath of fresh air after the last... well, after every single story in the anthology before this one. Laugh-out-loud funny, refreshingly queer, written with verve and personality -- literally everything the foregoing stories haven't been. Rossman's setting is superb: for millions of years random portals have opened between our world and a parallel dimension, which now hosts a mix of dinosaurs, Renaissance knights, gay cowboys, and D.B. Cooper. The repressive knights want to conquer the gay cowboys and force them into their medieval social strictures. Our hero Joan, brain crammed full of 21st century pop culture, is taken through the portal to fulfil a prophecy and save the gay cowboy dinosaur land utopia. It's a delight, and the best story here by a long mile. A-

"A Time Beyond Sunset: An Apex Island Adventure" by Alana Joli Abbott. At this point I've given up on anything in this book living up to Jennifer Lee Rossman's piece, or indeed on anything in this book being good besides "Joan of Archaeopteryx." There's vague potential buried deep in this story -- the "teens volunteer at a dinosaur island during World War II" plot borrows heavily from Dinosaur Summer by way of Dinotopia -- but the writing struggles to make anything good out of it. For a story set on a dinosaur island, we spend an inordinate amount of time in New Haven, or repairing a truck, or talking to random soldiers or people in the infirmary. When we do meet dinosaurs, it turns out they speak impeccable English thanks to a rogue Nazi scientist who invented tin-foil hats. The story crams in some mostly unnecessary backstory about the Nazi scientist (whom we never actually meet) and ends abruptly when one of the teens successfully absconds with a crystal tablet the Nazis were using. Clearly, this was written backwards from the Apex game setting rather than as a standalone story. I'll be generous and award this an F+.

"When the Sky Was Starless and the Ocean Flat" by Gwendolyn N. Nix. An undercooked tale of pterosaur riders watching their world collapse along the Western Inland Sea. There's a nice amount of potential here, and as it stands, it's worlds better than almost everything else in this book, but I feel it could have used a few more rounds of editing to bring out the magic. C-

"We Are Emily" by Lee F. Szczepanik, Jr. A distasteful throwback to the "murderous mentally ill" days of the 1980s and '90s, built around a Hollywoodized misunderstanding of dissociative identity disorder. Derrick, Bobby, and Melissa are a "family" -- a DID system inhabiting a body together, trading off consciousness with each other but communicating freely amongst themselves. They vote in a new member, Emily, who is a raptor from a video game called Cretaceous Wars. Somehow, cyberpunk clichés of "hacking the A.I." are also involved. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as Emily becomes part of the family, she takes control and goes on a wild bloody murder spree! It's equal parts silly, sophomoric, and exploitative. I had to check to make sure this wasn't originally published in 1989. This one gets a big ol' F.

"Party Crashers" by J.A. Cummings. A boy wishes for a pet Compsognathus for his seventh birthday. He helps the wish along with some tricks he learned from YouTube. Magic! Two squirrels turn into compies and promptly cause chaos at the party. That's literally all there is to this tale. But it isn't actively offensive or badly written, so maybe I'll give it a D+.

"Starfall" by Darren W. Pearce. A garbled mess of writing that feels like it's trying to squeeze in every "badass bounty hunter who can psychically talk to dinosaurs in a postapocalyptic wasteland" cliché at the same time. Our hero is a blank slate except for her snark, and her raptor companion can only chuckle and crack wise about how tasty their quarry is. It could not end fast enough. F

"Forever" by Robert J. Sawyer. Bog-standard "intelligent dinosaurs achieve civilization right before the Chicxulub impact" story, first published in 1997. Nothing special. nothing objectionable, nothing new. Somehow that still makes it one of the better stories in this anthology. C-

"To Mega Therion" by Markisan Naso. This wasn't badly written, per se, but the prose veers to the amateurish side with its excessive commas and clunky descriptions. Every bit character is introduced with a name, a couple adjectives, and a genus: "His second-in-command, Sotiris, stretched his long, tan opisthocoelicaudia neck..." With so much of the story devoted to descriptions of hand-to-hand combat, this awkward prose is a major liability. That aside, I enjoyed the general vibe of anthropomorphic dinosaurs wielding swords, fighting duels, and erecting heroic statues in a Cretaceous kingdom. This story even has a sauropod using a spiked helmet to turn himself into a giant morningstar. So, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Maybe I'll give it a tolerable C-.

"Droma Station" by Alexandra Pitchford. Derivative sci-fi action piece. Maybe you wouldn't call "secret experimental facility on an asteroid breeds cyborg raptors" derivative, but I certainly would. Like all too many of the stories in this volume, this reads like the writer has never been exposed to any form of fiction more advanced than SyFy Originals and tabletop gaming supplements. All the characters are the shallowest of archetypes, the action is paint-by-numbers, and there's nothing here deeper than a coat of paint. I'll be supremely generous and offer it an F+.

"What Came First" by Kimberly Pauley. A big ol' shrug of a closing number. The kind of pop sci-fi written by someone whose only experience with scientists is in the pages of pop sci-fi. This story is notable mainly for a section which details a domestic chicken's brief adventures in time-travel. Maybe D-?

And that's it. Finally. I cannot express the depths of my disappointment in this anthology.

2022 read #45: HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology, edited by Jack Apollo Hartley.

HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology, edited by Jack Apollo Hartley

180 pages

Published 2022

Read October 20

Rating: N/A (I liked it a lot!)

It feels weird to review an anthology one of my pieces is in, an anthology edited by a friend of mine and dotted with poems and stories from writers I know. An anthology where I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements. Weird, maybe even borderline unethical. But it's not like anyone reads this blog on the regular.

HELL IS REAL began when I tweeted something along the lines of "Someone who isn't me should put together a Midwest Gothic anthology." Jack, an amazing writer in his own right, was taken with the idea, and put in an immense amount of labor reading through submissions and compiling this book. There are a grand total of seventy poems, flash fics, and short stories in here, too many to review one by one.

There are some repeating themes and motifs: Driving and roadsides. Urban decay and rot in the cornfields. Deer. Not-deer. Blood. Burial. Childhood trauma. Religious trauma. Apostacy writ in biblical imagery. Queerness. And as with so much stuff getting published in the indie lit press these days, a great number of these pieces are astoundingly good -- all-time bangers, even.

A running list of some of my favorites:

"When Me and the Other Ex-Mormons Get to Outer Darkness" by K.A. Nielsen

"Postcard from Bluegrass" by Elizabeth Walztoni

"Storm Day" by MP Armstrong

"Welcoming Remarks from Tim Busch, Pillar of the Community" by Amanda Minkkinen

"Cowboy Killers & Corn Fields & Coming Home" by Camille Ferguson

"Poachers" by Andrew McSorley

"We Have All Come from the Earth and in the Earth Is Where We Will Go" by Rowan Bagley

"Kerosene" by Lucy Frost

"The Angel at Harvest Church" by Freydís Moon

"Tornadoland" by Hattie Jean Hayes

"Without Protest" by Cassie E. Brown

"Shelter / Decay" by Andrea Lianne Grabowski

"Local Woman Discovers Remains of Two Girls, 10 and 6, Missing Since 1977" by Kimberly Glanzman

"Blood and Beatitude in the Buckeye State" by Alana Greene

"When the Anthropocene Ends in the Rust Belt, or When the Gods Decide to Repent" by John E.K. Carter

"Seek" by Pippa Russell

"65" by Audrey Hollis

Despite singling out all those poems and stories, I can say that I liked or loved every piece in this book, and I'm only slightly biased.

2022 read #44: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte.

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of Their Lost World by Steve Brusatte

398 pages

Published 2018

Read from October 18 to October 20

Rating: 3 out of 5

Ah, 2018. Now that's a lost world. I remember strolling around Barnes & Noble, blissfully unaware of the potential civilization-killing pandemic then barely more than a year away, and stopping dead in my tracks when I saw this book on display. It had been a long time since the big Dinomania boom of the 1990s. Not many pop-science dinosaur books had been published since then, let alone aggressively promoted into bestsellerdom. I couldn't afford retail price books back then (and I really can't now, though I have enough wiggle room these days to go on the occasional discounted or used book splurge), but I came close to springing for this one.

I didn't, of course. And it's probably for the best that I didn't. I liked this book fine enough, I suppose, but I'm not its intended audience, and that dulled my enjoyment. Unlike later books that publishers snatched up to cash in on success of Rise and Fall -- titles like Beasts Before Us and Otherlands, two books I enjoyed tremendously -- this book doesn't trust its readers with grasping its subject. Rise is explicitly, perhaps even cynically, written for mass consumption, its ideal audience the sort of blandly curious reader who has somehow never touched a book on geology or evolution (or dinosaurs) since middle school. As popular science books go, it feels like a naked grab at bestsellerdom. And apparently it worked.

Like so many popular science titles these days, Rise spends much of its time giving pocket biographies of the cool characters of modern paleontology, all of whom happen to be great buddies of Brusatte's. Publishers love that "human interest" element, I suppose. The presentation of the actual science is hopelessly glib, employing banalities like "This was the real Jurassic Park" and shortening foraminafera to "forams" without ever giving the accepted (and not even that difficult) name. In a book already choked for space thanks to all the bios of Brusatte's rad buddies, there's an entire chapter on Tyrannosaurus rex. If you came for a new history of the dinosaurs' lost world, as I did, you'd be disappointed. If you were a casual reader who didn't know a thing about dinosaurs beyond the name T. rex, this would be the book for you.

More than anything, it feels like Brusatte used this book to position himself as our generation's go-to media paleontologist. The Millennial equivalent of Bob Bakker or John Horner: that one guy the newspapers know the name of and call up whenever they need a flavor quote, or that one guy who's the token expert in any documentary. If that was his goal, it seems to have succeeded admirably.

2022 read #43: Salvation Spring by TC Parker.

Salvation Spring by TC Parker

133 pages

Published 2021

Read from October 13 to October 14

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Some spoilers ahead.

There are bits and pieces of a brilliant story here. A lone drifter comes to a remote desert town, drawn irresistibly by fragments of memories that haunt her. A doctor lives alone outside of town, bringing her patients back to life with a kiss. Bodies turn up in the hills nearby, bloated with spiders, rotting into fungus. Strange white-skinned beings lurk in the desert. When the drifter regains her memories, we learn she is in fact over three hundred years old, a survivor from a place once called California. In short, the vibes are immaculate.

Unfortunately, the Weird Western vibes get buried under a mess of way too much exposition. This brief novella crams in a little bit of everything: Egyptian mythology, a 1930s socialite in search of immortality, medical experiments, a river of the dead, a bone plague that ended the world we know. It doesn't really cohere into a whole; none of the backstory really adds to my initial enjoyment. I think a lighter touch, an air of mysteries never explained, would have carried this story far. As it is, it's a jumble, fragments of unrealized brilliance buried in a busy matrix.

2022 read #42: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2022.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2022 issue (142:3-4)

Edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

258 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 9 to October 13

Rating: 4 out of 5

When I originally bought this issue, I was excited because it was the first time someone I knew (a writer who is a Twitter mutual of mine) had been published in F&SF while I knew them. Since then, three more of this issue's contributors have become my Twitter mutuals; it's a bit dizzying, really, that I know four people featured in this one issue, at the very least on a parasocial level.

I haven't read this issue before now, despite my excitement, because ADHD made picking it up and reading it through feel impossible. With a couple back issues (terrible, terrible back issues) under my belt, I feel less overwhelmed. Time to read!

"Dancing Little Marionettes" by Megan Beadle. After all the sweaty, unsavory writing I read in my old F&SFs, it's such a joy to read a story like this. This is exactly what my old idea of the magazine had been like: a mix of melancholy and whimsy, a small-scale personal drama steeped in atmosphere, a tender and deeply personal examination of grief. 

"Void" by Rajeev Prasad. Amare, a doctor, works in a space station orbiting Mars, saving soldiers and POWs wounded in the war below -- or, when necessary, chucking them into the void of space for a quick merciful end. The colonialist powers exploiting Mars order Amare to void two POWs from the Martian Resistance. Caught between his desire for vengeance and his moral obligations as a doctor, Amare must make a choice.

"The Mule" by Matthew Hughes. My favorite aspect of this novelette is its setting. It's a pastiche of Early Modern Europe steeped in John Dee-esque occultism and planar sorcery, a lovely mix featuring a handful of my own historical and fantastical hyperfocuses. I've been working on my own Early Modern Magical setting for several years, so encountering this one was a delight. The story itself has a touch of the 1970s fantasy serial about it. I have no idea if there are other stories in this setting, but there are hints of other adventures before and after this one. One could imagine it sitting comfortably in an anthology with Phyllis Eisenstein's Alaric stories or something from Avram Davidson's Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania milieu. The characterizations were a little skimpy, but overall it was an absorbing story and an entertaining romp.

"These Brilliant Forms" by Phoenix Alexander. This one hooked me right from the first page. A tale of deep space salvagers and bioengineered "vacuumorphs" inspired by Dougal Dixon's Man After Man, all of it lovingly queer and proletarian, all of it rendered in bewitching prose. This story checks so many boxes for me. I crave more.

"Done in the Mire" by Adriana C. Grigore. Rumors of treasure lure generations of thieves and fortune-seekers to a boggy island, where a being called the Morasser deals with them by throwing them into a well. A young woman suffers this fate, but survives for fifty years on the well's healing waters, counting the stones and rattling the bones of those who perish. This is a marvelous tale, delectably weird, languid, dreamy with fairy tale logic.

"From This Side of the Rock" by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu. Having fled a homeland that became a graveyard, Rasika has waited long for the naturalization ceremony in the land on the other side of the rock. But the naturalization priests always take something away from you, the price always more, always crueler than you can imagine. An elegantly-structured work of devastating beauty.

"Lilith" by Ethan Smestad. After the last few bombshell stories, this one arrives as a brief shrug. Standard "Lilith and Adam are the last two humans on a terraforming Mars" bit. Could it be that Lilith is not who she appears to be?? Gasp!

"Maker of Chains" by Sarah A. Macklin. Another all-time great story, this one in a magic post-apocalypse setting brimming with place and character. Mr. Ezekiel must retrieve jewelry from a thief who occupies a lair in a former office building. But it's no ordinary thief, and no ordinary jewelry. And Mr. Ezekiel is no ordinary jeweler. A superb little tale.

"Where God Grows Wild" by Frank Oreto. The best part of this story is its setting: a laconic, vaguely New England-ish community of farmers and congregants, in a world where all animals -- chickens, cows, humans -- rely on plants to produce young for them. I liked the restraint in the worldbuilding; it's never explained how or why any of this came about, and the story is all the better for it. The Goddess plants birth out Cabbage Patch children, the old folks bliss out on orgy pollen until they become mulch, and that's just the way it is. A solid effort.

Of the three poems that follow -- all of them quite lovely -- my favorite was "We Feed on Stone and Light" by Deborah L. Davitt. It's very close to my own poetry aesthetic!

"Woven" by Amanda Dier. A sweetly sad tale of a neglected, abused boy and the injured boggle he befriends. In any of the F&SF back issues I read recently, it would been a standout, but in the brilliance and magic of this modern iteration of the magazine, it's just a tiny bit overshadowed. A solid entry nonetheless.

"The Epic of Qu Shittu" by Tobi Ogundrian. Speaking of magic and brilliance, this novelette crackles with both. Ogundrian makes worldbuilding, characterization, and description seem effortless here, each flowing naturally into the next. Within the first few pages I had been drawn deeper in this world than some novels ever bring me. An intrepid (or foolish) bard sneaks about the ship of a notorious sorcerer, and the plot unfurls with wonderful clarity and efficiency from there. Wonderful story.

"Nana" by Carl Walmsley. A maudlin tale of grief, holographic replicas of loved ones, and having to learn how to let go. Fine enough, I guess, but not my favorite sort of thing in a general way. The twist ending felt too calculated, too manipulative.

"Spirit to Spirit, Dust to Dust" by Anna Zumbro. A brief little story of rusalkas, the Dust Bowl, and ecological debts that need to be paid. Slight but charming.

"The Living Furniture" by Yefim Zozulya (translated by Alex Shvartsman). A translation of a Russian allegorical story over a century old, in which the wealthy and powerful use human beings -- regardless of their other skills or aptitudes -- as living furniture, wheel spokes, living books, and wallpaper. Pretty good as allegories go, and all too applicable to the horrors of modern capitalism.

And that's it! All in all, that was the best issue of a spec-fic magazine I've read in my adult life. (I remember being similarly blown away by issues of Asimov's and Analog as a teen, but I hadn't read much short fiction back then, and was easier to impress.) The bravura energy and verve in modern sci-fi and especially fantasy is like nothing else the genres have seen, and this issue is a gorgeous microcosm of the new SFF.

2022 read #41: So This Is Ever After by F.T. Lukens.

So This Is Ever After by F.T. Lukens

345 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 9 to October 11

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

This one is a high fantasy rom-com in which, after defeating the Big Bad Evil Guy and fulfilling the prophecy, the Chosen One and his band of adventurers settle in to rule the kingdom they accidentally inherited -- and also the Chosen One needs to find true love or he'll die. It's a charming set-up for a book and I had high hopes for it. Further, the cover is absolutely lovely.

Alas, Ever After eschews any real tension (romantic, humorous, or otherwise) regarding who Arek's soulmate is going to be. We know who it's going to be from the first chapter. That's not so bad in and of itself. This could have been a charming novella, a comedy of courtly manners as one complication after another impedes the course of True Love. What sours the book for me is how it stretches out a straightforward premise and places the burden of that extra length on our two romantic leads being absolutely oblivious idiots who can't communicate to (literally) save a life. That's a tried and true rom-com scenario, of course, but it long outlasted its welcome for me.

Beyond our two romantic leads, the main band of adventurers is a delightful cast. I'd happily read novels about Bethany's lusty adventures, about Sionna learning to loosen up and have fun, or Rion being the kingdom's sweetest himbo paladin. And I have to admit, when our two numbskull leads finally make things right at the end, I cried at how sweet and winsome it all was. The journey to get there could have been considerably shorter, though. Or maybe the focus could have been spread more evenly across the cast.

2022 read #40: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

304 pages

Published 2020

Read from October 6 to October 9

Rating: 4 out of 5

I haven't dabbled much in the Gothic category before now. There was The Secret Skin, which was lovely and gay, a love-letter to the genre that refused its misogynistic roots. Before that there was Dunleary, which was godawful, seriously one of the worst books I've ever read. And long ago I read Jane Eyre (though none of the other foundational Gothic texts). I like the general aesthetic of the business, but haven't ever sought it out, unlike my partner R, who has a shelf full of tawdry old "woman stumbling away from a house" paperbacks and has begun to collect modern queer revisions of the genre as well.

Mexican Gothic is one of the best books I could add to this meagre list. It unfurls a world of decadence and decay, delightfully unsettling and fantastically rendered. The descriptions of place, the rotting edges of reality coming undone in a remote colonialist's manorhouse deep in the mountains, linger in the mind and the lungs. The buried family secrets, a requisite of the genre, are wonderfully morbid and imaginative.

2022 read #39: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1989.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1989 (77:6)

Edited by Edward L. Ferman

162 pages

Published 1989

Read October 7

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Here we are, back at it again with another entry in my F&SF collection. I've been wavering between reading my back issues in chronological order and simply skipping to the more current publications. For now, my plan is to alternate between older issues and current ones (within the last calendar year) until I either read through my entire F&SF shelf or I get bored of the enterprise.

Last time, the September 1989 issue was a dire affair. The one good story, Ray Aldridge's "Steel Dogs," was essentially "Westworld but make it fairy tale fantasy." The rest wouldn't be making anybody's best-of lists, unless you specifically wanted a list of stories by racist sex criminals. Looking at the table of contents here, I feel some trepidation, especially for the Esther M. Friesner and Mike Resnick stories. Wish me luck.

"The Old School" by Ramsey Campbell. The name sounded familiar, so I searched to find what I'd read from him before. There were two stories: "The Other Side," collected in 1988's The Year's Best Fantasy, which was insipid shock horror; and "The Changer of Names," reprinted in 1978's The Year's Best Fantasy Stories, which was a slightly satirical sword & sorcery piece. Today's tale is a disjointed attempt at boarding school horror, as our hero -- a modern, more enlightened school teacher -- follows ephemeral children through the woods to the ruins of a particularly abusive boys' school, where the residue of children's fear remains as a palpable thing haunting the classrooms. There's a vague idea of generational trauma here; mean old people who only want to see kids-these-days properly punished make an appearance, offering a blatant echo of "The Other Side." But honestly there isn't much of substance here. And worse, this is the 1980s, so no male author was capable of describing an 11 year old girl without mentioning her "budding breasts." A sour start to this issue. I'll give it a D-.

"Misbegotten" by Michael P. Kube-McDowell. What I've always loved about F&SF is the wealth of different SFF subgenres coexisting in the same magazine. Kube-McDowell is a workmanlike writer, the sort of writer with several Star Wars Expanded Universe novels to his name; this story is a workmanlike effort as well, a modestly entertaining xenobiology piece that wouldn't have been out of place in Analog. Coming as it does immediately after the British boarding school horror of the previous story, it feels fresher, somehow, the contrast accentuating the mild pleasures of the alien ecosystem, the laboratory airship studying it from above, and the parasite that worms its way into our hero Eric Kimura. The characters are interchangeable, the plot nothing new, but nonetheless, I found it enjoyable. Maybe a C+.

"Where Have All the Graveyards Gone?" by Dean Wesley Smith. The year is 1991. Society collapses in the immediate aftermath of a "limited" nuclear exchange. Abandoned as their caretakers leave to look after their own families, the residents of a nursing home must fend for themselves. This story feels especially bleak here and now, after the countless COVID horrors in nursing homes, as nuclear tensions rise, as the collapse of society seems inevitable, whether next month or twenty years from now thanks to climate change. This story was competently written and did what it set out to do, but it's a fucking bummer. C.

"Poe White Trash" by Esther M. Friesner. The editorial blurb above this story promises "the funniest story we've read in many months." The best thing I can say about it is that it's brief. It's an eyeroll-worthy retelling of "The Cask of Amontillado" populated with the broadest hillfolk stereotypes this side of Hee Haw. I'll be generous and say F+.

"Little Worker" by Paul Di Filippo. A bioengineered bodyguard who's part human, part wolverine, and entirely into jelly and toast, Little Worker protects the Prime Minister of North America, but also has her own troubles to solve -- namely, anyone who gets in between her and the Prime Minister of North America. The editorial blurb above this story says, somewhat leeringly, that this is "one different and disturbing story." I found it to be a bit of a shrug; the vibe of "childlike bioengineered killer who is altogether too obsessed with her charge" was oily and somewhat putrid in its 1980s-ness. Maybe a D.

"The Cheval Glass" by Reginald Bretnor. Here's a challenge for all cishet male authors, especially those in the 1980s: Write a story involving a tween girl without using descriptors like "unripened" and without some mention of growing breasts. Clearly, this challenge is impossible. This is, overall, a mild tale of a girl growing up with neglectful parents and an emotionally abusive mom, a story of a girl who uses a magic mirror to find her heart's desire. But the author just couldn't help getting sweaty over his 12 year old protagonist, and it's gross. D.

"The Wound That Would Not Be Healed" by Eric Carl Wolf. This issue seems to have a loose theme of sorts, or at least there is an abnormal number of stories that center on either kids or old folks. This one is a vaguely spiritual urban fantasy, or vaguely Christian "inspirational" tale, whichever way you'd like to phrase it. Drawing a rather vacuous allegory with the wounds of Christ, our tale finds an old woman wasting away in a hospital, the abscess on her hip a constant source of pain, never getting any better. Until [makes magical whooshy hand motions] the wound takes away her pain, glows with an inner light, gives her a lovingly merciful death, and makes a few small miracles happen on her way out. Not my cup of tea, but at least it isn't actively offensive on any level. Maybe I'll give it a D+ (the plus added solely because there are no budding breasts).

"Freezer Madness" by Patricia Ferrara. I know about child abuse. I was abused all through childhood; it's been a recurring motif in some of my own stories. The way it was employed as a plot device throughout the 1980s, though, feels skeevy, exploitative, a cheap way to wring pathos and horror from the audience, much like the use of homeless or mentally ill people as a plot device during the same period. That's how this one feels. It's a child's-eye horror story about a mom who drinks too much, a kid who remembers things he shouldn't, and a Gramma who's been in the freezer a bit too long. It's well-written, but left me with a freezer-burned aftertaste. [ba-dum-tiss] Maybe a C-.

"For I Have Touched the Sky" by Mike Resnick. I've been dreading this one. Apparently, Resnick, a white guy from Chicago, made an early name for himself with a series of stories "inspired" by (read: appropriated from) "African backgrounds." This story is set on a planet terraformed to resemble Kenya, a slice of Afrofuturism that would delight me in the hands of any number of actually African or Black authors who could handle it with the sensitivity and authority it deserves. Instead, we have a white American author wrestling with questions of Kikuyu cultural identity, cultural reclamation, and whether or not old traditions are worth preserving, which just feels unsavory. (Additionally, continuing one of the unpalatable themes of this issue, a young girl character is introduced, and immediately the narrator comments on how she's "not yet of circumcision age," which feels culturally stereotyping as well as predatory.) Overall, this is one of the better-written and well-structured pieces in this issue, and I'm sure at the time it must have struck F&SF's (white, American) audience as brilliant, innovative, and thought-provoking. But I can't say it aged well at all. I'll give it another F+.

There were some doozies in this issue, and I don't mean that in a complimentary way. I think my high esteem for F&SF in the 1980s may have been mistaken. It was cultivated through best-of anthologies, after all, which wouldn't be a representative sample of what its month to month issues were like. 

2022 read #38: Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn.

Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

107 pages

Published 2021

Read from October 5 to October 6

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

It's been a bit since I read what might be termed artsier, more literary prose. This novella begins dense, making you navigate a wall of backstory that vanishes in wisps of abstruse prose the moment you try to find a fingerhold. I struggled with it, but that's on me as a reader, out of practice as I am; Rocklyn's way with words is considerable. When we finally settle into the immediate perspective of our narrator, the prose becomes fiercely, almost frightfully embodied, a subcutaneous experience of muscle, salt, urine, breath, and heaving bone.

As with so many novellas I've read recently, I think Flowers could have benefitted from an additional 20-30 pages, particularly to help pace out and expand upon the whirlwind beginning. Even so, there is no denying the magnificence that Rocklyn achieves even in this brief space.

2022 read #37: Perception Check by Astrid Knight.

Perception Check by Astrid Knight

479 pages

Published 2022

Read from October 2 to October 5

Rating: 3 out of 5

This is a self-published New Adult fantasy about a deeply traumatized college student setting out into a Legally Distinct From Dungeons & Dragons world to rescue her friend and confront the evil mage who snatched her away from Michigan one fateful night ten years before. I like the idea of supporting self-published titles; someday I'll likely take the self-pub route with my own novellas, maybe even my own novels. It's hard to discover self-pub titles that I'll actually read, though. I've bought a handful of self-published books over the last year, and just haven't been able to power through and finish them; the prose has always been too iffy for my snobbish tastes. (One exception worth mentioning: Cute Mutants.)

Knight's prose is decent, as good as anything you'd find in most modern YA fantasy (though if I never read the words "sneer" and "smirk" again, it will be too soon). The story is absorbing and does exactly what it says on the label, plunging our heroes into fights with goblins, into dingy taverns with bad food, brushes with the royal guard, and an epic quest to retrieve a Maguffin and save their friend while saving the world. It was perfectly satisfactory in that regard.

I did find it a bit off-putting that every human, elf, and halfling character is coded as white -- most of them with blue eyes; some of them singled out as "pale white" -- except for one guy coded as Japanese, who (spoilers!) turns out to be morally suspect. I'm guessing it was an unconscious oversight, or perhaps a conscious effort to avoid appropriation. (One might position Check as the diametric opposite of Wake of Vultures, another fantasy written by a white woman, and an example of well-intentioned but perhaps dubious "I'll take it upon myself to write diverse characters" saviorism.) I'm in favor of avoiding appropriation, but making every character white -- humans from a fantasy world setting as well as humans from a city in Michigan -- swings way too far in the opposite direction.

2022 read #36: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

398 pages

Published 2020

Read from September 30 to October 2

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Refreshingly sweet, maybe even saccharine -- but it's saccharine in an aching and beautiful way that more than earns the right to be sugary. Gently heartwarming, bustling with wonderful characters you can't help but sweep into your arms and defend at all costs.

I knew little about the plot or vibe before I plunged into this book, beyond a general idea that it was lovely, queer, and feel-good, and I'm glad I knew so little about it. The heart of the book is its conviction that love and understanding can bring light and hope to even the grayest, most bigoted of worlds, that change begins with ordinary people opening up from their bubbles of habit, rule-following, and prejudice. Perhaps it lacks the revolutionary fervor of Confessions of the Fox; it certainly slips into the Disney Liberal trap when the sole Black character spends much of the book in animal form. Despite its flaws, though, there's so much room for this earnest joy and found family love on my bookshelf. More of this, please.