Nightmare, Uncanny, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Reactor: Short Fiction Reviews by Paula Guran
Nightmare 10/24
Uncanny 11/12-24
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 9/24
Reactor (10/2/24 – 11/20/24)
Both of the full-length original stories from Nightmare #146 are very dark fantasy. The narrator of Raven Jakubowski ’s “She Sheds Her Skin” is in love with an immortal shapeshifter who must murder to gain a new skin. The narrator has “shifted” herself: She’s “more reliable, becoming a rock [her lover] could lean on, a place she could rest”, not to mention being the one who cleans up the bloody basement and its grue-clogged drain after her love obtains her skins. Despite the horror, the reader can’t help but feel sympathy for both members of this problematic relationship.
Caroline Hung’s imaginative story “Moon Rabbit Song” also centers on an odd couple. The ambitious and depraved Princess Meifong and her lover Yang Meilin are trapped in a dimensional loop in which they seek and slaughter for the treasure of the Immortal Herb, die, and start again and again – ad infinitum. And, although the princess never does, we eventually learn the truth of this functioning dysfunctional relationship.
I particularly liked four of the stories in Uncanny #61. The ancient grove in “Woodmask” by Adrian Tchaikovsky lies at the edge of the city. In good times, it is terrifying. In hard times, with the city occupied in the depths of winter, it offers hope. A desperate young girl steals from the beings who inhabit the woods but pays her dues. This one offers more than one might expect from the folkloric tale it seemingly purports to be.
In the beautifully written “Twice Every Day Returning” by Sonya Taaffe, an aging man who once sailed the Arctic honestly tells his wife he’d never loved another woman. But he still dreams of a lost lover, a long-dead man he once sailed with. Marissa Lingen ’s “On the Water Its Crystal Teeth” is set in a world that has been radically changed by some unmentioned event(s). A childless woman living in near-wilderness finds a boy with a shell like a turtle’s. A muted tale of found family and acceptance.
Fate – and author Lauren Beukes, with the amusing “The Geckomancer’s Lament” – brings a highly incongruous group together: a centaur; a nyanga; Oberon, king of the faeries; and the narrator, a gecko who carries the spirit of his love in a glass vial that hangs on his scaly chest. They are all out to find the conquista Duvarles, kill him dead, and reclaim what he has stolen from them. We learn their stories.
Four tales in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #48 piqued my readerly interest. “The Skildraffen Stitch” by W. J. Tatersdill is a very tall tale about a knitting stitch, a lost runekey, and puffins. These elements (and more) are all suitably spun together to entertain the denizens of a fantasy pub/tavern and, of course, us readers. A couple find an Aladdinesque lamp in a thrift store in the clever “Divergence at the Village Thrift” by Summer Olsson. They discover their wishes for the future may not be as they wish them to be.
Bess Lovejoy’s engaging “Internal Theft” is set in 2002. A small-town newspaper reporter investigates a 1990 story about a huge stash of undelivered mail discovered after the death of a thirty-year postal employee named Dorothy Fairchild. What he uncovers involves the positive side of mail theft and supernatural aspects of both a model of the town and the mail hoard itself.
An old shoe is found beneath the floorboards of an old house in the interesting “The Witch Trap” by Jennifer Hudak. Told that such hidden footwear was once supposedly believed to keep witches away, homeowner Elizabeth does her research. She discovers the superstition was really used to trap witches rather than repel them and a great deal more.
Among the recent batch of original short fiction published by Reactor, allow me to point you toward several entries. “I’m Not Disappointed Just Mad AKA The Heaviest Couch in the Known Universe” by Daryl Gregory (11/20) is an enjoyable, indescribable romp about moving a sofa during an alien invasion. Or not.
In “The V*mpire” by PH Lee (10/23) a teenaged trans girl finds herself, vampires, and an abusive relationship through Tumblr and its many horrors in the early 2010s. Spoiler alert: There’s a happy ending.
Stephen Graham Jones’s darkly enjoyable “Parthenogenesis” (10/2) introduces us to Matty and Jac, who find themselves at a motel in a town in western Colorado waiting for a mechanic to show up and repair their broken-down rental moving truck. They contemplate an odd-looking wooden statue in front of the place. Is it a bear? An elk? A wolf? Jac spins a goofy tale of how the sculpture came to be. Once the truck is repaired, they hit the road, only to break down again at the state line. Then things, as things in a Jones story are wont to do, start getting weird as the made-up tale takes on a life of its own and picks up a chainsaw.
“Bright Hearts” by Kaaron Warren (10/16) is a haunting tale about strange red flowers a florist finds through an odd old lady. Warren masterfully weaves what, at first, seems to be a simple if supernatural tale. But everything becomes more convoluted as the flowers provide the florist with a practical if macabre answer to an unasked question. A literally breathtaking story.
Michael Swanwick has been publishing stories in his The Mongolian Wizard series since 2012. Until this fall, however, the most recent (#9) was published in 2019. Two new entries appeared on Reactor on October 17 – “Halcyon Afternoon” (The Mongolian Wizard #10) – and October 18: “Dragons of Paris” (#11). I advise a quick read of at least the first story in the series (“The Mongolian Wizard”, still available on Reactor) to better enjoy the two new tales that add further to the series that is now mostly about an ongoing war of technology and magic set in an early-20th-century fantasy Europe. The aptly titled “Halcyon Afternoon” finds Kapitänleutnant Franz-Karl Ritter, a Prussian officer of the Werewolf Corps on indefinite assignment to British Intelligence, dallying with Lady Angélique de La Fontaine before they encounter a succubus. “Dragons of Paris” takes place five days later as the battle of Paris begins. The British – with new mechanized weapons – and the wizardly might of their French allies hope to turn the tide of the war against the Mongolian Wizard’s forces in their favor. Instead, they commit “the single greatest military blunder” of the war, according to civilian scryer Peter Fischer – who expected it but, like Cassandra, is never listened to.
Recommended Stories
“I’m Not Disappointed Just Mad AKA The Heaviest Couch in the Known Universe”, Daryl Gregory (Reactor 11/20/24)
“Woodmask”, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Uncanny 11-12/24)
“Bright Hearts”, Kaaron Warren (Reactor 10/16/24)
Paula Guran has edited more than 40 science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and more than 50 novels and collections featuring the same. She’s reviewed and written articles for dozens of publications. She lives in Akron OH, near enough to her grandchildren to frequently be indulgent.
This review and more like it in the January 2025 issue of Locus.
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