Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Diabolical Plots: Reviews by Charles Payseur
Beneath Ceaseless Skies 12/26/24
Diabolical Plots 12/24
There’s only one December issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies this year, and it contains a pair of epistolary stories dealing with injustice, royalty, and punishment. Shoshana Groom’s “The Beloved Sisters of the Sun-Bleached Hills” unfolds as a series of letters between sisters Zarina and Durdana, who live in different kingdoms but who are facing the same alarming trend – their kings are marrying women only to have them executed for unnamed crimes the day after the wedding. At first it’s just the nobility affected, but as the nobility dwindles the kings move on to women of all stations, and the sisters have to measure the horrors they witness to their faith and allegiance to their rulers. And how the sisters diverge from their belief in their rulers shows the dynamics of power and fear, as each must weigh the evidence they see against the narrative their kings insist upon. It shows how tyranny can clothe itself as justice, and how easy it can be to believe it when the alternative is facing what seems an insurmountable power and threat. Groom’s prose is sharp and captures the distinct voices of the sisters well, instilling in their messages a deep well of tragedy that is very much worth checking out.
And lastly, the latest issue of Diabolical Plots features Mary Berman’s “St. Thomas Aquinas Administers the Turing Test”, a story that finds a 13th-century church official dispatched to evaluate an automaton and decide if it houses a soul or not. The Likeness, as it is called, was made by a monk and has learned to mimic the actions of monks – praying and working for the glory of God. But when it asks for the Eucharist, the nature of its soul must be investigated, and the story captures the careful and compassionate work that the official (St. Thomas Aquinas going by the title) does in order to come to a conclusion. It’s a quiet and contemplative study grounded in the philosophies and theories at the time, and its conclusions are likely only surprising because of how far the actions of the Catholic Church were from their tenets of logic, compassion, and inquisitiveness. Berman does great work in exploring the religious and metaphysical implications of the situation, and providing readers with a warm and measured experience (which I wish the history of the Church was more full of). A fine read and nice way to close out another month of reviews!
Recommended Stories
“The Beloved Sisters of the Sun-Bleached Hills”, Shoshana Groom (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 12/24)
Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. His works have appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others, and many are included in his debut collection, The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories (Lethe Press 2021). He is the series editor of We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction (Neon Hemlock Press) and a multiple-time Hugo and Ignyte Award finalist for his work at Quick Sip Reviews. When not drunkenly discussing Goosebumps, X-Men comic books, and his cats on his Patreon (/quicksipreviews) and Twitter (@ClowderofTwo), he can probably be found raising a beer with his husband, Matt, in their home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
This review and more like it in the February 2025 issue of Locus.
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