The White-Throated Transmigrant by E. Lily Yu


The White-Throated Transmigrant by E. Lily Yu
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (25 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

After a bird fatally collides with her car, a troubled young woman’s life changes irrevocably.

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Sadness permeated every corner of this story, and that was a good thing. There was something poignant about the death of the bird in the first scene. Seeing the tone of that moment being matched by everything else that was going wrong in Winona’s life was oddly satisfying. I desperately wanted her to finally find a place in this world where she felt accepted and loved after realizing just how lacking those things were in her life.

I would have liked to see more attention paid to Winona’s backstory. The scraps of information that were eventually revealed about it piqued my imagination, but they didn’t provide quite enough details in order for me to understand why this character felt so out of place in the world. Given how gloomy this tale was, i it sure would have been helpful to know more about where she came from and why she was unbearably lonely.

While I did see the ending coming in advance, that didn’t change how much I enjoyed watching it unfold. There was something beautiful about knowing what could very well happen to the main character before she had any clue at all that her life was about to take a highly unusual turn. There weren’t many hints at all about what was her future held in the beginning, so anyone who is planning to read this should pay close attention to every little detail they notice along the way.

I’d recommend The White-Throated Transmigrant to anyone who has any interest at all in taxidermy.

Red by Ramsey Shehadeh


Red by Ramsey Shehadeh
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (24 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A young man grieving for his lost sister steps into the world of their favorite board game, in a desperate attempt to find her.

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As soon as I read the premise of this tale, I couldn’t wait to find out what it was going to be like to check it out for myself. There was something about the combination of grief and playing a board game that appealed to me quite a bit. They aren’t two things that I’d ever think to link together, so I was intrigued by the thought of them being combined. The deeper I got into the storyline, the more I understood where the author was coming from and how a board game could help someone heal after a tragedy.

The ending totally confused me. Suddenly, the plot stopped without any advanced warning. I only had the faintest idea of what might have happened or why the author decided to wrap things up at that point. It would have been really helpful to have more clues about what Ansel figured out about his sister’s disappearance and what happened to him after the events of the final scene.

Ansel’s character development was handled nicely. I’ll admit to not being a huge fan of him in the beginning. He had such a pessimistic outlook on life that I struggled to relate to him even though I had a lot of sympathy for what he must have been going through since his sister disappeared. With that being said, I was impressed with where Mr. Shehadeh went with this character after establishing Ansel as someone who didn’t find a lot of hope in life and who couldn’t stop obsessing over what might have happened to his sibling.

I’d recommend Red to anyone who has ever wished they could go back in time and change something about their pasts.

Sweetlings by Lucy Taylor


Sweetlings by Lucy Taylor
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (35 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

“Sweetlings” by Lucy Taylor is about a small enclave of people living on the shrunken east coast of the United States, surviving and evolving as Earth’s seas rise.

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The plot twists were handled nicely. One of the things I enjoyed the most about them was how much time Ms. Taylor spent introducing her characters before she gave any real indication at all that her readers were about to surprised by what would happen to them. She did a good job developing the storyline early on before diving into what Mir’s life was really like.

The characters in this story used terms to describe the world they lived in that were never really explained clearly to the audience. As interested as I was in figuring out what they were talking about, it was a little frustrating for me as a reader to see so many references to certain events and other things that I was never quite able to completely understand. A little more exposition in this area would have gone a long way.

There’s something mysterious about the ocean in general. This is even more true for characters who live in a time when the seas are rising and evolution is working faster than it ever has before. Some of my favorite scenes in this tale were the ones that described why the humans were so afraid and what they encountered every time they wandered out by the sea. Not only were these sections a joy to read, they added a layer of urgency to the plot that made it impossible for me to stop reading until I knew what Mir’s fate would be.

Sweetlings should be read by anyone who loves post-apocalyptic fiction.

Harriet Gets Carried Away by Jessie Sima


Harriet Gets Carried Away by Jessie Sima
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Genre: Childrens, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (48 pages)
Age Recommendation: 3+
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

From the author and illustrator of the bestselling Not Quite Narwhal comes a sweet and funny story about remembering where you belong, no matter how far you roam, or what you’re wearing when you get there.

Harriet loves costumes. She wears them to the dentist, to the supermarket, and most importantly, to her super-special dress-up birthday party. Her dads have decorated everything for the party and Harriet has her most favorite costume all picked out for the big day. There’s just one thing missing—party hats!
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But when Harriet dons her special penguin errand-running costume and sets out to find the perfect ones, she finds something else instead—real penguins! Harriet gets carried away with the flock. She may look like a penguin, but she’s not so sure she belongs in the arctic. Can Harriet manage her way back to her dads (and the party hats!) in time for her special day?

It’s not every day that a kid gets kidnapped by penguins!

The plot twists were creative and adorable. I especially loved the fact that the penguins knew how to speak and had so many strong opinions about what Harriet should do after she realized she missed her dads and wanted to go back to them. This is the sort of thing I’d happily read to the young children in my life over and over again because of how fun it was to discover all of the twists and turns in this character’s adventures after the penguins took her to their icy, faraway home.

I would have liked to see a little more exploring Harriet’s attempts to go home to her parents again. The illustrations did help to flesh out the hints in the words themselves, but there was a lot more the narrator could have done with these sections while still keeping them appropriate for such a young age group. Had these scenes been given more time to shine, I would have gone with a full five-star review as everything else about this book was wonderful.

One of the other things I loved about this tale was how much genuine kindness and empathy was expressed by many of the characters. Harriet was feeling nervous and sad about being separated from her fathers. The fact that her feelings were acknowledged was lovely, especially after she decided to try everything she could to be reunited with them.

Harriet Gets Carried Away was a heartwarming story that I’d recommend to anyone who has ever had to deal with uncomfortable emotions.

Shaman’s Seduction by Kathryne Kennedy


Shaman’s Seduction by Kathryne Kennedy
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Historical, Inspirational, Paranormal, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short story (79 pages)
Heat Level Sensual
Rating: 3.5 stars
Reviewed by Orchid

What would you do to find—and keep—your perfect soul mate?

In an arctic world of magic and monsters, three powerful women face their deepest fears…and find their truest loves.

Inaluk’s Curse
The tribes are facing the fiercest battle in their history, and the last thing the chieftain’s daughter wants to do is recruit warriors from a village rumored to be cursed with cowardice. But when she meets the muscular blacksmith, Otuku, all of her preconceptions are shattered. Can Inaluk’s love for this man allow her to embrace her shaman powers and save her people?
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Za’lla’s Dream
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Kalaka’s Choice
Young Shaman Kalaka has been obsessed with gaining the affection of the artistic and handsome Alloc. Then a stranger comes to her village, and she must rely on this mysterious man, Manuk, to help save Alloc from certain death. After she travels to the spirit world and understands the truth about these two men, Kalaka must decide which one to choose before she loses her perfect soul mate forever.

Three stories in one book, all from the same author. The first tells of Inaluk, chieftains daughter who turns her back on the ability to be a shaman. She asks Otuku the blackmisht of a distant village for help fighting the wild koba. Although she knows the village is cursed she has no idea what the curse entails, but she does know whatever it is makes the villagers cowards when it comes to fighting.

Za’lla is a blind shaman, taken in as a child and taught by the old shaman of the village. She has a strange dream of a girl who looks like herself and is being attacked by the koba. A traveller and the chieftain’s son agree to help her find the girl and solve the mystery of who she is.

Kalaka is an apprentice shaman but believes she knows better than her tutor. She believes her soulmate to be Alloc who is married to the chieftain’s daughter. Her love makes her do things that are not for the benefit of the tribe, but more for the benefit of Alloc.

All three of these shaman end with strong love interests and Kalaka is a descendant of Inaluk The three women suffer from self importance, low esteem and bad judgement which leads them to believe in the wrong destinies. I could feel the cold of the area they lived in, glaciers and snow nearly all the time, but found it difficult to connect with the first and last shamans as they could have easily sorted things out for themselves without wars and trips to the spirit world. Za’lla on the other hand worked for the benefit of others, not herself.

Placid stories with excitement coming only from violence, but on the whole it all fitted together nicely.

Hexagrammaton by Hanuš Seiner – translated by, Julie Nováková


Hexagrammaton by Hanuš Seiner – translated by, Julie Nováková
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (39 pages)
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Each man has a measure of luck given by destiny, but not a drop more. Has the luck of an unusual guide responsible for the passage of visitors into the deep buried bellies of alien ships just run out? His newest client, a young woman named Janita, proves to be a member of the resistance carrying in her body an alien civilization’s gift to humanity. Will either of them become the devil’s martyr? One story gives life to another, waiting all along…

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What illuminating flashbacks this story had! I could see what purpose every single one of them served, and I honestly almost found myself wishing for more of them due to how much they enhanced the storyline and pushed it forward even though I soon came to the conclusion that there was the perfect number of them after all. I simply didn’t want them to end. They were so well written and interesting, especially once I realized how they were probably going to tie into what was happening years later in the main character’s life.

Cryptography is a topic that’s recently begun to interest me. While I don’t yet know a lot about it, I was pleased with how the characters in this book handled the idea of a code so complex that even the most powerful cryptographers and ciphers had yet to be able to break it. The more I read about how this all worked in this tale, the more I wanted to know.

The world building was excellent. There was exactly enough time split between giving the audience the details we needed in order to understand what life was like onboard space ships in the distant future and expecting us to put certain clues together ourselves. I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the less obvious but still quite important parts of this world while at the same time having a fairly clear picture of how everything worked in general.

Hexagrammaton is a must-read for anyone who loves aliens, space ships, or characters who might not be everything they seem at first glance.

The Awakening of Insects by Bobby Sun


The Awakening of Insects by Bobby Sun
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (31 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Patterns emerge in the most unexpected places as a scientist studies the flora and fauna of a new world.

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The world that Jingru and her colleagues were exploring was like nothing that exists on Earth. I was mesmerized by all of the unique plants and animals that called that planet home, especially once the main character began to study them in even more detail than she had before. They truly felt alien to me in the very best sense of the term.

I would have liked to see more attention paid to Jingru’s personality. She was an excellent scientist and explorer, but I never really got a sense of what she was like as an individual. Knowing something as simple as whether she was always as serious as she seemed to be while she was on the job would have gone a long way in rounding out her personality and making this character come alive in my imagination.

The ending was beautifully written. Not only did it tie up the main conflicts of the story nicely, it also left me yearning for more. I finished the final scene wishing I could find out what happened next while also feeling satisfied with how much the author shared with me about what happened to the characters at this particular time and place in their lives. This isn’t to say that I’ll ever stop hoping for a sequel, but I was quite pleased with how everything was tied up by the last sentence.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to discover and study life on a distant planet, The Awakening of Insects might be right up your alley.

Literature® by Guillermo Stitch


Literature® by Guillermo Stitch
Publisher: Nineveh Editions
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (102 pages)
Heat Level: Sweet
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

We don’t know exactly when Literature® takes place and we don’t know exactly where-all we know is that Philip Marlowe would fit right in.

But we don’t get Marlowe. We get Billy Stringer, and Billy is on nobody’s trail. He’s the prey.

The story unfolds in the course of a single day, and it hasn’t begun very well for Billy. He just messed up his first big assignment, he’s definitely going to be late for work, his girlfriend won’t get back to him and for reasons she has something to do with, he’s dressed like a clown.

Also, he’s pretty sure somebody’s going to kill him today. But then that’s an occupational hazard, when you’re a terrorist.

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Why? Because people need to get to work…

It’s fight or flight time for Billy, and he’s made his choice. But he has to see Jane, even if it’s for the last time-to explain it all to her, before she finds out what he has become. That means staying alive for a little while.

And the odds are against him…

Banning something that’s been around for millennia isn’t an easy thing to do, especially when not everyone agrees with the ban.

One of the things I enjoyed the most about the first scene was the reference to the parts of this society that didn’t agree with banning all genres of fiction. It was mentioned so casually that it was as if the characters assumed the audience lived in their same universe and understood the history of how this ban was created and why so many folks had decided to go along with it. That piqued my interest.

With that being said, it would have been helpful to have more details about the setting and time period of this tale. So many parts of it were left for the reader to make educated guesses about based on a small number of clues that I had trouble putting the pieces together. As interested as I was in figuring out what was happening and in how many ways Billy’s society was different from the one I live in, at times it was frustrating for me to have so little information to work with.

The ending was well written. There were so many different things going on in the beginning and middle that I wondered how the author was going to tie everything together in a satisfactory way. Not only did he meet my expectations, he exceeded them. Everything from Billy’s fate to why, exactly, reading fiction was so forbidden in this world was explained nicely.

I’d recommend Literature® to anyone who enjoys solving literary puzzles.

The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections by Tina Connolly


The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections by Tina Connolly
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical
Length: Short Story (30 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Review by: Astilbe

A young food taster to the Traitor King must make a difficult choice in this story of pastries, magic, and revenge.

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The flashbacks were handled well. At first I was a little surprised to see so many of them popping up, but they fit into the plot so perfectly that I treasured every single one of them. In fact, I soon began to look forward to when the next flashback would arrive because of how much information these scenes gave me about the characters and what happened when people ate pastries in this world.

I would have liked to see a little more attention paid to the ending. It was such a powerful way to wrap up everything that had happened in this tale that I was surprised by how quickly it passed. There simply wasn’t quite as much time as I would have preferred to have to savor everything that happened once all of the various parts of the plot began to come together.

With that being said, this was still an incredibly satisfactory read. Saffron, the confection taster, and Danny, her spouse and the Head Pastry Chef, had experienced a great deal of pain in their lives. More than anything, I wanted them to figure out a way to find meaning in all of their previous experiences with disappointment and grief. Finding out how or if they might have been able to do this gave me a deep sense of satisfaction. I truly loved seeing how these characters grew and changed over the short amount of time I had to get to know them.

The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections should be read by anyone who has ever found themselves overwhelmed by a memory from their past.

The Skeleton Lady by Tori L. Wilson


The Skeleton Lady by Tori L. Wilson
Publisher: Books to Go Now
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (64 pages)
Heat Level: Sensual
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Oliver Adams and Kayte Westin have been best friends since the first grade, when Kayte stood up against Oliver’s bully, earning his undying loyalty. The two are neighbors and are now attending their small town of Adairsville, Georgia’s local high school together, counting down the days until summer vacation. Oliver and Kayte both have feelings for one another besides simply friendship, however neither of them have been able to summon the strength required to confess their true feelings.

One day, when the two friends are walking home together after school, they hear a chilling scream from a nearby alley. Kayte rushes to investigate the noise and Oliver follows behind her, making sure Kayte doesn’t get into any trouble. As they come to the alley, Oliver and Kayte notice something strange- there is no one around, and the alley is completely desolate.

Suddenly, everything goes black and Oliver and Kayte awake in separate rooms, chained to old beds and surrounded by concrete walls, floors, and ceilings.

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All of this changes, however, when on Oliver’s birthday, the Skeleton Lady allows him to see Kayte for the first time since they were kidnapped. Having all but forgotten their previous lives, it takes the two a moment before they even recognize each other. Once their memories come flooding back and they finally confess their attraction for one another, Oliver and Kayte realize they must escape The Skeleton Lady’s lair.
Driven by their love for each other, the two must use their mental and physical strength to escape the clutches of their captors.

Will their love be enough to break the grasp of their tormentor’s clutches, or will they die trying? Find out in this exciting tale filled with twists and turns at every corner.

If they ever want to have a chance of breaking free and going home again, Oliver and Kayte are going to have to quickly figure out what The Skeleton Lady wants from them and how they might be able outsmart her. Only time will tell if any of these things will happen for them.

Oliver was a brave guy. No matter what happened to him, he always held onto the hope that he’d figure out a way to escape his captor and find his way back to everyone who missed him. This wouldn’t be an easy attitude to cling to for anyone who went through the things he did. I admired his determination to make it through no matter how dire his circumstances became.

The plot development wasn’t as strong as I would have liked it to be. So much time was spent describing the various ways The Skeleton Lady seriously harmed Kayte and Oliver that there wasn’t a lot of attention paid to everything else that was going on in the scenes. Reading about these characters being tortured without knowing why it was happening made me less interested in finding out what their fate would be than I otherwise would have been.

This was one of the most descriptive short stories I’ve read in a long time. Everything from the outfits the various characters wore to the various ways The Skeleton Lady came up with to cause even more physical and emotional pain for Kayte and Oliver was described in vivid detail. No matter what scene I was reading, I could picture what was happening in it perfectly.

I’d recommend The Skeleton Lady to anyone who loves the gory side of the horror genre.