This month was made memorable by my workload reaching a low ebb. Unfortunately, this also happened for everyone else in my office, so they are bugging me all day always constantly!!!
If I could get ten freaking uninterrupted minutes of lunch, I would be reading a lot more. But the good news is that I had real good luck with what I did managed to read. Lots of new favorites.
Also, I finally have the mental energy to think about how I ought to be querying books and submitting short stories again. So maybe that’ll happen in August.
Short stories
“Oop! All Swords” by Jessie Roy
A really fun fantasy story on PodCastle, about a cardsharper who tries to cheat at tarot. The magic doesn’t like that. I’ve been in a writing group with Jessie for a couple years. She knocked it out of the park with this story— Definitely give it a read or listen!
“Death and Liquidity Under the New Moon” by Vajra Chandrasekera
A competent story about an undead soldier on the battlefield from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors.
“Fossils of Us” by John Wiswell
This is from the author of Someone You Can Build A Nest In. It originally appeared in the Back 2 OmniPark anthology. Apparently, the OmniPark world features a deeply strange themepark in Texas that fictitiously existed from 1977 to 2003. Eighteen authors contributed to the first anthology set in this world. This is weird fiction and horror, yet oddly I’ve somehow never seen it discussed in circles that go in for those things. I’m not terrifically online, and I barely use social media at all, but still. The premise reminds me of the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park blog, the SCP Foundation, and the Backrooms.
Anyway, Wiswell’s story is about an Erasmus Haymer, who travels to an undisclosed country to research the origins of man for a themepark ride. Cool premise.
One of my top favorites this year. A delightfully horrific story about creating art for consumption and parasites. In this world, humans have ink sacs in their mouths, and can spin and dye plates by pressing clay between their tongue and upper palate. Unlike anything else I’ve ever read. Highly, highly recommend.
This is from the author of The Dark We Know. I hadn’t read Lee’s stuff before. She was on my radar because my main critique partner has talked about her, with them both being horror writers from Singapore. This is another favorite of the year. Ziya sells three-fifths of her name, magical characters inscribed on her body at birth, losing the magic that comes from them, in order to pay for tuition at a prestigious foreign school. She soon discovers that her peers use their pocket money to buy these name fragments as decorative curiosities, as if they weren’t part of another person’s soul. This story is about being colonized and sacrificing parts of yourself for survival. It’s very well done.
“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells
This story takes place within the Murderbot continuity. It’s from the perspective of Iris, a minor supporting character who’s basically a human sibling to the Perihelion, aka ART (Asshole Research Transport), the experimental ship AI who befriends Murderbot early in the series. This story shows how Perihelion’s crew learned about ART’s new buddy, over the course of a mission to explore the pre-Corporate-Rim part of a satellite that was recently subject to hostile corporate takeover. Unfortunately, this mission proves to be only a vehicle for conversations between ART and Iris. The story cuts off after Iris learns of Murderbot, right as the crew is actually getting a look at the thing they’ve been wanting to see for the past 7,000ish words. The overall effect is that the story feels fanfic-y.
“Hard Times at the Four Pines Motel” by Patricia Cornell
A story about how a roadside motel survives the invention of teleportation. Short & sweet.
“The Shape of Stones” by Hildur Knútsdóttir
An epistolary story from the perspective of a researcher working to unearth an ancient sacrificial stone in Iceland. This is one of the rare short stories I might be able to get my gaming buddies to read, since they have a soft spot for Scandinavian culture, being close to my husband. We’ve played a lot of Valheim together.
“The Scene Near Arles-sur-Tech” by Fawaz Al-Matrouk
This is about a woman who gets offered a key to the universe by a guy she worries might be the devil, so she turns him in.
“Mothman and Eli Visit the Cryptid Museum” by Izzy Wasserstein
Mothman is an extradimensional entity isekai’d to our world, where he enjoys a decades-long friendship with a nice man named Eli. The two of them travel the U.S. to help out at disaster sites, guided by itching in Mothman’s hidden wings. This whole thing is executed like an idle slice-of-life.
“Family Pre-union” by Daniel Bensen
The Great Depression has been averted by time travelers, and now a young lady named Ruth, born in the early 20th century, is buying a taser in advance of her family pre-union. I absolutely loved this story’s take on time travel, where reality branches into alternate futures. Multiple future versions of Ruth’s relatives descend on the pre-union party to deliver family drama and dire portents.
“The Alchemists” by Daniel Bensen
Another Bensen story I really liked, entirely dissimilar from the other one I read this month. He’s got an impressive range. In this one, scientists (and adjacent) from successive eras go splat against politics in their pursuit of gold (and adjacent). I read this one twice because I could feel it expanding my brain.
Books
Why Darkness Seems So Light, edited by Helen Frost
I’m a foster parent, so, when I met Helen Frost at a convention last year, she was extremely kind in offering me a copy of this anthology. During the 90s, she collected stories from young people about violence they’ve experienced. I hope they help my foster daughter feel seen; I’ve been waiting for the right time to share this anthology with her, because she’s been stressed by her birth parents’ ongoing struggles.