Story Catch Up 2
Still catching up on reviews from stories earlier this year. Here's another ten:
1. Dollar Fortune by Archer Sullivan in Tough
Micah Hollers sits at a table with a sign saying “I See” and for a dollar he will tell you fragments of your future, or someone’s future, or some other shattered part of time. And maybe the narrator doesn’t believe but it’s only a dollar and Micah needs the money, he used to be a smart man and now he’s just got this fortune telling in the parking lot of Arlen’s Grocery And Bait
Micah tells them that they find them in the hole in the canyon. What they find isn’t clear. So they go to the canyon. But time is broken into shards for Micah and so is our narrator’s memory.
Read This: For mysterious fortunes and secrets revealed
Don’t Read This: The unmooring of linear time conceals
rather than enlightens
2. A Chestnut, A Persimmon, A Cunning Lie by Michelle M Denham in Podcastle
Haewon’s sister Hyojin is reborn as a tiger-hearted girl. Tiger-hearted men and women are violent and dangerous, killing and eating people. There are traditionally three things that can be used against the tiger-hearted; a chestnut, a persimmon and/or a cunning lie.
Hyojin is violent and dangerous. She’s the sister and daughter reborn. She might be too dangerous. They might need a chestnut or a persimmon.
Or a cunning lie.
Read This: For a story of redemption and how truth and lies
might swap places
Don’t Read This: Both the clever reveal and the emotional
one can be seen from a country mile
3. Silver Necklace, Golden Ring by Marie Brennan in Uncanny
Nievre comes and takes women for his servants and they are never seen again. He comes to our protagonist and tells her she will serve him for a month and then be given a reward. She insists she will never step under the roof of someone who has not died three times. He is immortal, according to the tales, so surely cannot die even once, let alone three times.
He dies three times and she is his servant, scouring his ice castle of the warmth that has come in. The secret of immortality is in having no heart. Can the two of them somehow find a chill arrangement?
Read This: Secrets and death, the true horror of love in a
fairytale world
Don’t Read This: Death and transformation to slightly
improve a monster
4. All Those Moments Will Be Lost In Time by Eliot Li in Hex Literary
Our narrator has a doll of Roy Batty from Blade Runner. When you put the dove in its hand it recites the famous speech. Batty is a replicant, with a limited lifespan. The scans from the hospital show that our narrator, too has a limited lifespan. And so they avoid connections that will inevitably die and be lost.
Until one day something changes.
Read This: An obsession with Blade Runner becomes a lens for
observing a life
Don’t Read This: Roy who? Blade what?
Medusa’s been out having lunch with Stacy. She drank a lot. The sunglasses hide her eyes, which is just as well, but also stops the red from showing.
She’s had 5,000 years and there’s a lot of time, a lot of regrets. Time to face herself (though not in the mirror).
Read This: To learn about how Medusa
lives in these modern times
Don’t Read This: She drinks a lot
because she doesn’t care
6. Your Coral-Star Lagoon Luxe Resort Premium Honeymoon WaterCabin: A Welcome Kit for the Newlyweds! by S A Greene in Trampset
A series of warnings not to go into the water when there is a moray eel there. Even though it is harmless. Even though it offers to take you to a reef where the fish are colours beyond knowledge, previously undiscovered.
Read This: A modern, exotic, folklore warning story
Don’t Read This: Why would you listen to a whispering eel?
7. Their Untimely Lives by Roppotucha Greenberg in Cabinet Of Heed
Ellie makes herself look like an old woman. Felix lives in almost a week’s time. When they go on their first date, he thinks it’s their second and opens up about personal things.
One night Felix has a terrible spasm. He thinks he’s been hit by a bus. And they have to decide what to do about that, which will change… everything.
Read This: Two people, out of time, come together
Don’t Read This: Felix’s problem is weird, Ellie’s is…
unclear?
8. Schrödinger And His Cat by Lucie Bonvalet in Monkeybicycle
Schrödinger has a cat and people don’t know if it’s alive or dead. But this isn’t because of any experiment with a box and probability. That is a thought experiment and a cruel one. Schrödinger calls the cat Eichhörnchen, a bad name for a cat even if you don’t know it means squirrel. The cat refuses to respond to it, and Schrödinger wonders if the cat is here, or there or both.
And there are other indications the cat is not in just one place at a time.
Read This: For clever insights into cats, names, death and
being
Don’t Read This: Erwin Schrödinger was a real man, a genius
scientist and a big piece of shit who abused children, and this offers no insight into any of that
9. Bold Mary by Sarah Mcpherson in Fudoki
Mr Reynard comes to the house of a man with three daughters, looking for a wife. Greta does not sparkle, and Elise prefers to stay at home, but Mary is willing to ride with him. She wants to know where they will live but Mr Reynard puts her off.
So one day she follows him, boldly. But perhaps too boldly?
Read This: For a bold (sorry) revision of Mr Fox, the robber
bridegroom
Don’t Read This: Villainy on villainy, god forbid it should
be so
10. My Formaldehyde Darling; or, A Redress for the Female Creature by S M Hallow in Icarus
Elizabeth and Henry are working on a project. They are trying to build a creature. Re-build a woman, Justine. Elizabeth is determined but Henry is tired, unsure. He asks for help from his friend.
The friend is Victor Frankenstein.
Elizabeth attempts to put right what Frankenstein and his daemon have broken. And in this she discovers that she is not cunning enough, not brutal enough.
But she may not need to be.
Read This: A story that rips the guts out of Frankenstein
and remakes them into something new and monstrous, the women who are sacrificed
in the original bloodily redeemed
Don’t Read This: Taking the parts of something dead and
resurrecting a new creature never ends well
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