The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley & Kat Howard Malcolm Mays is very close to the end of his rope. After the collapse of his terrible marriage, after a horrific tragedy, he has spent close to his last dollars on a house in rural Ione, Oregon. His first sight of the house […]
Read MoreTerry Weyna´s rating: 4 | Kat Howard, Maria Dahvana Headley | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 1 comment |
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard Roses and Rot (2016) is a slow-building but beautifully written dark fantasy, loosely based on a familiar folk tale that isn’t disclosed until about a third of the way into the novel, so I’ll refrain from giving it away. Primarily Roses and Rot explores the relationship between two adult […]
Read MoreTadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Kat Howard | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 5 comments |
An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard Wizard tournaments and wizard duels are standard fare in fantasy now, and Kat Howard puts the concept to good use in her fast-paced An Unkindness of Magicians. Published in 2017, the story follows a group of families based in Manhattan, who call themselves the Unseen World. They use […]
Read MoreMarion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Kat Howard | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | no comments |
Weird Tales celebrates “Uncanny Beauty” in the Summer 2010 issue (No. 356, and the most recent issue available as of this writing). The best story in the magazine, though, is one that is off-theme. “How Bria Died,” by Mike Aronovitz, is the tale of an unorthodox teacher who may well have taken his unusual teaching […]
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Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a bi-weekly online magazine that publishes literary adventure fantasy. Each issue contains two stories. Each issue is available for free online, or can be downloaded to an e-reader for a mere $.99. I read the two issues published in February 2011 for this column, but there are already two March issues […]
Read MoreTerry Weyna | Jesse Bullington, Kat Howard | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | | 4 comments |
Apex Magazine is an online magazine I’ve reviewed once before, stating some reservations about the change in editorial command. I’m happy to report that the summer’s issues indicate that the magazine is as strong as ever. The June, July and August issues contain something to satisfy nearly every fantasy reader. The August issue opens with […]
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Issue 44 of Apex Magazine leads off with “Trixie and the Pandas of Dread” by Eugie Foster. It would take a hard heart to resist a story that starts like this: “Trixie got out of her cherry-red godmobile and waved away the flitting cherubim waiting to bear her to her sedan chair.” In the world […]
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The spring issue of Subterranean is exceptionally strong, even for a publication known for its excellent fiction. The six long pieces in this issue seem to be somewhat thematically linked, most of them having taken some form of art as their theme. In “Painted Birds and Shivered Bones” by Kat Howard, an artist named Maeve […]
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Editor’s note: We now know that K.J. Parker is author Tom Holt. The Summer 2013 issue of Subterranean Magazine has a special K.J. Parker section, which is a treat for anyone who has read any of Parker’s work. This author (gender unknown) writes from the perspective of a military historian, and appears to have a […]
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The most recent two issues of Apex Magazine give us a chance to say goodbye to one editor and hello to the next, and offer an interesting contrast between two strong voices. Issue 55 is Lynne M. Thomas’s last issue of the 26 she has edited. It is a strong issue, with stories that are […]
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The January 2014 of Nightmare Magazine opens with “The Mad Butcher of Plainfield’s Chariot of Death” by Adam Howe. Gibbons is the proud owner of Eddie Gein’s car, a genuine relic of the murder on which Alfred Hitchcock based his movie Psycho. Gibbons has a carnival show built around the car, a regular “Disneyland from […]
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The Spring 2014 issue of Subterranean Magazine is as strong as this magazine ever is, and that’s saying a lot. Kat Howard’s story, “Hath No Fury,” stands out as a memorable work about the old gods in the modern age. It is a story about women who are victimized by men, and the women who […]
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To the dismay of all lovers of great speculative short fiction, the Summer issue of Subterranean Magazine is its last. This magazine was notable not just for the quality of its fiction, but for its willingness to publish short fiction at the novelette and novella lengths. The Summer issue ably demonstrates just what we’re going […]
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Fantasy Magazine was folded into Lightspeed Magazine in 2012, but it came out of retirement in October 2014 for the Women Destroy Fantasy issue, one of the stretch goals of a Kickstarter for an all-women edition of Lightspeed. I was one of the contributors to the Kickstarter, and, as my review last week revealed, I […]
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Uncanny Magazine is a new bimonthly internet publication edited by Lynn M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas. The editors have explained their mission this way: We chose the name Uncanny because we wanted a publication that has the feel of a contemporary magazine with a history — one that evolved from a fantastic pulp. Uncanny […]
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This week’s roundup of free short SFF on the internet contains some great old and new stories. “The Stolen Church” by Jonathan Carroll (2009, free at Conjunctions, also in The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories) Tina and Stanley, married for five years, are in the lobby of a nondescript apartment building, […]
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Our weekly sampling of free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are some of the stories that caught our attention this week. “Next Station, Shibuya” by Iori Kusano (Jan. 2017, free at Apex, $2.99 Kindle magazine issue) A poetic little story (under 4000 words) narrated by a city (or perhaps a city’s local spirit/deity) in second-person address […]
Read MoreBill Capossere and Tadiana Jones | Kat Howard, Michael Swanwick, Molly Tanzer | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | | no comments |
After a few weeks’ vacation, SHORTS returns to continue exploring free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read recently that we wanted you to know about. “As Good as New” by Charlie Jane Anders (2014, free at Tor.com, 99c Kindle version) Marisol Guzmán, a pre-med student who decided that […]
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Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about. “A Recipe for Magic” by Kat Howard and Fran Wilde (2017, free at Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog, free to download for Nook) “A Recipe for Magic,” co-written […]
Read MoreJana Nyman, Tadiana Jones and Marion Deeds | Fran Wilde, Kat Howard, Neil Gaiman, Philip K. Dick | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | | 3 comments |
Oz Reimagined edited by John Joseph Adams Oz Reimagined is a collection of tales whose characters return as often, if not more often, to the “idea” of Oz as opposed to the actual Oz many of us read about as kids (or adults) and even more of us saw in the famed MGM version of the […]
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