Mabry, The Who the Where and the What (2024)

J.R. Mabry, The Where, the Who & the What: A Gnostic Science Fiction Novel. Apocryphile Press, 2025. Pp. 668. ISBN 978-1-958061-92-3. $24.99 pb/$0.99 e.

Reviewed by Don Riggs

Mabry’s The Where, the Who & the What: A Gnostic Science Fiction Novel is an uncomfortable delight for those fascinated by Gnosticism and opens the portals to that mystical perspective for science fiction readers as well. I am both, and found the novel to be gripping the entire length of its 654 pages of text; the Author’s Note at the end was a fitting coda placing the experience I had just gone through in a biographical context. Seth St. John is a protagonist who could be expected to say, with Shakespeare’s Romeo, “I am fortune’s fool!” as he has been saddled with a crazy-making world view from his parents, whose church epitomizes institutional toxicity. Indeed, the reader may wonder why he keeps trying to deal with his mother, who seems to deny the fact that her husband has been dead for years. Seth has OCD; perhaps he keeps trying because he feels duty-bound to support her as an only child with a fundamentalist upbringing.

Gold, anOther Mythology (2023)

Maxwell I. Gold, anOther Mythology. Interstellar Flight Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1-9537-3624-6. $14.99.

Reviewed by Lisa Timpf

anOther Mythology is a collection of horror prose-poetry re-imagining myths from a queer perspective, penned by Maxwell I. Gold, a five-time Rhysling Award nominee, and twice Pushcart nominated Jewish American author of prose poetry and short stories in cosmic horror and weird fiction. Gold’s books include Oblivion in Flux: A Collection of Cyber Prose from Crystal Lake Publishing and Bleeding Rainbows and Other Broken Spectrums from Hex Publishers. With this background, it’s not surprising that he is able to craft a compelling collection that is often humorous, sometimes darkly so. Publisher Interstellar Flight Press is an indie speculative publishing house that aspires to spotlight “innovative works from the best up and coming writers” in science fiction and fantasy, so this different approach to mythology is right up their alley.

Yoo, Small Gods of Calamity (2024)

Sam Kyung Yoo, Small Gods of Calamity. Interstellar Flight Press, 2024. Pp. 151. ISBN 978-1-953736-28-4. $9.99.

Reviewed by Julie Reeser

Small Gods of Calamity is a debut novella by Sam Kyung Yoo, who has had a short but illustrious career publishing stories in magazines such as Fantasy and Strange Horizons, with work showcasing themes of East Asian folklore and ghosts. This foundation has served them well for this strikingly emotional urban fantasy, set in Seoul, a landlocked city. Kim Han-gil is investigating an apparent suicide when he smells the sea. This is his first clue that his past has once again caught up with him, and that the death at his feet is something much more sinister. Because that smell isn’t actually the sea, it’s a spirit.

Cahill, Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner (2023)

Zachary Cahill, Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner. Red Ogre Review & Liquid Raven Media, 2023. Pp. 74. ISBN 979-8-8600-3593-5. $14.99.

Reviewed by Julie Reeser

Over the last few years, I’ve established a personal habit of spending time each morning planning my day with a view toward my yearly goals and reading poetry. When I saw the Unicorn Death Moon Day Planner by Zachary Cahill, I anticipated an experience born of this complimentary companionship—a planner interspersed with art and poetry to inspire—it seemed the perfect match. Zachary Cahill has quite a few projects and titles under his writerly belt, including a graphic novel, a debut novel, a directorship, and being editor-in-chief of Portable Gray. Both his art and poetry have been shown in several prestigious settings.

Weinstock, Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition (2020)

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition. Broadview Press, 2020. Pp. 246, ISBN 978-1-5548-1445-9. $15.55.

Reviewed by Don Riggs

I have taught from Weinstock’s Mad Scientist’s Guide to Composition for three years now, and have found it to be extremely useful in presenting the basic principles of academic writing for students, including what instructors call the “mechanics” of writing, including punctuation, paragraphing, and transitions; finding and using sources for research papers (helpfully called “Graverobbing” with a nod to Victor Frankenstein); preliminary stages like brainstorming and outlining; “Conducting Experiments” as a way of developing strategies for informing, persuading, and evaluating; and in a stirring chapter, “The Monster Lives!” providing approaches to revising, peer review, and retroactive outlining; and finally, “Placating Ghosts,” or documenting sources “to Avoid Angering the Dead… and the Living.” In other words, a very conventional approach to forming and formulating an argument… but presented in the guise of horror movie tropes.

Raglin (ed.), Shredded (2022)

Eric Raglin (ed.), Shredded: A Sports and Fitness Body Horror Anthology. Cursed Morsels Press, 2022. Pp. 274. ISBN 978-1-73695-327-3. $13.99.

Reviewed by Gwen C. Katz

First off: I am not a sports person. The closest I come to a sports horror story is being stuck on the bleachers in the freezing rain waiting for my sister’s track meet to finish. So I wasn’t initially real drawn to Shredded. However, I have full faith in Eric Raglin as a horror editor. Can he overcome my inherent indifference to athletic events? Let’s find out!

Nikolits, Everything You Dream Is Real (2022)

Lisa de Nikolits, Everything You Dream Is Real. Inanna Publications, 2022. Pp. 323. ISBN 978-1-7713-3930-8. $22.95 pb/$11.99 e.

Reviewed by Christina De La Rocha

As the plot cartwheels, a motley crew of the old, the young, the lovelorn, the pregnant, the queer, the disabled, and the drug-addled overthrow the authoritarian patriarchy whose secret subterranean sex show funds its military operations. You might think what’s not to love? But, argh, for this reader possibly a few things. Your experience may differ, but I found this book frustrating rather than hilariously absurd. Everything You Dream Is Real is truly unique, has a strong voice, and is told by that cast of characters not traditionally represented in fiction, but the premise of the book changes as you move through it. Major details are lobbed in often and out of nowhere to change the direction of the plot in sort of a deus ex machina every couple of pages. I don’t often read a book and keep thinking, ‘well, geez, obviously I am a square,’ but I found this aspect of the book exhausting. I’m happy to go along for a wild ride with thrills and spills and absurdity, but I need to have some idea of the point of it at some stage well before the neatly wrapped up ending. As I’ve said, your experience may differ; I’ll wager the farm that out there in the great, big, wide world there’s a horde of rabid fans of Everything You Dream Is Real. It is that sort of book—one that either alienates you almost entirely or speaks to you so thunderously, it grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.

Evans, Babel Apocalypse (2023)

Vyvyan Evans, The Babel Apocalypse: Songs of the Sage, book 1. Nephilim Publishing, 2023. Pp. 388. ISBN 978-1-7399962-2-2. $13.99.

Reviewed by Don Riggs

Vyvyan Evans is a professional linguist with an extensive interest in online technology and publishes in academic journals as well as magazines such as Psychology Today and The New Republic, so his credentials in the real-world fields of linguistics and computer tech are impressive. The Babel Apocalypse, however, is not like Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash, although it has a somewhat similar sinister plot to gain world domination through manipulating people’s minds via language. For one thing, there is a definitely Western European cast to the characters and setting: Emyr Morgan, the protagonist, is English, though with his home in Wales, and is a James Bond-007-type of secret agent, a commander in Europol, who has relationships with various highly placed women, in which he is not always completely in control. His house is in the Netherlands, in a fishing village called Scheveningen, the name of which was used as a Shibboleth to detect Germans impersonating Dutch nationals at the beginning of World War II. This is not mentioned in the novel, although it might be a very esoteric Easter Egg.

Jones, Of Weeds and Witches (2022)

Shelly Jones, Of Weeds and Witches. Alien Buddha Press, 2022. Pp. 36. ISBN 979-8-357779-18-2. $10.99.

Reviewed by Julie Reeser

Shelly Jones is an educator, author, and researcher nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Dwarf Star Award, and she has been a finalist for the Best Microfiction 2023. Their chapbook, Of Weeds and Witches, contains twenty-four poems that thrum with mythical magic. Nature lurks and drips from the lines, midwifed by women seeking power, revenge, or escape. The titular poem was published in Issue 58 of The Future Fire, and it’s lovely to see it put in service as an anchor for this collection. While eighteen of the poems have been previously published, six will be new to fans of their work.

Thorne, Hell Spring (2021)

Isaac Thorne, Hell Spring. Lost Hollow Books, 2021. Pp. 374. ISBN 978-1-938271-55-7. £19.99.

Reviewed by Rachel Verkade

So… this one is weird. And I do not say that lightly. Let me try to describe how this book opens. It opens within the depths of hell, in a wood ringing a field surrounding a giant penis. Buckle up, folks. We’re just getting started.

Within the woods are hellhounds. All of the hellhounds are female, and describe themselves as sisters. They must leave the wood into the Penis field in order to consume sin that has seeped in from the mortal realm. These forays must be precisely timed, however, as at particular intervals the giant penis ejaculates, and should any of the hellhounds be touched by the ejaculate, she dies by bursting into multiple, smaller hellhounds. If the ejaculate touches the ground, it transforms into “eyeless white snakes” that pursue any nearby hellhounds, causing them, again, to swell and explode into multiple juveniles. This is apparently how hellhounds reproduce. Oh, and they all refer to the giant penis (which is very lovingly and explicitly described) as their father.

Margariti, The Saint of Witches (2022)

Avra Margariti, The Saint of Witches: A Horror Poetry Collection. Weasel Press, 2022. Pp. 92. ISBN 978-1-9487-1234-7. $12.00.

Reviewed by Jason Kahler

The witches depicted in Avra Margariti’s collection The Saint of Witches are cursed with the burden of knowing, the pressures of womanhood, and the threat that comes with being the other. Dangerous love waits on a blanket under a moonlit tree, and the penalty for being extraordinary is death. Taken as a whole collection, The Saint of Witches doesn’t have one specific narrative line to follow, at least I don’t think, but instead paints a general impression of the lives (and deaths) of witches and those around them. The poems’ speakers are consistent, but I don’t think we’re supposed to understand that voice as belonging to one specific person. If I’m wrong, I don’t think that changes my reading of the pieces, and if I’m right, it doesn’t do anything to diminish the impact with which each individual piece lands.

Schein, Lady Anarchist Café (2022)

Lorraine Schein, The Lady Anarchist Café: Poems and Stories. Autonomedia, 2022. Pp. 110. ISBN 978-1-57027-391-9. $15.95.

Reviewed by Cait Coker

Speculative poetry is an often overlooked genre in the fields of the fantastic, despite a wealth of practitioners in and out of the mainstream. Lorraine Schein’s collection, The Lady Anarchist Café: Poems and Stories, plays with the conventions of both form and language, cannily utilizing wordplay to heighten response and reaction. Consisting of 41 poems and 9 short stories, the volume is a delightful romp across words and worlds.

Schroeder, Archer 887 (2022)

Anna Schroeder, Archer 887 (Archer book #1). Self-published, 2022. Pp. 308. ISBN 979-8-9862308-0-1. $15.00 pb/$8.99 e.

Reviewed by M.L. Clark

Military sci-fi comes in many moral flavours. Anna Schroeder’s Archer 887 is a highly conservative variant, as illustrated in its treatment of empire, military service, aliens as enemies, righteous torture, gender relations, and the core romance. Action forward, it’s written at an engaging pace with realistic battle sequences, and has a good sense of dialogue, so for folks looking for a more traditional SF read, this series opener promises a coherent and compelling adventure.

Hyslop, Miasma (2022)

Jess Hyslop, Miasma (Luna Novella #16). Luna Press Publishing, 2022. Pp. 108. ISBN 978-1-915556-01-1. $11.99 pb/$5.99 e.

Reviewed by Zachary Gillan

Jess Hyslop’s Miasma is a book that I wish had been around when I was younger. It’s a novella that would have fit nicely in the fantasy works of the 1990s that I spent my teenage years reading, but with a revisionist approach. It takes a variety of elements any reader of secondary world fantasies will recognize—knights, mages, monstrous lizards, a dangerous swamp—and reworks them into something fresh for the 2020s. Part of Luna Press’s novella series, Miasma clocks in at just under 100 pages, but Hyslop doesn’t waste any of them, wisely choosing not to pad this out to a standard novel length. It has a story and it tells it, directly, forthrightly, with well-drawn human stakes. There’s no saving the world, no prophecies or chosen ones, just a family trying to survive.

Karl, Exogeny (2022)

Nathan Karl, Exogeny. Self-published, 2022. Pp. 101. ISBN 978-1-0880-5771-1. $6.99.

Reviewed by Jason Kahler

I’ve been reading DC’s current Poison Ivy mini-series, which is excellent. The main thrust of the story is that Ivy, to one degree or another, is becoming a plant monster and is making other people into plant monsters or moss or mulch or trees or what have you. I also read a lot of Jeff VanderMeer; his stories often have strange new hybrids of plants and animals folded into people. The bottom line is—I’m not sure if we’re in a particular stage of sci-fi/horror that’s focused on this vegetable type of body transformation, or if it’s just my current reading predilections. An argument could be made that we’re seeing a response to both the pandemic and the climate crisis; nature is taking things back. That’s not new, but the stories I’m seeing are just much gooier than their predecessors. Microscopic becomes macro in a bulge of puss and spittle. Good stuff.

Sizemore and Connor, Apex Magazine 2021

Jason Sizemore and Lesley Connor (eds.), Apex Magazine 2021: The Companion Anthology. Apex Book Company, 2022. Pp. 544. ISBN 978-1-955765-06-0. $27.95 pb/$8.99 e.

Reviewed by Christina De La Rocha

Apex Magazine 2021: The Companion Anthology serves up 48 stories originally published in Apex Magazine in issues 121–128, representing the year the publication bounced back from a brief hiatus. Buying a copy, in either paperback or digital form, is a great way to support an award-winning speculative fiction magazine whose issues are otherwise free to read at the magazine’s website. On the upside, the stories are of generally high quality and come from authors from a variety of places around the world. One entire issue included in the anthology was devoted to Indigenous authors telling speculative fiction stories with Indigenous protagonists—a definite breath of fresh air. But, reader, I warn you, at 544 pages (or 626 if you include front and back matter), the anthology is a long slog through darkness. It's definitely not an anthology built for binge-reading.

Rosen, Cascade (2022)

Rachel A. Rosen, Cascade: The Sleep of Reason Book 1. Bumblepuppy Press, 2022. Pp. 410. ISBN 978-1-7770944-5-4. $19.95.

Reviewed by Don Riggs

Rachel Rosen’s Cascade is the first book of a trilogy, The Sleep of Reason, alluding to Goya’s etching of the same title, in which a young man is sleeping on his desk and swarms of bats, owls, and other denizens of the dark flock towards him—or is it from his dreaming brain? The titular Cascade refers to the major cataclysmic shift that has occurred an indefinite period before the novel’s start, resulting in weird occurrences, like cracks appearing in the surface of the earth, people being transformed into demons, the sprouting of “shriekgrass” to replace edible crops, and the general appearance of magic. As one major character, a wizard, puts it, the question is not what can we do to preserve our way of life, but what does magic want?

Applegate (ed.), It Was All a Dream (2022)

Brandon Applegate (ed.), It Was All a Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right. Hungry Shadow Press, 2020. Pp. 338. ISBN 979-8-986920-20-7. $16.98.

Reviewed by Gwen C. Katz

When Hungry Shadow Press announced It Was All a Dream, I was immediately curious and a bit puzzled. The foremost question in my mind: What does it mean to do a trope right? There are many possible answers to this question, and It Was All a Dream showcases all of them. The stories in this anthology fall into four categories: Parodies, metanarratives, inversions, and stories that are played straight. Quite an assortment!

Ebnou, Barzakh (2022)

Moussa Ould Ebnou, Barzakh: The Land In-Between. Translated from French by Marybeth Timmermann. Iskanchi Press, 2022. Pp. 209. ISBN 978-1-957810-00-3. $26.99 pb/$9.99 e.

Reviewed by Jason Kahler

I am acutely aware that I approach every book I read weighed-down by the baggage of my history. That load was particularly burdensome as I read the excellent Barzakh: The Land In-Between by Moussa Ould Ebnou. My exposure to African literature is woefully inadequate, so I can’t place this book anywhere within that tradition. I can’t tell you how it stacks up against contemporary African literature, or the African literature of the past. I can tell that my unfamiliarity with Africa as a literary tradition and as a geographic region heightened the sense of strangeness and other-ness I felt while reading. In many ways, that actually impacted my experience with this novel for the better. Readers who are more familiar with these traditions are sure to appreciate what they find in this story.

brown, Fables and Spells (2022)

adrienne marie brown, Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry. AK Press, 2022. Pp. 329. ISBN 978-1-84935-450-9. $17.00.

Reviewed by Julie Reeser

When I first encountered the work of adrienne marie brown, it was through her book, Emergent Strategy. That book showed me a gap in my existence and began the process of filling it in. brown introduced to me the concept of moving through systems in nonlinear and creative ways with whole minds, bodies, and communities. She embraces this perspective again in her new release, Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry. The book is long and complex, ever-shifting like an octopus exploring the environment. It challenges the reader to find a place of relaxed alertness while acknowledging the pain of both change and stagnancy. brown is one of the few writers who makes the reader inescapably aware of the body—not just the reader’s body, but all bodies in space and time and politics. Her work and activism are tender and confident like a practiced lover, alive and breathing.