Siobhan Carroll, “The Year of Silent Birds.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 9, 2014.
This is an epic fantasy short story, if that isn’t an oxymoron, a story that hints at a much bigger world than it can show in the space available without being incomplete. A woman comes back from the dead to save the son of her sister from execution, in the process learning that even the undead still aren’t save from politics. Carroll has a good eye for imagery and the opening with the protagonist moving through deep, silent snow while the birds in the forest have frozen on their branches will stay with me a while.
Dario Ciriello, “Free Verse.” Free Verse and Other Stories, Panverse, 2014.
Ever since I first read Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity I’ve been a sucker for parallel worlds/cross time travel craziness and this delivers in spades. It reminded me a lot of the sort of stories Keith Laumer used to write. For me, this is high praise.
C. S. E. Cooney, “Witch, Beast, Saint: an Erotic Fairy Tale.” Strange Horizons, July 21, 2014.
I’m not a real fan of modern fairy tales, nor of erotic fantasy perse, but this was worth overcoming my prejudices. Filthy, kinky, written in a way that you can believe the relationship between the witch, her enchanted man-beast and the saint who transforms him back to the man he used to be. Cooney is a writer I didn’t know anything about, but now need to read more of.