Short Reviews – July to September, 2024

Andrew Leon Hudson

T wo of the magazines mentioned in last issue’s short reviews return in the Autumn, delivering stories that – as captain of a rival ship – fill me with seething envy (but ahaha! I jest! We’re all comrades in editorial arms, back here where the readers see us not! And certainly where they see us not sharpening our back-knives).

Reversing the order of appearance this time, the first is featured at NewMyths.com, whose perspective takes in “Life from a side view mirror”. In this case the life in question is viewed from the distant end, as long years of services are somewhat rudely cast aside. In Tiny by William Wandless, the ageing housekeeper of Hazelton Hall is dismissed from her role by Lord Talbot, her replacement (both the act and the person) coming at the demand of the new Lady Talbot, eager to stamp her own authority on management of the family seat.

The sole symbol of her former employer’s gratitude is the gift of a small, portable cottage from which to see out her days, graciously permitted to rest somewhere on the grounds. Despite the sadness of the staff, and one member of the family, she continues to take pleasure in the small things in life. This change heralds the beginning of the estate’s decline, something which our narrator at least takes with her customary calm and forgiving demeanour – yet some unkindness is too much to abide, and when the venerable Mrs. Vulpe’s limits are finally reached the settling of scores delivers sharp, satisfying closure.

O n now to the second returnee, ergot., germinating hosts of innovative and experimental horror, which in all ways is very much on point for this story. In Saurophaster in Oculus, we first meet Philip Karras, a generally ordinary man with an only slightly unusual condition in his total reluctance to make eye contact with anyone around him – a condition that is quickly revealed to be based in his rather less ordinary belief that a discomforting speck in his left eye will bring about unspecified misfortune for anyone who happens to exchange glances with him for even a moment.

J. F. Gleeson’s story offers up quite the mix. The tiniest speck of the otherworldly contaminating the all encompassing mundane. Epistolary texts that write around the edges of what’s really going on. Supernatural horror treated as a fact of life, echoing more than one horror that genuinely is such. And in places prose that teeters at the dangerous point where rich tips over into excess, a region that (in my opinion) even the likes of Cormac McCarthy trod both sides of. It’s a strong style, and if occasionally very strong, not too much so to turn me off a thought-provoking, satisfying read. And not bad company to keep, is it?

And while I’m here… a passing nod to another ergot. story, their latest at time of writing: Boomtown, by Sarah M. K. Palmer, a piece of strange small-town fiction with hints of the classic Twilight Zone to it. Signposted perhaps a little too clearly (again, in my opinion), but as with Saurophaster in Oculus this was a really pleasurable read. ergot. contains gems.

F inally, according to its slug line, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly deals in three things: Prose. Poetry. And Pulp. In the case of their final p-word, that’s often in the sense of beaten to a, as even a cursory glance across their thematically focused wares will reveal that adversaries being pounded into paste by mighty-thewed warriors is something of a trademark. But then Heroic Fantasy is something of a hack ’em slash ’em genre, isn’t it? There’s a good chance quarterly is how the losers get picked up and carried off for burial.

And while that’s more or less what’s on the cards for you with Tim Hanlon’s The Wailing Keep, that takes nothing away from what is a nice example of the other kind of pulp that HFQ peddles: good old-fashioned adventure. Here we encounter Foscari the Gate-Keep, perhaps once Conanesque but now built more for comfort than for battle, as he wakes to find his master’s kindly daughter kidnapped by a vengeful sorcerer-type whose henchmen leave only mutilated bodies in their wake. Seen only as a fat liability by the real soldiery, Foscari takes it upon himself to pledge his oath to bring the damsel back home alive, and being along for the ride as he rolls back the years is to have a good old-fashioned time.

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