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Uncanny Magazine #39

Uncanny Magazine Issue 39: March/April 2021

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The March/April 2021 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Catherynne M. Valente, Dominica Phetteplace, Caroline M. Yoachim, Carrie Vaughn, Rati Mehrotra, and Sarah Pinsker. Reprint fiction by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Essays by Tansy Rayner Roberts, Sid Jain, Marieke Nijkamp, and Jay Edidin, poetry by Tamara Jerée, Brandon O'Brien, Terese Mason Pierre, and Ali Trotta, interviews with Caroline M. Yoachim by Tina Connolly, and Sarah Pinsker by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Paul Lewin, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Contents:
The Uncanny Valley / Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
The Sin of America / Catherynne M. Valente
The Perils of a Hologram Heart / Dominica Phetteoplace
Colors of the Immortal Palette / Caroline M. Yoachim
The Book of the Kraken / Carrie Vaughn
Eighteen Days of Barbereek / Rati Mehrotra
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather / Sarah Pinkser
They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass / Alaya Dawn Johnson
Deadly Frocks and Other Tales of Murder Clothes / Tansy Rayner Roberts
Seduced by the Ruler's Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson's Masquerade / Sid Jain
Protector of Small Steps / Marieke Nijkamp
Please Be Kind to the Singularity / Jay Eddin
The Most Humane Methods Could Involve a Knife / Tamara Jerée
Lagahoo Culture (Part II) / Brandon O'Brien
Future Saints / Terese Mason Pierre
Of Monsters I Loved / Ali Trotta

202 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 2, 2021

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About the author

Lynne M. Thomas

101 books219 followers
In my day job, I am the Head of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Rare Book and Manuscript Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the largest public university rare book collections in the country. I used to manage pop culture special collections that include the papers of over 70 SF/F authors at Northern Illinois University. I also teach a Special Collections course as an adjunct in the iSchool at Illinois, and used to do so at SJSU.

I'm an eleven-time Hugo Award winner, the Co-Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Uncanny Magazine with my husband Michael Damian Thomas. The former Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (2011-2013), I co-edited the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords, Whedonistas, and Chicks Dig Comics. I moderated the Hugo-Award winning SF Squeecast and contribute to the Verity! Podcast. You can learn more about my shenanigans at lynnemthomas.com.

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5 stars
48 (42%)
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43 (37%)
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18 (15%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
Profile Image for Trish.
2,289 reviews3,709 followers
January 28, 2022
This review is for The Sin of America.

Ah, Valente. The multi-talented writer - equally adapt at writing long(er) novels and short stories. This was not her shortest work but definitely a shorter and snappy one. The ingenius part, as my teacher once said is, "the shorter the story, the more important every single word". Valente either knew him, too, or it's just her regular magic with words, because she embodies this spirit.

Ruby-Rose Martineau sits in the Blue Bison Diner & Souvenir Shoppe just outside of a town called Sheridan and eats the Sin of America. And yes, this is how I pictured her:

Her parents own a nearby butterfly farm - which immediately made the entire family intriguing - but it's Ruby-Rose having run away (and why and what happened to her until she sits in that diner) that makes this tale riveting.

Gorgeous, simple writing, not as whimsical as in some of Valente's other works, helps bring all the tragedy and heartbreak to a point. And it's perfect for the bleak atmosphere it conjures up. I mean, the diner itself is out in the middle of nowhere, practically. And don't get me started on the sin-eating itself - it's as "deliciously" horrendous as I had hoped!

America can swallow you up, some say. But here, it's America that has to get swallowed and digested. Thank you for your service.

This is terrible and this is beautiful and so raw and honest, it made my heart hurt.

You can read it for free here: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/t...
331 reviews43 followers
November 20, 2023
*caveat: the rating and review are for "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather"

This bad boy won a Hugo AND a Nebula in 2021 and lemme tell you, it was well fucking earned!! I had such blast reading this. What a fun use of the form. I think this story will hold an extra special place in the hearts of nerds who spend their time on forums where people speculate about such pressing topics as "White Walkers -- zombies or otherwise formed of organic human matter?" and "The Coming of The Long Night -- a countdown" (I myself have very fond memories of being a pimply 15yo who lived on that shit, hence the instant recognition and warmth towards the contributors to the Oaken Hearts thread).
I keep imagining a concept like this but around an existing creepy poem such a Rossetti's Goblin Market?? That would be so rad. Somebody go write that fanfic already!
ALSO the story contains an actual working link for a performace of Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather??? LOVE LOVE LOVE. Multimedia storytelling, bbyyyy

EDIT NOVEMBER 2023 bcs I *did* stumble across a longform(!!) fic written in this form and it was as delightful as you would imagine. I'm told by non-Vorkosigan reading pals who've read this that familiarity with the source is not necessary, so what are you waiting for, besties??
Profile Image for Silvana.
1,232 reviews1,227 followers
June 12, 2022
I read the stories, all this year's Hugo nominees.

Individual ratings for each:

The Sin of America / Catherynne M. Valente: I don't get it and was bored. *
Colors of the Immortal Palette / Caroline M. Yoachim: Interesting take of immortal, vampire like beings who were painters. Very atmospheric. ****
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather / Sarah Pinsker: My favorite of the bunch although the first time I tried to read I was so confused with the format (basically a message board). It grew up on me and I was fascinated with the myths and history bits but also chuckled on the interaction in the comments. *****
Profile Image for Bradley.
Author 10 books4,629 followers
January 28, 2022
I'm just reviewing for Valente's Sin of America here.

I couldn't help diving right into middle America, feeling the down-home goodness first-hand.

Muahahahaha

Yup. Valente is great. Lip-smacking good.
Profile Image for Ron.
Author 1 book155 followers
April 11, 2022
It feels funny to be searching for traces of Rydell where he was searching for traces of truth in this ballad, like we’re all chasing each other
In the form of a social media chat about the titular poem, the short story takes the reader deeply into a world that may or may not have been/be.
11 Sweet William was supporters’ nickname for Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, known as Butcher Cumberland to his Tory enemies! He died relatively young, with no children. Possible link? –Dynamum
--BarrowBoy marked this as a stretch–

Not really fantasy nor science fiction, but insightful and funny. With an undercurrent of suspense. Well done.
That’s awfully reductive, and I’m not sure what allegory you’re seeing.
(2022 Hugo Awards Short Story finalist)
Profile Image for Hirondelle (not getting notifications).
1,189 reviews283 followers
April 13, 2022
Edited review for another short story:

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker available here https://uncannymagazine.com/article/w...

I was browsing the Nebula award nominees list (and everybody go read Mr Death by Alix E Harrow which is my ultimate favorite of what I read of the list, though I will check a few more) and this seemed really attractive to me: a epistolary, kind of, short story about a horror story creeping under an english ballad, all under the form of annotations in some kind of bulletin board (a bit Pale Fire which is a real weakness of mine as well).

And right here we have the biggest problem: that the annotations supposedly are presented not chronologically but according to the internal structure of the ballad. We get come character development in the interactions between commentators though not a lot, and it is implied that one of the commentators (HenryMartyn) himself disappears and as the same fate as Sweet William of the ballad and another missing folklorist, but his comments again show up throughout the ballad. And perhaps the story is too subtle for me and there was something I missed (I did get it about Jenny and her sisters though...) but I thought while the idea is ambitious and the execution not awful, that the storytelling, the structure ends up being problematic and it falls short of the potential which made me pick it up as soon as I found out about it. And this story is not creepy enough, not mysterious enough, we do not relate to the characters (or even tell them apart that well), nor with some dazzling idea or notion. On a short story of 6K words, in a type of storytelling technique I love with an implied mystery, I had to force myself to keep going because I was bored.
Rating: 2.5/5 (good idea but it does not really work IMO).

Review for The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente available here https://www.uncannymagazine.com/artic...

Lots of style, a lot of style and vignettes of characters in some magical realism America, and a diner in Wyoming. Gory, kind of with verve. But it kind of missed me, maybe because I am not American, maybe because I thought the story was going someplace else and it was simpler (older, very old) than I thought it would be. Also the prose the writing was a bit too overwritten for my taste, too much style, too many repetitions.
Being Portuguese I wonder if she used the name Salazar intentionally (probably not), and I was googling if there was any possible similar meaning to Martineau (I can not find any obvious one, so probably all just a coincidence).
Rating: 3.5 or 4 probably, it just did not totally work for me.

Profile Image for Tar Buendía.
1,283 reviews77 followers
April 25, 2022
Me parece un ejercicio de forma excepcional, con un concepto buenísimo, pero como relato no me ha enganchado en ningún momento.
Profile Image for Alex Sarll.
6,647 reviews342 followers
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April 3, 2022
I've had to stop following Pinsker's novels because they're too prescient as regards our current dystopia – which, in one sense, nice problem for an SF writer to have, right? But the short stories cover more varied terrain, as witness this one, presented as the folk ballad Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather, and the discussion around it on a website devoted to folk songs. It's a creeping folk horror mystery, all isolated villages and deep woods, which also works as a study in the dynamics of online communities – not two things which you'd think would be natural partners, but Pinsker pulls it off beautifully.

[Once again, my review on a short story I have read has now been glomped into a publication I haven't. At least the identity of this one is still reasonably clear, but I do wish people would stop doing this when the stories are available separately]
Profile Image for Jess.
499 reviews92 followers
November 19, 2024
Rated for They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass by Alaya Dawn Johnson ★★★, Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker ★★★½, and The Sin of America by Catherynne Valente ★
Profile Image for Beth Tabler.
Author 12 books186 followers
April 11, 2021
Reviewing The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente

"There's a woman outside of Sheridan and she is eating the sin of America."

What is the sin of America?

That is the question of this story, and it was a question I asked myself repeatedly as I had to read it three times before I started to understand. That is not any knock to Cat Valente. Sometimes great things take time to digest, and they have to be chewed thoroughly. Do I know what the sin of America is? Maybe. Maybe I think I do because I am an American and see glimpses of it. Whatever is happening in the story is not straightforward. Because doing something like eating the sin of America is not an easy or simple thing.

All we know is that we are in a "Blue Bison Diner & Souvenir Shoppe under a busted wagon wheel and a pair of wall-mounted commemorative plates. One's from the moon landing. The other's from old Barnum Brown discovering the first T-Rex skeleton up at Hell Creek." There is a woman whose life has been nothing but pain and half-truths and disappointments sitting in a vinyl booth. Her name is Ruby Rose and "she ran away from the Ultimate Butterfly Experience as soon as she could chain one dollar to the next." She was terrified of the glittery swarms that flitted and alighted after stroking you with their sticky tongues. Some butterflies drink the nectar of flowers, but many will eat anything. Ruby Rose was called upon to eat the sins of America.

Ruby Rose is sitting in this cracked vinyl booth in this no-where diner staring at the menu. They told her that her meal could not be a small one. "Ruby-Rose looks over the menu. She isn't in the least hungry. But it cannot be a small meal. They told her that when they came for her, and all the delicate endangered emerald swallowtails circled their heads like green rings around terrible planets. It cannot be small and it cannot be short. It takes as long as it takes. You can't do this thing halfway. We're counting on you."

The Waitress who is serving Ruby-Rose is named Emeline. She nervously cracks a pinky and asks Ruby what she wants to start with. Ruby asks for some wine, but they don't serve soft things like that here. The owner of the diner, Mr. Herbert James Gage, when informed by certified mail that it was going down in his restaurant, picked up some hard alcohol in preparation for the event.

The food starts to come out: a rib-eye steak, peppermint milkshake, and tomato soup. It is grotesque in its amount, and the food keeps coming. Ruby keeps swallowing. It is too much food, it is all too much, it won't fit inside her, and she can't hold it. All this was the lottery or the anti-lottery. Astronomical odds that it would be her.

What happens when she is done? "We'll be happy, they say. We'll be better. We'll all be happy forever and everything will be okay." But will we? Probably until the next person has to come and eat our sins.

The imagery is grotesque, slovenly. The woman, Ruby Rose, has a life of tragic mediocrity. Then as the story progresses and climaxes, Ruby finishes her food and so much more. It ends and begins again. The cycle. Does it mean anything? Does Ruby Rose's sacrifice mean anything in the grand scheme of things? I don't know; there will be more sin.

The Sin of American is one of those stories that is difficult to parse; you can read it a dozen times and get more out of the language. It has the ere of dark and too salty, or sticky sweet. It is the idea of fried twinkies and made for tv movies. It has a vague christ mythos, but that has been sanitized, homogenized, and run through a Jerry Springer talk show. It has lost all of its original meaning and become an ugly thing. Someone must suffer. And in this scenario, for all of us to continue to sin and enjoy our lives, Ruby Rose must eat that sin and suffer.

It is a harrowing story that is puzzling and will continue to puzzle me as a reader. But, one thing is for sure. Cat Valente is a hell of a writer.
Profile Image for bee.
301 reviews16 followers
April 14, 2021
Fiction
The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente: 4.5/5
The Perils of a Hologram Heart by Dominica Phetteplace: 3.25/5
Colors of the Immortal Palette by Caroline M. Yoachim: A very resounding 5/5
The Book of the Kraken by Carrie Vaughn: 3.75/5
Eighteen Days of Barbareek by Rati Mehrotra: 3/5
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker: 4.75/5
They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass by Alaya Dawn Johnson: 3.25/5

Non-fiction
Deadly Frocks and Other Tales of Murder Clothes by Tansy Rayner Roberts: 2.75/5
Seduced by the Ruler's Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson's Masquerade by Sid Jain: 4/5
Protector of Small Steps by Marieke Nijkamp: 3/5
Please Be Kind to the Singularity by Jay Edidin: 5/5

Poetry
I don't rate poetry because I don't read enough of it and a lot of it goes over my head but I did really enjoy Of Monsters I Loved by Ali Trotta.

Average rating: 3.82/5, rounded up to a 4/5.

This is probably one of, if not my absolute favorite issue of Uncanny that I've read. Usually I read one thing I like or love and then the rest of the works are misses for me but this issue had a lot of bangers. Caroline M. Yoachim's "Colors of the Immortal Palette" is my favorite thing I've read in an issue of Uncanny and one of my new favorite short stories/novelettes of all time, and Sarah Pinsker's "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" was incredibly creative and captivating in its own right. I had a really great time reading this issue!
Profile Image for Nicole (bookwyrm).
1,254 reviews4 followers
Read
April 12, 2022
I was mostly interested in reading the short fiction. (Though I did also enjoy Tansy Rayner Roberts' nonfiction piece.) The quality of the pieces varied, as expected, though few of them stood out for me as ones I might want to revisit. My favorite of the lot was “The Book of the Kraken” by Carrie Vaughn. Of the three Hugo Award-nominated pieces, the only one I cared for at all was “Colors of the Immortal Palette” by Caroline M. Yoachim, and even then that's not my pick for its category.
Profile Image for Biblioteca de Priscilla.
4 reviews1 follower
Shelved as 'short-fiction'
June 26, 2022
The Sin of America / Catherynne M. Valente
Colors of the Immortal Palette / Caroline M. Yoachim
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather / Sarah Pinkser
Profile Image for Bodine.
358 reviews5 followers
May 12, 2022
the form, the atmosphere, everything is perfect
Profile Image for Afreen Aftab.
298 reviews34 followers
April 15, 2021
Fiction

The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente - 4/5
I was left completely puzzled by this one. Maybe it's cause I'm, not American myself? Every time I got close to getting a grasp on the story it just fizzled away but the writing is classic Valente awesomeness

The Perils of a Hologram Heart by Dominica Phetteplace - 4/5
This was so so interesting to read with topics like Immortality, the future, death, identity, self image etc being explored. Whats it like for someone who has never known oldage, sickness and death and whats it like for someone whos never known immortality but now has the option of it. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side if youre a human

Colors of the Immortal Palette by Caroline M. Yoachim - 4.5/5
“If I don’t carve out space for myself, they will steal whatever inspiration they like from my culture and my art and erase me from the conversation entirely.”
Story of women in artistic circles being seen as only models instead of being appreciated for their art which are just as good if not better than their male counterparts. Loved the storywriting in this one; it was like watching the timelapse of a painting.

Eighteen Days of Barbareek by Rati Mehrotra - 4/5
Ive read a little bit of the Mahabharatha before but this was new and interesting pov. Something in the veins of Madeline Miller but with Hindu Mythology.

They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass by Alaya Dawn Johnson 3/5
Classic dystopian but with focus on women's bodies regarding pregnancy, abortion but I just didnt get the point of this story. Its was a bit all over the place.

The Book of the Kraken by Carrie Vaughn - 3.5/5
Smh these colonizers just wont stop

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker - 3/5
Honestly the one word I can use to describe this story is 'Unsatisfying'. The plot is okay but just as it gets interesting it ends in a cliffhanger and im like why did i have to spend precious time reading about some random british ballad that makes no sense and just when someones about to make sense it ends. ugh

Poetry
Some great works. My faves were lagahoo culture (Part II) by Brandon O’Brien and Of Monsters I Loved by Ali Trotta

Essays

Seduced by the Ruler’s Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson’s Masquerade by Sid Jain - 4/5
I think everyone who has grown up in post colonial countries can relate to this to some extant. Damn them colonizers!

Deadly Frocks and Other Tales of Murder Clothes by Tansy Rayner Roberts - 4.5/5
deadly green ball gowns. Murderous victorian era ladies or innocent victims of fashion or ignorant elites who have the blood of poor labourers on their hands.

Please Be Kind to the Singularity by Jay Edidin - 5/5
full rating because this opened by eyes to so many things. Also this essay is so good I could quote the entire thing but i'll leave with this.
'Nobody who describes you as “robotic” means that you are strong and innovative and resilient. They aren’t acknowledging the alienness of your sentience or commenting on its specific qualities; they’re questioning its existence.'

Protector of Small Steps by Marieke Nijkamp 3.5/5
Im sure this is gonna be helpful to read for the right kind of people but thats just not me.

Interviews
Loved Caroline M. Yoachim's interview especially this quote:
Representation, being able to see yourself in fiction, is hugely important, but it often feels like a no-win situation—if you try to do something ambitious from a marginalized perspective, the story is too complicated; if you put your spin on something familiar, it’s dismissed as derivative.
Profile Image for Pau Lethani.
402 reviews24 followers
April 21, 2022
4'75/5

Short Story Hugo Awards Nominee 2022.

Wow what a ride! It felt like when you sneak into some forum/post, start reading all the comments and two hours later you look back up and realise you've been absorbed in this theoretical world and now you've come back to reality. It kept me hooked from the beginning to the point that I needed the song to be real and I looked it up on Google with disastrous results. If I don't give it the full 5 stars is only because I expected a final twist or something at the end. But it was really good anyways!
Profile Image for Ian.
240 reviews7 followers
April 17, 2022
Very effective macabre tale presented as comments on an online lyrics forum into the eponymous folk song "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather". In horror curiosity is dangerous, particularly when characters do not realise they are in a horror story, so it is not too much of a surprise that research into the strange song's origins led to a grim yet mysterious denouement.

There is a recording of the song on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Prl...
Profile Image for Saralynn.
150 reviews2 followers
April 14, 2022
I’ll admit this threw me for a loop. I didn’t understand the formatting initially or what the purpose was. But the story drew me in considerably. Goosebumps!
Profile Image for Meredith Katz.
Author 16 books206 followers
April 6, 2021
A very sweet story and also an exciting sea adventure! I enjoyed how tightly the threads of the themes pulled together by the end.
Profile Image for John.
536 reviews19 followers
August 3, 2021
The Sin of America: It took ages for me to understand what was going on, but it was powerful when I did. 4/5

The Perils of a Hologram Heart: Short and sweet, but I didn’t find much to connect to. 3/5

Colors of the Immortal Palette: It reminded me somewhat of the stories in The King in Yellow. On top of that, it was beautiful and had so much to say about identity and truth. I really loved it. 5/5

They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass: This didn't really make an impact on me. It was powerful, but I found the backdrop a bit too insubstantial and so it didn't land well. 3/5

The Book of the Kraken: I enjoyed this little story, I definitely got the impression that it was part of a larger world but nothing in the issue actually indicated that was so. I think I'd like to read more about Margaret. 4/5

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather: I'm a sucker for a story with an amazing narrative structure, and I'm a sucker for stories that unfold in your head without too much prompting from the author, and this nailed both, with side-orders of melancholy and mystery and a desire to know more. Just so, so great. I loved it. 5/5
Profile Image for Shiva.
192 reviews7 followers
December 23, 2022
This review is for Sin of America only.
I read this as part of my Hugo and Nebula Award reading list.

The story left me puzzled, and I am not sure I want to read it again to unpuzzle myself. Valente writing is great, yet the story is too sad, freaky and gruesome for me. I did not expect all that happened right in that little diner in a middle of nowhere really.

Valente imagination is great but her writing too grotesque for me.
“No one but her sees the bowls fill with fire and brick and charred wood, the fruit rot inside the pastry, the bread cry out for its mother.
No one feels the eggs turn to radioactive sand and hot shards of gold and silver in her mouth.”

What I dislike in the story is how ordinary and normal these violent events are described.
“There are good God-fearing people outside of Sheridan and they are killing the sin of America, a place born with half a heart that demands to be made whole, year in and year out. They are crushing the sin of America into a paste. They are releasing themselves from it. They are ridding themselves of it forever. It’s not their fault. Nothing’s their fault. It never has been. It never will be.”

2 stars
⭐️ ⭐️
409 reviews2 followers
July 8, 2022
Read for the 2022 Hugos - Story: "Where Oaken Hearts do Gather"

When I started reading this I had a series case of "what the heck am I reading?" going on. It isn't long before I was pulled into this world of people trying to understand an old song. I love the general premise that they may be able to determine the historical origins of this very weird, very creepy song.

And it is very much, not where I thought this story would go when I started it. Bravo.
89 reviews7 followers
April 16, 2021
Je n'ai pas été enchantée par ce numéro, globalement. Il m'a manqué un vrai coup de coeur. 2,5/5

The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente: ★★☆☆☆ (j'ai rien compris)

The Perils of a Hologram Heart by Dominica Phetteplace: ★★☆☆☆ (j'ai rien compris, again)

Colors of the Immortal Palette by Caroline M. Yoachim: ★★★☆☆ (beaucoup de similitude avec L'Oeuvre de Zola dans la première partie, le reste j'ai lu en diagonale)

The Book of the Kraken by Carrie Vaughn: ★★★☆☆ (entertaining, does the job)

Eighteen Days of Barbareek by Rati Mehrotra: ★★☆☆☆ (borinnnnng)

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker: DNF (pas mon style)

They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass by Alaya Dawn Johnson: ★★★★☆ (entertaining and efficient)
Profile Image for Matthew.
122 reviews
June 1, 2021
First time reading Uncanny and I ADORED it. Yoachim's "Colors of the Immortal Palette" was such a tender and alluring depiction of immortality, fame, and art, and was by far the best of the issue. Mehrotra's retelling in "Eighteen Days of Barbareek" was superb, and made me go research more about Hindu mythology. "The Perils of a a Hologram Heart" was one of my favorite kinds of pulpy Sci-Fi, and felt firmly in the tradition of much older stories. The way that time oozed into centuries was beautifully written, I could feel the characters experiencing eternity and making the decisions they did at the end. Valente's "The Sin of America" contained gorgeous imagery, but on the whole I found it confusing. I think I must have missed something in it, because I am not entirely what it was about, though even so I think it was rather good. A stellar issue!
Profile Image for Demarmot.
11 reviews6 followers
November 9, 2021
(very short) Reviews for:

The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente :
Harrowing, lyrical, disturbing. I had to put down the issue after reading this and go take a walk and breathe. Very much not my thing, very much what I expected from the author. Sometimes I stop and think about it, about how the food was written, about the physicality and resignation and despair of the story. I think it will stay with me for a while, which is one of the best things you can say about a short story.

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker :
I'm at thepoint where everything written by Sarah Pinsker is an insta-read. This story did not disappoint. I loved the format, I loved the subtle but creeping sense of dread that builds up as you read, I love that you have to put it togheter yourself. A lot of things in such a small space, quite masterful, really.
Profile Image for baum.
122 reviews13 followers
May 2, 2021
standouts: the sin of america; seduced by a ruler's gaze (nonfiction)

other favorites: the perils of a hologram heart

i found they shall salt the earth with seeds of glass particularly frustrating. i desperately wanted to know more about the glassmen and the post-apocalyptic world the characters are living in, but alas. too many unanswered questions for me
Profile Image for Happy Readergirl.
142 reviews7 followers
May 10, 2021
* Seduced by the Ruler's Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson's Masquerade by Sid Jain: 5/5 Wow!!
* Deadly Frocks and Other Tales of Murder Clothes by Tansy Rayner Roberts: 3/5
* The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente: 2/5
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