Rise Reviews

Everything about this movie made me wish it was never made. Perhaps I should have taken a clue from the fact that the Director remains anonymous. Maybe I should have read the introductory disclaimer as an actual warning against viewing instead of as flavorless flavor text. Regardless of what early indicators I may have ignored [...]

Picking up where we left off with last week’s review, “Memories of Chalice” by Peter M. Ball is a tale of memory. Or more specifically a lack of it and the trade in it. The narrator describes his fall from prominence pushing exotic memories. The world suggested here would be an interesting one to see in a larger format. It deals with memories being traded on an open market, influenced by a mysterious machine called the Nexus.

“In the Dark” is the first in a series of poems by Ki Russell that suggest speculative topics. None of them display the opaqueness that is the bane of most fantasy poetry. “Infatuectomy” and “Drowning in Pearls” also appear in the issue.

Roarke by Frances Pauli Divine Destinies, 2010 $3.99 (ebook) Frances Pauli cranks up the tension right off the bat with her sci fi romance, Roarke, with a lot of questions begging for answers. But what hints at the beginning of a nail-biting thriller instead turns into an introspective story where the problems are more about [...]

This collection’s biggest weakness is its length, as a result, the stories blend together in the reader’s memory and the collection can sometimes feel neverending. However, the writing is strong and there are some solid, entertaining tales here, many with unique premises, making this a unique anthology from many fantasy antho’s I’ve read in recent [...]

Electric Velocipede is the type of magazine that could not exist without the internet. That is to say, it’s focus is so eclectic that it would have a hard time gathering a following without the wider exposure the internet allows. It’s fortunate for us, then, who live in the internet age that we get to experience the thing made real.

The latest double issue of the Hugo Award winning magazine is a monster. There are 32 stories, poems, shorts, and non-fiction pieces to uncover. Undoubtedly, there is something here for everyone.

I’m struggling with how to open my review. Whatever I write I find myself instantly deleting. What I’ve probably managed to express right is how hard it is to review “Cthulhurotica”. It’s to do with the fact that I loved reading Carrie Cuinn’s debut as an editor. It also has a lot to do with the first thought that entered my mind, when I heard about Lovecraft erotica for the very first time: ‘tentacle porn has struck the Western World.’ Here, though, I have to agree with the editor, who in her introduction says:

“Readers expecting a collection of monster sex might, after all, be disappointed. The characters within these pages are all quite human, though they sometimes dally with creatures that are not. This book turned out to be about the kind of people who live in a world where monster sex is possible, and it looks at how that world and those people would have to operate.”

My first impression of the Ideomancer mainpage is the one that stays with me – ooo, fancy!

Support the Little Guy is an e-zine devoted to promoting the Twitter campaign by the same name. It is published on a bi-monthly basis, and contains 3-6 stories, poetry at times, and reviews of short fiction that are published online. Episode #2, titled Jingle Bells, contains three short stories and five reviews. The stories are [...]

Unpleasant Tales is a fantastic collection of short stories by Brendan Connell. While each of the twenty-two stories is different in subject matter, a feeling of surreality permeates throughout. The first story, “The Maker of Fine Instruments” is a creepy yet beautifully-written tale of Willi, who seeks help from a reclusive luthier after his beloved cello breaks. Charles Martens is a brilliant musician and teacher, but is also extremely eccentric. Willi goes to Charles to get his cello fixed and ends up taking music lessons from Charles. The instruments he gets to play are nothing he’s ever seen before. “The Maker of Fine Instruments” weaves a feeling of dread throughout and ends with a horrifying visual that will haunt one’s dreams long after the story is over.

“A Dish of Spouse” follows a woman who prepares a feast for her friends with her husband as the main dish. Every moment of the butchering and preparation for cooking is written in loving and grotesque detail. The guests are perfectly aware of the main course and look forward to it. “A Dish of Spouse” is a blackly humorous story that I enjoyed very much.

Bizarro, surreal, stream of consiousness, non sequitur. Tom Bradley’s fiction is a pick your descriptor grab bag. Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch strings together nine tales of debauched and hallucinatory imagery with somewhat mixed results.

The challenge of writing truely experimental or non-traditional fiction is keeping the reader involved in some kind of sequence of events that is understandable. Many amateur attempts leave the reader blinking in confusion, wondering what is a nugget of plot and what is just extraneous information. Thankfully, Mr. Bradley is no amateur.