Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2021

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

An interesting issue, with good stories by Brian Trent, Matthew Hughes, Nuzo Onoh, E. A. Bourland and Carl Taylor.

• “The Haunted Hills Community and Country Club” by Lincoln Michel: a real estate agent gets a job selling haunted houses at a community. As first, it goes well, as the houses sell at below market rates and the owners don’t mind the hauntings. But then comes a horror that no real estate agent can overcome.
• “The Scorpion and the Syrinx” by Brian Trent: a fascinating story of an alternate world where the Roman Empire reached the Americas and allied with Native Americans against the Aztec empire. On a river between both sides, a supernatural investigator looks into the death of a tutor, and discovers magic being used to bring death and settle historical scores between enemies.
• “Ice Fishing on Europa” by Erin Barbeau: a researcher in Europa meets an unusual friend, and together they learn about each other’s loneliness as they make a journey together.
• “The Forlorn” by Matthew Hughes: a light fantasy about an investigator sent by a magical scholar to find a common acquaintance. The journey would lead into a desert that used to hold a temple that made the mistake of trying to contain a god that did not want to be there. The end of the adventure hints of more magical journeys in the future.
• “Seedling” by Octavia Cade: an alternative Hansel and Gretel tale, where Hansel is left in a forest, finds an unusual girl he calls Gretel, and they both do others things to survive when there is no Gingerbread House.
• “The Abomination” by Nuzo Onoh: an African fantasy-horror story about a person who becomes known as The Abomination and shunned by villagers. But one day, she meets a spirit king and makes a request that, in time, would lead her to fulfil her revenge on the village for shunning her and later using her to appease the gods for a famine that now ravages the village.
• “To the Honorable and Esteemed Monsters under My Bed” by E. A. Bourland: a series of letter exchanges between a boy and monsters under his bed starts off sounding humorous but gradually gets a horrifying edge when they make agreements with each other to stop bullies and an apparently abusive parent.
• “Split the Baby” by Carl Taylor: in the future, when parents divorce, both can take digital representations of their child with them. But things take a turn when the child disagrees with being divided up in this fashion and comes up with his own solution to keep the family together.
• “And in Rain, Blank Pages” by Lora Gray: an urban fantasy about a young person escaping an abusive relationship, only to stumble into another unusual one with a man with a strange ability with words.
• “Her Dragon” by Amal Singh: in a land where imaginary creatures can be created by Makers, a young girl struggles to form a dragon like her grandmother. When she is thrust into the role of Maker, she goes on a journey to discover how and what she is meant to make.

Magazine read from 2021/09/08 to 2021/09/20