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Small Wonders is a new sff flash fiction and poetry publication. It's hard to review any sort of magazine as a whole cohesively. Like a lot of publications they put up their work online later so you can go read this all now for free if you want. My overall feeling about issue 0 was that there were quite a few gems; here's a few of my favorites:

The Mirror Test is a story that sticks to your bones. It's ostensibly a story from the point of view of a dog getting a traumatic bath, but it's also a dissociative story about identity and perception and communication.

The Lumberjack's Guide to Dryad Spotting is a story about queer resilience and follows gay lumberjacks in a camp where people hunt reclusive dryads to kill and sell.

Finally, I also liked this metaphor in this snippet from this poem:

this is a place where she can finally be at ease in a body made resilient through years that've thickened her like a tree trunk

Jinn-Bot of Shantiport is an exuberant action-filled science fiction novel with Aladdin and ~Murderbot vibes[*]. The narrator here is Moku the flying bot, who in service to squabbling siblings Lina and Bador, the other two main characters. Bador is the monkey bot brother with dreams of escape to space and of bot liberation, while carrying a lot of anger at how his family treats him for not being human. Lina's the daughter of failed revolutionaries who works hard to avoid surveillance and has her own ideas of how to make the city better. And that's all before the lamp granting wishes shows up.

This book reminded me a lot of Suzanne Palmer's Finder book; both are set in a city with warring factions, there's some weird alien technology, and both are stories filled with banter and action. They are not the same story by any stretch, but there's a lot of parallel vibes and I think if you enjoyed one you'd probably enjoy the other.

Extremely minor asides: I appreciated that although the book focuses on Shantiport for the whole story, there's still a taste of politics in the larger universe. I also enjoyed the fact that this felt like a third person perspective book, and then halfway into the first chapter the book busts out a first person pronoun for Moku with no warning. Love that introduction.

My disappointment here, if anything, is that the denouement of the story let me down. Some bits were overexplained (Lina) and the story opened up too many loose ends that didn't get tied off. On top of that, several of the final chapter's developments felt surprising and out of place for both Bador and Moku. It just (subjectively, for me personally) didn't quite give me the closure and satisfaction that it felt like the book was leading up to. Maybe this would land differently for other folks.

(A few extra bonus spoilery thoughts in this post too.)

Overall, this was still great fun and I'm glad I read it.

[*] (Loooook, I hate always saying that any book where there's a non-human narrator who looks askance at human behavior and has a bit of a wry tone is "like Murderbot", but it's mildly true here? You can't really say "it's like Star Trek's Data" because that involves a lot of "but that's not logical, Captain" and that's not really the vibe; Murderbot, Emergent Properties, and this book all are about bots dealing with emotions while also being non-human. Murderbot definitely deals with its own trauma and emotional avoidance in a way that these other stories aren't really about at all, but there's just still some similar "wry non-human outsider" vibes here that I'm not sure how to gesture at non-referentially even as they're all very different stories.)

The Hollow Places is a horror novel by T. Kingfisher. The premise is that newly divorced Kara goes back to live in her uncle's curio museum; when a mysterious hole in the wall appears and goes to what seems to be another dimension, she and her barista friend investigate. Overall, horror is not usually my cuppa but this was an enjoyable creepy ride (and I'll read anything by T. Kingfisher at this point).

But he groaned and stomped around the hall for a few minutes, then said, "Okay. But this is how people die in horror movies, you know."

"You're not the teensiest bit curious?

"I'm incredibly curious! I've just also seen horror movies!"

This book is intensely creepy at times, and the horror elements all the more unsettling for being fuzzy and unseen and unknowable. I wish a little that there was a little bit more character development or reveal (such as a more tight thematic coupling of Kara's backstory or marriage with the present events). However, I really enjoyed both the banter and also the centering of the museum as a welcoming and protective home rather than playing it just for creeps.

The author's note said that this was based on the 1907 short story The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood and I wish I had read that first so that I could understand some references that would have passed me by otherwise.

Feed Them Silence is the best fiction I have read all year.

It's a near-future sf novella about a researcher who is using new technology to neurologically interface with a near-extinct wolf pack, in order to "become in kind" with them and understand how they make their way in a tough world. Thematically, this novella is dense and chewy and interleaves so much into such a short length. It's about relationships and power dynamics, the fantasy of truly understanding animals (and other humans [and ourselves]), but also about global warming and the objectivity of research.

For me, this is science fiction at its best, using a what-if future science to ask troubling and incisive questions. Even as it presents its own conflicting opinions, it asks far more questions than it has answers for. The novella also walks a tight line in generating compassion and understanding for the protagonist Sean, even while she makes poor decisions and even while she is being (justifiably) emotionally eviscerated by her wife.

This TOR interview with Lee Mandelo was extremely worth reading and added a lot of context for me about how the author thinks and the book's background. I think it has some minor expectation spoilers, but can be read independently. That interview itself quotes from this interview with Donna Haraway which was also worth reading and gets more into the communication fantasy of understanding animals.

River of Silver is a companion book to the Daevabad trilogy with a number of short stories from alternative perspectives (or alternate versions of the novel) that didn't make sense to include in the main trilogy. I don't think it makes any sense to read if you haven't finished the trilogy, but it's a nice side piece to the series to flesh out the world without diluting the (already long) trilogy.

And while I wanted to set them in a fully realized world among a rich constellation of friends and family, lovers and enemies, all with their own histories, quirks, and agendas, I did decide early on that this particular story would focus on Nahri and Ali, and later Dara.

I have a great affection for my side characters, however, and a firm belief that writing things out is the most organic way to let stories grow and breathe.

It's interesting to read this perspective from the author after my own previous comments of "wanting to see more from the side characters". This series did an exceptional job of having all of its characters feel very fleshed out and real (even if you don't see what they're up to off page). Part of the reason for that clearly is that SA Chakraborty took the time to write these stories even if they didn't make it into the book at the end.

I won't list everything, but I think my favorite stories here are: * Jamshid and Muntadhir!!! * a better conclusion to the Nahri/Ali romance plot * perspectives from Manizheh and Ghassan that give their characters a little more depth than the series has room for