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mary_soon_lee's review
Unusually, this issue of F&SF has no novellas, instead containing half-a-dozen novelettes and four short stories. My favorites were the first three entries in the issue, all of them novelettes. Nadia Afifi's "The Bahrain Underground Bazaar" is a touching science fiction story in which enduring themes of death and family are counterposed with high-technology elements. Moving from the Middle East to Italy, "La Regina Ratto" by Nick DiChario is a fantasy tale with talking rats that I found unexpectedly charming. And Lyndsie Manusos's "How to Burn Down the Hinterlands" is a darker fantasy about the forging of a magical sword, and about those whose lives are spent or broken by the people in power. A justifiably, satisfyingly angry story.
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