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catevari's review
4.0
This issue started out great. I really, deeply loved "Ten Days' Grace" by Foz Meadows, with its The Handmaid's Tale-like plausible dystopia, and Amanda Forrest's "Sister of Mercy". Duane de Four's essay on Orphan Black didn't light any new fires for me, but I love the show and I share de Four's concerns about its future direction. I'm usually a little nonplussed by poetry, but I enjoyed this issue's offerings.
I felt like Charlotte Ashley's "Clavis Aurea: A Review of Short Fiction" was less effective unless you're already familiar with the works she was talking about--which I was not--so it didn't do much for me, and the excerpt from "Zombies and Calculus" by Colin Adams was okay, but I find myself disinterested in stories where the main characters seem to have zero awareness of the pop culture references you'd expect just from being alive in their culture--as this one did. Also, I'm not a math geek. So, not my favorite, though that's very personal.
I enjoyed "The Sandbirds of Mirelle", but it seemed a little simple and facile. Somewhat similarly, I wanted more from "The Good Matter", though I found it's ideas cool and intriguing.
I didn't like Erik Amundsen's "Jupiter and Gentian" at all. I actually would've finished the issue a week sooner if I hadn't dragged my heels over this story, but I just couldn't get through it for the longest time and I only finally finished it to say that I did.
So overall, the great promise of the first stories didn't deliver (for me) all the way through to the end, but it was still a great overall issue and well worth reading.
I felt like Charlotte Ashley's "Clavis Aurea: A Review of Short Fiction" was less effective unless you're already familiar with the works she was talking about--which I was not--so it didn't do much for me, and the excerpt from "Zombies and Calculus" by Colin Adams was okay, but I find myself disinterested in stories where the main characters seem to have zero awareness of the pop culture references you'd expect just from being alive in their culture--as this one did. Also, I'm not a math geek. So, not my favorite, though that's very personal.
I enjoyed "The Sandbirds of Mirelle", but it seemed a little simple and facile. Somewhat similarly, I wanted more from "The Good Matter", though I found it's ideas cool and intriguing.
I didn't like Erik Amundsen's "Jupiter and Gentian" at all. I actually would've finished the issue a week sooner if I hadn't dragged my heels over this story, but I just couldn't get through it for the longest time and I only finally finished it to say that I did.
So overall, the great promise of the first stories didn't deliver (for me) all the way through to the end, but it was still a great overall issue and well worth reading.
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