Category Archives: Science Fiction and Fantasy

October 8, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Galatea

Book cover for Galatea by Madeline Miller. Image on cover shows the author’s name and title in a thick gold font against a dark blue background. One the left and right side of the cover are gold flecks adorning the edges, and at the top of the scene is a snowy white mountain range. Title: Galatea

Author: Madeline Miller

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks

Publication Date: August 13, 2013

Genres: Fantasy, Historical

Length: 27 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

An enchanting short story from Madeline Miller that boldly reimagines the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion.

In ancient Greece, a skilled marble sculptor has been blessed by a goddess who has given his masterpiece — the most beautiful woman the town has ever seen — the gift of life. Now his wife, he expects Galatea to please him, to be obedience and humility personified. But she has desires of her own and yearns for independence.

In a desperate bid by her obsessive husband to keep her under control, Galatea is locked away under the constant supervision of doctors and nurses. But with a daughter to rescue, she is determined to break free, whatever the cost…

Content Warning: Sexism, emotional abuse, and imprisonment.

Review:

Possession isn’t love.

I loved the fact that Galatea’s perspective was explored in this short story as the original included some pretty sexist ideas about how women are supposed to think and behave in order to be considered good members of a family. Flipping those notions on their head was an excellent way to explore why they were wrong and what might have actually been going on with Pygmalion.

As much as I wanted to give this one a higher rating, there were too many underdeveloped ideas here for me to feel comfortable doing that. If only this had been turned into a novella or full-length novel so that the protagonist not only had more time to explain what her life with her creator was actually like but also to further solidify her plans for true independence.

One of my favorite moments occurred at the very end when the conflict was at its highest point. It involved Galatea attempting to escape and her husband attempting to capture her again and bring her back to the room where she was being held against her will. While I can’t go into any more detail about that scene, I will say that it contained kernels of what could be an excellent sequel if the author ever decides to write it!

The author shared a  brief summary of the original Galatea and Pygmalion in her post-script for readers who may not be familiar with that tale, although this version does stand up on its own without that background information.

Galatea made me curious about reading more Greek myths.

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October 1, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Grief Eater

Book cover for Grief Eater by Emma Osborne. Image on cover is a drawing of a zombie with green skin and long, wavy black hair who is holding her head up and back and looks like she’s yelling in pain. There is a little blood around her mouth. Title: Grief Eater

Author: Emma Osborne

Publisher: Interstellar Flight Press

Publication Date: June 1, 2026

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, LGBTQ+, Contemporary

Length: 94 pages

Source: I borrowed it from my local library

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Visceral, gritty, and unforgiving, GRIEF EATER is a zombie story like you’ve never read before.

When Kristina rises from her violent death, she’s not the same fragile woman her family once abandoned. She’s rageful, powerful, and hungry—for the blood of the ones who were supposed to love her. With a newfound craving to see vengeance and grief served, she launches into a once-in-an-undead-lifetime journey across blood-slicked highways to the scorched Australian bush and her hometown. As her body fails and her mind fractures, she’s left with one final question: Is she here to forgive, or to feed?

A transgressive, gory examination of queer identity and found family, GRIEF EATER sinks its teeth into trauma and what it means to be devoured by grief.

Content Warning: Domestic abuse, violence, dismemberment/gore, stalking, homophobia, and death of a parent.

Review:

Some things can never be forgiven.

One of the first things I noticed about this novella was how much time it spent telling readers what was happening instead of showing them, but I eventually came to the conclusion that this may have been done on purpose in order to illustrate Kristina’s intellectual and emotional limitations. Zombies have thoughts and feelings in this universe, but they are pretty muted when compared to how a living person would react to the same situations. Things that would have made me recoil in horror barely registered as a blip on the protagonists radar, for example, and her priorities in life – or undead life, as the case may be – were wildly appropriate for a zombie but would have been incredibly odd for the living. This isn’t a criticism, then, but it is something to keep in mind if you read this for yourself as I’d love to hear other perspectives on what should and shouldn’t be expected from the recently deceased.

Strong world building would have propelled this to a five-star read to me. While I learned a lot about the life cycle of a zombie in this universe, the bigger question of what was happening in Australia, much less the rest of the world, went nearly entirely unanswered. This was something I found surprising due to the fact that the protagonist managed to survive the first few waves of attacks and was doing pretty well for herself right before she was turned. Had she shared some more details about what she’s learned about human society’s reaction to this threat in general, this would have been just about the perfect horror novella for me.

Zombie fiction is only something I’m interested in on rare occasions these days, but seeing the world from the perspective of one of these individuals definitely piqued my interest. Kristina had an abusive and traumatic childhood that so deeply affected her as an adult when the events of this tale began that she couldn’t sustain romantic relationships with any of the women she was drawn to. I thought the combination of blatant horror themes and the more subtle but still easy to discern journey she experienced as she confronted her violent beginning in life worked well together and added a much-needed layer of meaning to her quest.

Grief Eater was a wild ride and a good introduction for more Halloween season reads.

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September 24, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Intercepted Wishes

Book cover for Intercepted Wishes By Mike Sutton. Image on cover shows a fountain that has a statue in the middle of it. The statute looks like it might be of an angel crouching down, although we are viewing in it from the side and mostly just see two wings jutting out. This fountain is in a park that is filled with large deciduous trees that are green and lush. Title: Intercepted Wishes

Author: Mike Sutton

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 10, 2014

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 7 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 2.5 Stars

Blurb:

Wishes are made. Some take time to be granted. Getting in the way is like walking into traffic.

Content Warning: Rape.

Review:

Luck is real.

Brian genuinely came across as a happy-go-lucky teen or maybe young adult to me. He had clearly had a pretty good life up until this point, and his assumptions about how the world works were as naive as they were cheerful. While I was obviously disturbed by his decision to steal money from the fountain, I was curious to learn more about his justification for doing so and about what he decided to spend that pocket change on.

This short story needed more development in my opinion. There were some fascinating ideas packed into it, including the thought that stealing coins from a fountain can affect someone’s fate in ways that they couldn’t possibly have anticipated, but they were never fleshed out enough for me to fully  understand what was going on. This was particularly true for the ending which I found confusing and disturbing. As much as I wanted to give this one a much higher rating, I had too many questions about the world building and plot development to justify doing so.

The paranormal elements were memorable and sometimes funny. I liked the fact that Brian didn’t have any warning about the consequences of his actions as this piece was honestly too short for that sort of foreshadowing to be effective in my opinion. Instead, he faced the consequences of his actions rapidly and in increasingly surprising ways. Had the ending matched the humorous tone of the beginning and middle, this would have been an even better read. This is sometimes how things play out in real life, too, so it was interesting to see natural consequences in action.

Intercepted Wishes had a creative premise.

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September 17, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Catch-All Drawer

Book cover for Catch-All Drawer Author: Manuel Sánchez. Image on cover shows a drawing of a white drawer filled with toys that looks like giraffes, tigers, and lions; a toy shark; two people behind bars holding a cellphone together so they can take a selfie; two people kissing and embracing; a Roman soldier; and a mummy still in its sarcophagus. Title: Catch-All Drawer

Author: Manuel Sánchez

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 9, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction, Alternate History, Historical, Contemporary

Length: About 97 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

A delight for the senses that will surprise you on every page. A journey filled with irony, sensuality, and human passions. Catch-all Drawer is an anthology of eight fiction stories where the author transports us with vibrant language to a world full of sensations, fantasy, and extraordinary situations: A fascinating woman in ancient Egypt, Virgil’s curious pet in Imperial Rome, the animal jungle of modern multinational corporations, the sensual dream of a red lantern, a mischievous worm, the circus of politics, the madness of a selfie in Australian waters, or the misadventures of a couple in the solitude of erotic contact social networks immerse us in stories of wild and addictive beauty.

Content Warning: Brief references to  sex and infidelity.

Review:

A little bit of everything can add up to a full meal.

I loved the satirical take on modern workplace politics in general in “The Gazpacho.” Honestly, this was my favorite story of the collection because of how well it described both the joys and frustrations of working with the same group of people over a long period of time. While the specific setting here was in an office, I think the vast majority of the plot would have turned out more or less the same had it been in a restaurant, medical setting, warehouse, store, or just about any other place of work because of how keenly the author focused on the personalities of the characters as they interacted with one another and dealt with sometimes ridiculous rules.

Kudos to the author for experimenting with the science fiction genre so much in this book. While not every tale was to my taste, most of them were and I must tip my cap to him for being so willing to try new things and see what may or may not resonate with his readers. “A Selfie,” which followed a couple who decided to swim with the sharks on their honeymoon to Australia, was one such example of this. I struggled to understand why these characters were not only willing to take so many risks with their safety but also unwilling to learn from their past mistakes. It would have been helpful to have more character development here so that I could understand their perspectives better.

The email format of “The Worm” made me smile. It’s a writing style that pops up on occasion in what I read, and I’m always interested in seeing where new authors take it because of how much it reminds me of the old epistolary novels that share so much in common with this newer form of storytelling one message at a time. Another interesting thing about this piece was related to how trustworthy I found the protagonist. Other readers should decide for themselves what they think of him, of course, but I thought this was a good example of how to create a main character who is simultaneously fascinating and deeply unlikable (in my opinion, of course).

Catch-All Drawer was my introduction to Mr. Sánchez‘s work, and my curiosity has been piqued to see what else he might write in the future. 

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September 10, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Corner of My Eye

Title: The Corner of My EyeBook cover for The Corner of My Eye by Rudolph Kohn. Image o cover shows a black square in the middle of the cover. Around the edges of you can make out a dimly lit wooden staircase in an old house.

Author:  Rudolph Kohn

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: February 14, 2023

Genres: Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 7 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Moving into a new house can be stressful, and it can be refreshing. But what do you do when you start to hear strange sounds and see hints of motion out of the corner of your eye? What happens to your mind when all of your efforts to get to the bottom of these strange phenomena comes up with nothing? A short Lovecraftian story about figments of your imagination, or perhaps reality.

Review:

Always ask questions if something seems too good to be true.

One of my favorite things about this tale was that almost nothing was revealed about the protagonist. The first paragraph mentioned that they had just bought a new home, but this was really the only piece of information shared about them. Everything else, including their sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, race, ethnicity, and a million other descriptive adjectives that could be used to paint a mental image of who they were as a person, was left blank. This meant that basically any reader out there could imagine themselves in this character’s shoes as they closed on their new home and gradually began to realize they weren’t the only occupant there.

I did find myself wishing that the last scene could provide a deeper explanation of what was already inhabiting the narrator’s new home, especially given the other knowledge this individual had acquired by that point. While I wouldn’t have expected to know everything by the final sentence, having even a few more sentences explaining what was going on would have encouraged me to choose a full five-star rating for this short story.

This started off as a fairly typical paranormal story but soon shifted into something a bit more frightening than is usual for this genre. I loved seeing the protagonist react to each new development as they attempted to figure out how to best handle a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control. As much as I wanted that final scene to provide a little more guidance, it did end on a deliciously scary note and was well worth the read.

The Corner of My Eye made me shiver.

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September 3, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula

Book cover for The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula - Explore the History of Vampires & the Inspiration Behind Bram Stoker's Masterpiece Author: Steven J. Rolfes. Image on cover shows a drawing of a castle on top of a hill. A full moon looms large behind the castle, and the sky is a disturbing shade of blood red. Title: The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula – Explore the History of Vampires & the Inspiration Behind Bram Stoker’s Masterpiece

Author: Steven J. Rolfes

Publisher: Llewellyn Publications

Publication Date: August 8, 2026

Genres: Folklore, Nonfiction, Historical

Length: 324 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

With the inquisitive heart of an adventurer and the rigor of a scholar, this spellbinding work leads listeners through centuries of dark folklore, lost legends, and the wild inspirations behind Bram Stoker’s immortal classic.

Volcanic cataclysms, secret aristocratic scandals, mysterious societies, and ominous landscapes all converge to cast their spell. Historian Steven J. Rolfes skillfully untangles a web of real events, eccentric creators, and uncanny myths that shaped and informed Stoker’s Dracula.

Rolfes’s writing is lively, immersive, and unfailingly engaging, inviting listeners to make sense of what is fact, what is fable, and how the two entwine to birth the world’s ultimate vampire. For those compelled by the timeless mystery of the undead, this book is both an exploration and an adventure, reviving forgotten tales and reimagining the legendary Count for a new generation.

Content Warning: Death, of course. References to epidemics like cholera and tuberculosis. Dead bodies being dug up and mutilated for religious purposes in cultures who believe the recently dead can become vampires.

Review:

Stories can be the gateway to the past.

One of the things I enjoy most about reading about vampires and vampire-like creatures is imagining the real-life events that might have inspired people living in the distant past to come up with such folklore and legends to explain  how the world must work when they encountered things they didn’t yet have the technology or medical expertise to understand in other ways. This book did an excellent job of explaining the many possible origins for vampires from a wide variety of cultures, beginning with hunter-gatherers in Africa tens of thousands of years ago and moving forward through time from there as various aspects of these legends gradually coalesced into what we now know as Dracula.

I did find myself wishing that this book had been given another round or two of editing. The author went on many tangents, some of whose connections to Dracula and legends about vampires in general were sparse at best. It would have been a far more compelling read for me had it been about 20o pages instead of well over 400 as there simply wasn’t enough material here to justify such a long read in my opinion. This is something I’m saying as someone who was extremely interested in the premise and who thought I’d be giving this one a much higher rating.

It was interesting to read the connections the author made to similar supernatural creatures like golem and Frankenstein that shared some similarities with Dracula. These sections were among the best in the entire book, and I would have liked to read about even more creatures from other cultures that exist in that liminal space between life and death. There’s definitely something to be said for collecting these tales and comparing them, especially from historical and public health perspectives.

The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula could be a good pick for the most hardcore fans of this subject.

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September 2, 2026 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: One Sci-Fi Item or Ability I Wish Really Existed

A laptop sitting on a wooden table. The text reads: “Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.”

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

In previous posts on this topic, I’ve talked about my desire for replicators and for top-notch Star Trek medical care to be real due to all of the wonderful things they’d do for us.

I’m sticking with the Star Trek theme yet again this time because that universe was filled with some excellent ideas.

A computer-generated sketch of what warp drive might look like as a spacecraft suddenly zipped away. Hundreds of white lines are jutting out from a centralized space in the middle of the image, illuminating outer space for a moment as the spacecraft leaves. I wish we lived in a world where Warp Drives really existed as well so we could travel faster than the speed of light and see more of the universe. Right now we are only capable of traveling to the moon which, while still a noteworthy place to explore, doesn’t have any life on it.

Imagine a time when we could travel to distant stars and see if the moons or planets orbiting them had anything interesting living there.

Are there plants growing in those distant places that might cure diseases like cancer?

Are there friendly aliens living there with whom we could trade scientific knowledge and resources?

Could humans live there if necessary? Could aliens live on Earth?

The possibilities are endless, and I wish we could have answers to all of our questions.

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August 27, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Science and Magic and Lions, OH MY!

Book cover for Magic, Science, & Lions, OH MY! by JD Bennett. Image on cover simply shows the title and author written in a gold cursive font against a light yellow background. Title: Science and Magic and  Lions, OH MY!

Author: JD Bennett

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 31, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Horror

Length: About 45 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

***Intended for adult readers*****

Magic, Science, & Lions, OH MY! is a collection of short stories that include horrifying tales of a rapist eating monster, the staging of a war between fairy tale and folklore characters, and, of course, aliens.

Content Warning: Poisoning, politics, domestic violence, and murder.  I skipped over the story about the rapist eating monster and so will not be including it in my review. (Yes, I read the rest of them!)

Review:

Some fairy tales have sharp teeth.

”The (Attempted) Murder of a Pot Head” showed what happened after the protagonist was poisoned at a family reunion and had to try to figure out who might have been the culprit and what their motivation was. There was a plot twist involved in the investigation of this crime that I don’t want to reveal in my review for spoilers reasons, but it was as clever as it was attention grabbing and showed off Ms. Bennett’s writing abilities nicely.

Anyone who reads the title of “The Confession” can almost certainly make an educated guess about what it is about. What surprised me about this piece was the complete lack of any fantasy, science fiction, or other speculative fiction elements to it. While I thought it included some interesting ideas and had a satisfying ending, it felt out of place in this collection due to that.

By far my favorite story was “Lion in the Mirror” due to how it blended real-life events like the repeal of Roe vs. Wade in the United States to some heavy fantasy elements of a storyline featuring a likeable and intelligent main character. This is the sort of storytelling that grabs my attention and doesn’t let go, and I loved coming up with various theories about how the fantasy themes could be reinterpreted as metaphors for various experiences that many women encounter in their lives, particularly for those of us who are part of one or more other minority groups as well.

Magic, Science, & Lions, OH MY! kept me on my toes. 

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August 20, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of All the Little Hedgehogs

Book cover for All the Little Hedgehogs by Leigh Kimmel. Image on cover shows a blue double helix strand of DNA against a laboratory background. Title: All the Little Hedgehogs

Author: Leigh Kimmel

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: April 29, 2023

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Alternate History

Length: About 20 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

In Soviet Union, genetic engineering does you. Yona wondered why everyone kept steering him toward a military career, until one of his teachers noticed his aptitude for genetics. Now he’s the personal student of Academician Voronsky, working in a secret genetic engineering facility in a closed town. However, Yona keeps having to spend as much time babysitting the Academician’s adopted son Kolya as actually doing genetics. When this extra assignment becomes a frustration, Yona learns just how quickly privileges can be retracted. And then he starts learning just how deep the secrets of the Soviet human genetics program really goes. A story from the Grissom timeline (Gus on the Moon universe). Caution: Contains intense material that may be disturbing to some audiences. Reader caution advised

Content Warning: Pregnancy, birth, cloning, and brief references to infanticide.

Review:

DNA only tells part of the story.

Genetic engineering is one of those topics I often like to see covered in the Science Fiction genre because of how many different ways it can be approached. While I don’t want to go into too much detail about what exactly what happening  in this facility, I thought the narrator asked some interesting questions about how important genetics are to how someone turns out that might be of special interest to any readers out there who might be related to people who are incredibly different from them in crucial ways. That is to say, you can be a blood relative of someone and share very little in common with them.

I struggled with the violent content in this short story due to how unnecessary it felt for plot development. Horror is a genre I’ve been moving away from, so this made be of greater interest to readers who still like to read that sort of stuff.  Still, there was one particular scene I thought was egregious and could have easily been cut out without ruining the effect of the chilling world Yona knew in general.

The descriptions of the medical facilities were my favourite part of this short story. They were given so much attention that I could easily imagine what it would be like to visit or work there. One bright moment that stood out to me the most involved how the fetuses interacted with each other before birth. I could have read many more pages about them if such a thing were possible due to the funny things they did to each other.

All the Little Hedgehogs made me shudder. 

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August 13, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Seed

Book cover for Seed by P.B. Cannon. Image on cover is a drawing of a double helix strand of DNA, presumably of the seed that mentioned in the story. Title: Seed

Author: P.B. Cannon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 2o, 2012

Genres: Science Fiction, Romance, Historical

Length: About 137 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Abandoned on an alien planet, Second must learn to co-exist with a group of primitives in order to survive. A tale of the acceptance of differences and of unconditional love.

Content Warning: Polyamory, sex scenes, pregnancy, birth, and bullying for physical disabilities and differences.

Review:

Love comes in many different forms.

I enjoyed seeing how much trust the author put into assuming readers would figure out some things on our own. Not every aspect of these characters’ lives was spelled out plainly, and a few of them could only be uncovered by taking note of subtle clues that fit together in specific ways once one was well into Second’s adventures. There’s something to be said for believing that one’s audience is intelligent and patient enough to do such things, and it’s one of the reasons why I keep returning to Ms. Cannon’s work over and over again.

While physiological differences between Second and the people they met on the alien planet they visited were described in detail, I would have liked to see a little more attention paid to the world building as well, particularly as it related to culture and religion. Second had grown up with certain assumptions about how society worked that weren’t always well fleshed out but that did have a heavy impact on how they interacted with nomadic people they met on their travels. This could have easily been a five-star reading for me if more time had been spent on such things.

The romances were handled nicely and I thought they contributed a lot of character development to this novella. This is something I’m saying as a reader who only occasionally dips my toes into this genre and is not easily impressed, but the author put in all of the work that was required in order to make these subplots flow smoothly with the main storyline. They were ultimately well done.

This is a prequel to a series, but it also can be read as a standalone work.

Seed was heartwarming.

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