Strange Libations

by Marissa Van Uden (Editor), Marie Vibbert, Nicholas G. Marconi

Strange Libations, edited by Marissa van Uden, is an original anthology of dark micro-fiction in the form of cocktail recipes.

Unknown Binding

First published March 2, 2023

About the author

Marissa van Uden is an editor and writer from Aotearoa-New Zealand who now lives in rural Vermont, in a little cabin in the woods. She is the editor of The Off-Season: An Anthology of Coastal New Weird (Dark Matter Ink, 2024) and the Apex Strange Microfiction anthologies. She is also the EiC of the imprint Violet Lichen Books and an associate editor and interviewer for Apex Magazine.
Her fiction has appeared in Dark Matter Magazine, Zero Dark Thirty, Los Suelos, and Vastarien Literary Journal. She loves animals, wild things, and weird horror.

Reviews

[Tomasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heady mix of recipes, mixing not advised, operating heavy machinery a definite no-no. Perfect for November.

[Eric Mesa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a Kickstarter backer on this (or it was a stretch goal for an Apex mag kickstarter - I can’t remember). Since these are micro-fiction I am not going to do my usual per-story review for the anthology as the stories are too short for that.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for an anthology themed around recipes for alcoholic drinks, the stories were overwhelmingly sad and/or angry. Since each story is only about a page long, this might be a good anthology to dip in and out of. Reading it straight through was a bit much. Also, some of the themes are repeated in a way that is made more obvious when reading it straight through.

With those small critiques aside, I think these individual bits of micro-fiction are all pretty great on their own. I think they each take the assignment of turning a drink recipe into a story and tweak it in their own ways to create some truly haunting tales.

I’d recommend picking it up.