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Reckoning #2
Reckoning 2
A locus for the conflict between the world as it has become and the world as we wanted it to be.
“A project that is timely, necessary, and at times even hopeful. Highly recommended to all who are interested in the future of genre fiction as well as the future of our world.” —Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
“In a world of disappearing futures, Reckoning arrives like a flock of undiscovered birds—a journal of speculative ecology that invents its own new genre, simultaneously urgent and atemporal, from a diverse array of mostly new voices—the freshest and most important new fantastic literature magazine in a very long time.” — Christopher Brown, author of Tropic of Kansas
“I love this story so much that I am not going to discuss a single detail except that the ending made my heart leap and it is my favorite story of 2018 so far. I will hold onto my copy of this magazine forever because it contains it.” —Cat Rambo, of Marie Vibbert’s “Fourth-Dimensional Tessellations of the American College Graduate”, in Green Man Review
Innocent Ilo’s “To the Place of Skulls” was longlisted for the 2018 Author of Tomorrow Contest.
“A project that is timely, necessary, and at times even hopeful. Highly recommended to all who are interested in the future of genre fiction as well as the future of our world.” —Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
“In a world of disappearing futures, Reckoning arrives like a flock of undiscovered birds—a journal of speculative ecology that invents its own new genre, simultaneously urgent and atemporal, from a diverse array of mostly new voices—the freshest and most important new fantastic literature magazine in a very long time.” — Christopher Brown, author of Tropic of Kansas
“I love this story so much that I am not going to discuss a single detail except that the ending made my heart leap and it is my favorite story of 2018 so far. I will hold onto my copy of this magazine forever because it contains it.” —Cat Rambo, of Marie Vibbert’s “Fourth-Dimensional Tessellations of the American College Graduate”, in Green Man Review
Innocent Ilo’s “To the Place of Skulls” was longlisted for the 2018 Author of Tomorrow Contest.
- GenresFantasy
248 pages, Paperback
First published December 21, 2017
3 people are currently reading
12 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 31, 2018
I mean I am in this so I am biased but I very much enjoyed this issue as a whole! I particularly recommend "Night of No Return" by Grace Seybold and "The Alice Grey" by Santiago Belluco; the premises of these are both ingenious and buckwild af.
April 8, 2018
Seldom have I agonized more over giving a book 4 or 5 stars. The overall quality of the contributions to Reckoning 2 is remarkable. Standouts include "To the place of skulls" by Innocent Ilo, a harsh tale pulled from the brink of bleak despair by the friendship between the protagonists; "Girl singing with farm", wherein Kathrin Köhler brings a whole new meaning to the term 'farm animal'; "The complaint of all living things" by Joanne Rixon, quiet, thoughtful, literary, and mesmerizing; "Lanny Boykin rises up singing", Jess Barber's tale of friendship, escape, and ecological destruction.
I finally decided on 4 stars, because one of the stories in this awesome book is mine, and it feels wrong, somehow, to award 5 stars to anything I've personally contributed to.
I finally decided on 4 stars, because one of the stories in this awesome book is mine, and it feels wrong, somehow, to award 5 stars to anything I've personally contributed to.
February 3, 2020
This is a review of "Lanny Boykin Rises Up Singing" from Reckoning 2.
This story from Reckoning Magazine packs a ton of heart and hope into a diminutive novelette. It also packs eldritch horror into the unsuspecting body of a young girl whose family is responsible for the dam and diversion project which dramatically altered the ecosystem of its small-town setting. Lanny Boykin is a shape-shifter; but she is not the only shape-shifter in the story.
While the reader is fascinated by the mystery of Lanny’s transformations — and Lanny’s desperate efforts to escape her hometown — the story of the town’s transformation quietly expands in the background, not unlike Lanny in her sea-monster form, spreading out below the surface of the water, displacing lakes with sheer mass. There is desperation in the lives of Lanny and her best friend Junebug, and in the lives of their parents and other townspeople who are tense and exhausted, living their lives on the cusp of failures very much connected to their surrounding ecology. Lanny’s home is a mill-town poised to become a mining town, the pollution of water from the mill about to become pollution of the air from the mine. But the story stresses that it is insufficient to criticize the mill workers (or even the future miners) who have little say in the progression of industry in the town; Barber makes this clear in her portrayal of poverty, quiet desperation, and the seemingly impotent protest of Junebug and Jack against the mine.
The town’s industrialists seem unstoppable, not unlike Lanny’s transformations which at first come over her unexpectedly, forcing her to stumble — more than half out of her mind — toward water. But as the story reaches its climax, it becomes apparent that that which can stop the town’s further development is Lanny herself, a girl who is connected through ancestry to the place’s first environmental devastations, and through her heart to the town’s future of which she has never felt a part. In this way, Barber has created an intricately interconnected narrative, wherein those who are responsible for ecological devastation pay for it with the lives of their descendants, but the sacrifice is made willingly, for love and hope.
The love between Lanny and Junebug and the care they show for each other even when they disagree drives this narrative. It is desperately sweet. Even the destruction of the story’s final scene barely touches the palpable connection demonstrated by these two characters. If Lanny and Junebug stand at odds as representatives of the disconnection of industrialized development of an ecosystem and the struggle of the poor and dispossessed to withstand detrimental changes , they also represent a deep care and connection that can right wrongs and maybe even rehabilitate damaged worlds.
Review posted here: https://www.stelliform.press/index.ph...
This story from Reckoning Magazine packs a ton of heart and hope into a diminutive novelette. It also packs eldritch horror into the unsuspecting body of a young girl whose family is responsible for the dam and diversion project which dramatically altered the ecosystem of its small-town setting. Lanny Boykin is a shape-shifter; but she is not the only shape-shifter in the story.
While the reader is fascinated by the mystery of Lanny’s transformations — and Lanny’s desperate efforts to escape her hometown — the story of the town’s transformation quietly expands in the background, not unlike Lanny in her sea-monster form, spreading out below the surface of the water, displacing lakes with sheer mass. There is desperation in the lives of Lanny and her best friend Junebug, and in the lives of their parents and other townspeople who are tense and exhausted, living their lives on the cusp of failures very much connected to their surrounding ecology. Lanny’s home is a mill-town poised to become a mining town, the pollution of water from the mill about to become pollution of the air from the mine. But the story stresses that it is insufficient to criticize the mill workers (or even the future miners) who have little say in the progression of industry in the town; Barber makes this clear in her portrayal of poverty, quiet desperation, and the seemingly impotent protest of Junebug and Jack against the mine.
The town’s industrialists seem unstoppable, not unlike Lanny’s transformations which at first come over her unexpectedly, forcing her to stumble — more than half out of her mind — toward water. But as the story reaches its climax, it becomes apparent that that which can stop the town’s further development is Lanny herself, a girl who is connected through ancestry to the place’s first environmental devastations, and through her heart to the town’s future of which she has never felt a part. In this way, Barber has created an intricately interconnected narrative, wherein those who are responsible for ecological devastation pay for it with the lives of their descendants, but the sacrifice is made willingly, for love and hope.
The love between Lanny and Junebug and the care they show for each other even when they disagree drives this narrative. It is desperately sweet. Even the destruction of the story’s final scene barely touches the palpable connection demonstrated by these two characters. If Lanny and Junebug stand at odds as representatives of the disconnection of industrialized development of an ecosystem and the struggle of the poor and dispossessed to withstand detrimental changes , they also represent a deep care and connection that can right wrongs and maybe even rehabilitate damaged worlds.
Review posted here: https://www.stelliform.press/index.ph...
October 19, 2020
Keeping in mind that with any anthology, there are going to be some pieces that are more to my tastes than others:
This was shatteringly good. I need to get the other volumes.
This was shatteringly good. I need to get the other volumes.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews