Luna Station Quarterly Issue 056

by Jennifer Lyn Parsons (Editor), Elizabeth Hinckley, Clare Packard

Horses loom large in our collective histories. Symbols of power, of strength, companions on a long journey, heroes, magical creatures, etc. they’re woven through the fabric of our tales.

All this love of horses is pouring out here and now, the obvious inspiration for this year’s theme. There’s such a wild and varied selection of stories in this issue, tales full of magic and mayhem, court intrigues and cybernetic mounts. And of course, a few unicorns for good measure. It’s nothing less than you might expect from a stories centered on a creature with such presence in the tales we’ve told around a fire for millennia. We hope you enjoy the ride.

This issue features:
• "Misty Moon" by Elizabeth Hinckley
• "Horse Girls Til The End" by SK Marre
• "A Unicorn’s Horn Is Proof Against Poison" by Clare Packard
• "High To Kolob On A Cosmic Clydesdale" by Katrina Carruth
• "Merry Go" by Maria Brekke
• "The Last Ride of Rivke Grinkin" by Reyzl Grace
• "Hospitality" by Jennifer Skogen
• "Rain Town" by Mary J. Daley
• "Hell’s Bells" by Cass Sims Knight
• "Out to Pasture" by Juliet Kahn
• "Rodney’s Request" by Mary Jo Rabe

226 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2023

About the author

I write fantasy, soft sci-fi, and fairy tales, often with neurodiverse or queer characters. Occasionally, I'll write stories set in our own world.

In addition to working on my own writing, I also run Luna Station Quarterly, an online literary journal devoted to female-identified speculative fiction writers. The Quarterly is the daughter publication of the small publishing company I run, Luna Station Press.

Outside of writing (and its close associate, reading), I'm a software engineer working to make the internet more human-friendly. I can also be found devouring comic books and video games, watching baseball, listening to music, and making things out of wool, paper, and wood.

Reviews

[Bonnie McDaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I subscribe to the print issue of this magazine (yay publishers/editors who still provide print issues!) and while I enjoyed reading it, I don't think this issue was up to the standards of those I have read in the past. The theme of this issue is "horses," with a few unicorns sneaking in. There's nothing wrong with the theme, but I've just read better horse/unicorn stories.

The exceptions are "Horse Girls Til the End," by SK Marre, a horse/kelpie/horror story told entirely through phone text boxes (which must have been a challenge to format); "High To Kolob On a Cosmic Clydesdale," by Katrina Carruth, about a young woman rejecting her mother's religious cult and getting to confront not only her dead mother but her mother's God; and my favorite story in the issue, "Rain Town," by Mary J. Daley. This story contained some interesting worldbuilding that I would love to see expanded further, possibly to book length.

Of the stories I wasn't as fond of, they seemed to have one main problem: the endings. Their endings seemed to fade away without any sense of resolution or coming to a firm stopping place. Also--and this is more of a personal quirk--the formatting took some getting used to. It's set along the lines of online magazines, block paragraphs separated by white space. I would have preferred the traditional print-book indented paragraphs look (seeing that this was an actual print issue).

This isn't a dealbreaker, however. Jennifer Lyn Parsons, the editor, has been publishing this women-identified-authors only magazine for quite a few years, and I am glad it exists. The physical print issue is a lovely thing, and the magazine as a whole is worth supporting.

[Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote a story for this magazine! It's called A UNICORN'S HORN IS PROOF AGAINST POISON. You can read more about the inspiration for it here: https://thegrimmlibrarian.com/2024/12...