I read An Alpine Divorce. More hell hath no fury like a woman scorned than a good for her, but also, good for her. I read this only because everyone on Tik Tok is talking about alpine divorces as an actual phenomenon. I would rather this concept remain in fiction, please and thank you.

I kind of wish the revelation at the end didn't feel like stating the obvious to the reader, but I get we were in the protagonist's head - so his revelation would be what we already gathered. I thought the family history and demon lore to be really rich and interesting.

This was a very unique story and a grand fantastical way to explore grief and faith, but I don’t think it was very successful at its execution in that exploration.

I made the mistake of reading this piece on Tor/Reactormag as a standalone, only coming to find out this is a part of a series. Even more so, I came to realize I read the first of this series two years ago, which I should have realized sooner because of how much I loved the aspect of Graff's people being able to know all of each other's experiences through a simple touch. Reading about Graff as a teenager would have so much more of an impact on me if I had read all of his other adventures in this series first. Since I made that mistake and this story feels on its own for me I would give it a 3/5. I added the .5 for this error on my part. I'm sure once I go through the series and circle back to this piece this will be a 4 star or higher. I really want to know more about this world that Graff comes from, as well as the worlds and stations across the galaxy right as he is experiencing them, now that I know there is more to read!

I absolutely loved this, this is the kind of story that reminds me of why I adore science fiction. How is a letter to a daughter from a mother, when they are both non-human, so unimaginably more human than some real people? This was so well written, every single word and sentence so perfectly intentional, and blends between yearning and grieving for a relationship Titania will never have, and yet accepting, loving and celebrating that very thing.

Grief is a purgatory, mental illness is too if the world around you instead of supporting you dismisses you and tells you to “stop this”. Whether Lukas was ever real, or she is unwell and has imagined a son who died from cancer, in either reality she feels torn between the people she loves most are exhausted with her depression and dependency.

2.5 Stars. What a quirky, absurd little ten minute short story about sanity, where I let my mind wander like the protagonist had, only about the parallels between the finicky nature of man, beast and our relationships with each other.

It’s like if you were an alien chaser instead of a bug chaser, trapped on a ship like the USCSS Nostromo.

The control that we can never have when it comes to mortality and inevitable loss. Anticipatory grief and wanting to covet all that is, and yet isn’t, gone. Mourning something still here and not here at all. Resenting memories’ fleeting nature. All of this hurts enough, but what if you could have such a closeness as in this story because of a fungal infestation? The world is dying, animals are endangered and humans are sick and distant. What if, at the end of all of this, of everything, love can be found through cordycep-made enmeshment? What if it isn’t? Where is the line between closeness and control?

If only we all could get to experience just a little bit of magic, even if it is just for a time, even if the magic is for someone else.

I absolutely love this story, love even more that a man from the other side of the world, born centuries ago and died in the last century, wrote brilliantly a short story with a premise that I have for a much more inferior version of the same premise. I love when life and art proves that their are no original thoughts and we are all each other, just across different timelines, geolocations and in different skinsuits. How could one truly claim to value life if you can easily hand-wave one's existence as rubbish? Over productivity? Over class? Over human pettiness? Over ordinariness? The moment one decides that any one existence is worthless they have decided that life itself is worthless.

This reminded me a bit of the film Malena: a community that ostracizes one particular person - a woman - to hate. One ugly, one too beautiful. For this story, for the former woman, the resentment of the husbands and the ressentiment of the wives gave them license to be so cruel. Their developing hetero-fatalism in comparison to the romance of the ugly girl and her wicker husband led them to be pitiful group of indecent people - as miserable as their marriages were revealed to be!

To be resurrected, but at what cost? To put a young Black girl through such a medical spectacle, to take her from family, to make her life science's and medicine's...it's all so tragic.

Foretold what would come merely three years later... Jenny is a good ally after past failures, passive to helping one of her sons that is no longer here. There were so many parallels to our real world: radicalization, terrorism, persecuting the alien (immigrants). What matters most is the little things that we can do, we MUST do.

My first Ray Bradbury read - and I only heard of this and read it because of a Tik Tok stating today is the day this story takes place! Setting as a character is masterfully done here. The imagery is so haunting and rich here. To know about a family through the negative space of their absence, of human race absence, to have the home be the only thing left, and then that goes too. Haunting!

How sad it is, to have never known the sun. Even sadder it is to have known it and lose it, for it to be a privilege to witness every few years rather than a given experience every single day. And how sad it is, the little petty things, that can come out of bitterness, envy and child-like behaviors. How sad it is, for the little ones who have never known the sun to take the sun’s only two hours from the one who had known the sun before!

A good campfire-style horror story. The end really got me, and I'll think about it when my friends play make-believe and make the narrative spooky.

I found myself wanting to know more about the characters; Enid, the rat maze, the differences between Enid, Marybelle and Clara. If the story is going to be an eerie and absurd acid trip that ends with one girl gone I wish there was more to them for me to care.

I love when the horror of it all is just grief, and a complex person navigating the messiness of that grief, making sketchy choices and bad decisions all the way to (figurative or literal) hell.