LINKDING

Excerpt: After we kill our father but before we leave the island, we argue. Cal doesn’t want to go; he’s afraid of the water. Even after the rest of us outvote him two to one, he refuses to move, crouching on the ground, pressing the ruined side of his face into the earth, snarling whenever we try to touch him. In the end Ari has to sit down with him and say something in a quiet soothing susurrus, like they do, and the whole time Mir is pacing in the waves at the very edge of the water, where it barely comes up to her ankles. She is moving back and forth and back and forth, with her eyes on the horizon, and when this is happening Father’s blood is still on all of our hands but mostly on hers. ➤ that's a very evocative short story title right there and it's like. yeah. that's what the story is about! ➤ a fantasy story about three teens who have escaped their powerful and abusive father figure, who are a team in escaping, who might not always like each other but who are bound together in inextricable ways ➤ the entire story takes place in a boat as they make their way away from the island, hoping to find the mainland, but it never feels static, it's always pushing you onward, as you get more hints of the backstory, of what exactly all the context is for the murder and the escape ➤ it's so good!!! ➤ also. it's told in plural first person? which is so cool. The three teens are the "we" and "us" of the narrative voice. it's so well done! I love when stories play with pov. ➤ also. trans characters! ➤ 5k words

Excerpt: I had warned a hundred mortals not to trust the boatman. I’d told them: No matter how much you pay him, no matter what you promise, it will never be enough. Yet somehow, I found myself surprised when he grabbed my wrist before I could step off the boat. I gave him my most forbidding stare, which only made him smirk as he held out his other hand. We had an agreement, I almost said. I caught myself just in time—I would have to shed my mainland habits, and fast, now that I was back. ➤ A novelette inspired by the fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses ➤ about one of the princesses who managed to escape, but who comes back ➤ a fascinating reimagining, leaning into the dangerous appeal of the fae, and the desire for belonging, and what you will and won't do for love -- or for freedom ➤ I've read a lot of retellings of this fairy tale and there are a lot of good ones but this one definitely ranks pretty high on the list! ➤ 10k words

quote: There are seven hundred aliens hidden in Miko’s backpack, and the Galactic Security Agent currently studying her passport (hopefully) has no clue. The agent is an alien themselves, some tentacular species with assistive devices hooked into its uniform to mist its soft skin every few seconds. A puff of evaporated solution exits from one of the devices by its neck as it draws her passport closer to its pitted eyes. ➤ a scifi short story set in space, about a smuggler who left her sister behind when she left the shitty planet she grew up on ➤ but her latest mission has her returning to that planet to deliver the goods ➤ (the goods are hundreds of teeny tiny sentient bioluminescent jellyfish fleeing civil war) ➤ I enjoyed the worldbuilding, and the difficult emotions about family, and how the things that felt world-endingly true at 17 don't need to be true forever ➤ 7k words in length

quote: Dad says Auntie was beautiful when she was young, with a bright-eyed gaze, pure yet alluring, and a slender, curving waist. When happy, her face was like springtime. When sorrowful, she was like a thin willow bending in the wind. Sometimes I try to imagine my aunt’s youthful beauty, and I end up thinking of those fox demon women in Zhiyi novels, eyes flickering like stars. With a slight twist of the demon’s waist, your soul is hers. But Auntie was the type who’s a thousand miles removed—aloof, full of rebuffs. Every boy who saw her back then suffered pangs of desire, yet they shunned her. Before Deng Baolin met her husband, she scratched the faces of thirteen boys. She was a prickly beauty, a thorny rose. In short, she was completely unlike the person before my eyes. ➤ scifi short story translated from chinese; originally published in 2021 ➤ it's a fascinating outside-outside pov, a nephew telling the story of his aunt, whose story is that of her famous physicist-astronaut husband ➤ the multiple layers of abstraction work well for this story -- and the narrative loops around itself in how it's told too, wandering forwards and backwards in time to circle around the heart of things ➤ which is really a story about family and about place and about how you decide what to prioritise in your life ➤ it's lovely and thoughtful and wistful. I really liked it! ➤ 7k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>According to the ways, when the head of a household passed away, his womenfolk had to refrain from lifting their feet in dance and their voices in song until the moon cast its full light down for the third time. During that interval, which, to be clear, could be three months, the mourners remained cloistered in their home and performed ritual ablutions to cleanse themselves of death, while their family and friends slowly entombed them within walls of food containers and condolence cards. When her mom asked Oona to join her in observing this ancient duty, Oona said nah. The explosion that followed was totally understandable, but through it all Oona remained immovable and flippant.</blockquote> ➤ about the difficulties of being a teen girl whose dad just died, and who is trying to figure out her identity as an othered visible minority, with a large and close-knit multigenerational family whose older generations are more connected with traditional culture and who want her to be too ➤ the traditional culture is selkies ➤ yeah it's a GREAT premise and I love how carefully and believably the selkie culture is imagined, and what the experience of being part of a landed selkie family would be ➤ very emotionally affecting too! ➤ 8k words in length

Summary: <blockquote>Mirae sits on her bed, parting her hair with one hand and feeling for the access port on the back of her head with the other. She finds the notched edges of the cap and twists counterclockwise until it comes loose. Her eye twitches as she slides the plug into her skull. The sensation isn’t strong enough for her to say it hurts, but she doesn’t know how else to describe it. Her post-op recovery had been difficult. She had fever dreams of worms crawling into her brain through the still-healing metal port. Even after she was fully recovered and ready to be plugged in for her first update, images of the plug’s pin connectors piercing too deep and puncturing her occipital lobe made her hands shake.</blockquote> ➤ a short story about a young woman who was given a neural implant to improve her abilities and skills in school to be able to get a good job ➤ about parental expectations and abusive control ➤ trying to figure out who you are and what you care about when you've never been given the opportunity to be anything but obedient ➤ I had feelings ➤ 4k words in length