Mysterion, April 2024

“Her Neighbor’s Keeper” by Jessica Snell

Reviewed by David Wesley Hill

Given its setting, you’d think “Her Neighbor’s Keeper” by Jessica Snell, the April offering of Mysterion, is science fiction. After all, Lena lives in “the Grove,” a “high-density housing unit,” and goes to work “through the crowded city tunnels that protected them all from the hot horror that the surface of their world had become.” But then Lena purchases a magical “fairy patch” and applies it to the terrarium her late Nana willed her, transforming the glass tank into a real universe, and you understand the story actually is fantasy—a quirky redemption parable with some touching moments, although it didn’t entirely come together for this reviewer. Maybe your heart is softer than mine…