"The Star Inside the Swastika" by Ben Burgis
"The Miscast Spell" by Selena Thomason
"The Star Inside the Swastika" by Ben Burgis is an intriguing tale about identities. Fritz is the perfect son of the Nazi Fatherland: he has been a Hitler youth, has joined the Luftwaffe, and now takes part in air raids against the enemies of Germany. But things change when Fritz’s father, who is a researcher at the University of Berlin, shows him an odd Hebrew artifact. Fritz now finds himself behaving oddly and in contradiction with everything he has been taught.
This is uncomfortable territory, but Burgis handles it without sinking into too much cliché. The story is well done, and the explanation for Fritz’s change of behavior is not the obvious one. The only thing that did not work for me was the ending, which I found too convenient: it relies on someone’s decision, and since that someone is never really dwelled on, it felt tacked on.
In "The Miscast Spell" by Selena Thomason, Jani casts a love spell on Dathen, but not everything plays out as expected. The story is quite short and suffers because of that. There is no proper arc: the protagonist discovers something is wrong; she goes and fixes it. There is no challenge, no cost to her. The setting is standard medieval fare and nothing makes this stand out.