Lightspeed #114, November 2019
“The Second-Last Client” by Mathew Bright
Reviewed by Kevin P Hallett
There are four original stories in the 114th issue of Lightspeed, one of which is a novelette.
“The Second-Last Client” by Mathew Bright
In this short fantasy, an alien is in a coffee shop to save a fictional character before the Devouring Matter destroys the world in forty plus minutes. But the popular heroine character in the book feels an obligation to entertain the people in these last minutes before the apocalypse strikes. Can the alien save this second from last character in time?
Just longer than flash fiction, this quick story was an entertaining read.
“Her Appetite, His Heart” by Dominica Phetteplace
Javi is on a mission, in this SF short, to find the love he rejected. A year after saying he wanted to be with other women, Javi realizes he was wrong and begins searching for Isla. With the help of private investigators, he discovers her last job was in Robot Country, an exclusive and deeply secretive area, on the New Mexico border.
Deciding to risk losing everything, the love-struck young man schemes to start working in Robot Country. But what he finds there shakes his very faith in humanity, though his resolve to find his true love never waivers.
The author told the story at an easy and attention-grabbing pace, though the end seemed at odds with the rest of the story.
“Knee Deep in the Sea” by Melissa Marr
In Marr’s fantasy novelette, Isabel is a documentary filmmaker’s assistant on location in the Orkney Islands to film seals. After surviving a difficult and at times violent life, Isabel is no blushing violet. But when she wakes up on the beach with the dead body of a man she had a drunken argument with, she begins to question her own sanity.
Soon after disposing of the body, she meets a strange woman in a local pub. Attracted to the alluring local, Isabel follows her out to the beach, only to wake the next morning with another dead man. As the mysteries swirl around Isabel like the ocean currents, she wonders if there is any truth to the selkie stories that thrive in these Scottish islands.
This story, told in the first person, worked well, and kept the reader fully engaged and wondering who would survive the sea and its mysteries.
“Eros Pratfalled, or, Adrift in the Cosmos with Lasagna and Mary Steenburgen” by Adam-Troy Castro
A man waits to find his soulmate in this SF short. Ellis is nothing special, except his soulmate is not of his Earth or of his time. Holding out for what he knows is his final love, means that Ellis struggles to connect with anyone else who is not on that list of one.
Then, one day, after yet another failed relationship, time and space bends itself to transport the heavy-hearted Ellis across the cosmos. Is this the chance he’s been yearning for?
Though the idea was an interesting concept and the prose curious, the story seemed to drag through the middle.