Reactor, August 2025
“Every Ghost Story” by Natalia Theodoridou
“With Only a Razor Between” by Martin Cahill
“In Connorville” by Kathleen Jennings
“The Hungry Mouth at the Edge of Space and the Goddess Knitting at Home” by Renan Bernardo
Reviewed by Mike Bickerdike
Reactor offered four pieces of original fiction in their August issue, with three short stories covering several fantasy subgenres and a dark fantasy novelette.
“Every Ghost Story” by Natalia Theodoridou is a paranormal fantasy short story. The tale is told in an off-hand, somewhat flippant manner, as though narrated by a familiar friend. While the style is quite common, it is not uniformly successful throughout this story, which moves from a jocular start through to a more considered conclusion. After an unexplained worldwide event that renders ghosts visible, a young woman goes to ‘Ghost Camp’ to address her anxiety issues. Unfortunately the best ideas here are not especially well developed, with the plot ultimately turning to some of the more clichéd tropes of the genre.
“With Only a Razor Between” by Martin Cahill is a dark fantasy novelette. A barber, living under the yoke of a tyrannical regime, is required each week to shave one of the state’s military enforcers. Knowing what a murderous and evil man he is, he is conflicted by the opportunity to cut the man’s throat, and the inherent trust that his profession lives by. The tale deals with this tension very well, and the characters are well-formed. This is a highly engaging story, helped in large part by being very well written, in a smooth, mature style. This is recommended reading.
“In Connorville” by Kathleen Jennings is a fantasy short story, categorised by Reactor as being in the weird fantasy subgenre. Four women meet up in a motel in their old hometown a few days before a wedding, where they share strange stories from the town’s past. The idea presented here is not bad, though the narrated stories nested in the tale don’t build tension especially well, as their relevance to the main characters is not immediately apparent. Moreover, the payoff at the end was perhaps a little predictable and didn’t meet this reader’s expectations from the set-up.
“The Hungry Mouth at the Edge of Space and the Goddess Knitting at Home” by Renan Bernardo is another fantasy tale, though this one is set in space. It’s probably not SF as one usually defines it, as the protagonist appears as a ghost for the most part, having been killed on her ship, far from Earth. By way of backstory, it is revealed that her grandmother has fantastic powers that may be impacting the grim events on the starship. It was interesting to read a piece of weird fantasy that is placed in such an unusual context, and the plot will keep most readers guessing.
More of Mike Bickerdike’s reviews and thoughts on science-fiction can be found at https://starfarersf.nicepage.io/