Beneath Ceaseless Skies #115, February 21, 2013

Reviewed by Chuck Rothman

The two stories in the February issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies are concerned with the magic of words and language in two completely different settings.

“Sate My Thirst with Ink and Blood” starts out in the middle of the desert where Torin had gone to try to accomplish something important in his life. Struggling, he makes his way into the city of Lacuna and, against the warnings of the mages, begins to look through the books he finds there. Adam Callaway‘s story can be seen as a metaphor for the magic of books and is a clever mix of fantasy, science fiction, and magic realism.

Nick Scorza‘s “The Language of True Things” is about a boy who is apprenticed to Master Martyce, who is essentially a wizard. It’s set in a world of strange gods and the boy is an orphan, his father killed in war and his mother gone to follow the trickster god Balan. The boy learns spells and the methods of magic, but gets caught up in trying to find whether his mother is alive. A very strong story that is filled with some nice surprises and some powerful drama.

Chuck Rothman currently has fiction out in the anthologies Futuredaze, Mortis Operandi, and Unidentified Funny Objects.