Lone Star Stories #29, as is usual for this publication, contains three short stories and three poems. Every piece of writing in this magazine is accompanied by an illustration. These illustrations don’t detract from the words, but, for me, they don’t add much either. The biggest effect any of them had was a photograph of running horses that accompanied “Seven Steeds.” Count them as often as I may, I get either six or five. Does that mean anything? Nothing, except I was distracted rather than focused or enlightened.

The lead story is “The Toymaker’s Grief” by Hal Duncan. It is a recursive tale in which the fantastic elements slip in somewhere near the middle. The accompanying illustration is quite simple and charmingly appropriate in this tale about the simplicity of complexity. Curiously, although Duncan’s story has the feel of a folk tale that might have been at home in a book your grandmother read from at bedtime, the setting is contemporary, or nearly so. I found this a little off-putting; I expected it to be set in the 18th century or earlier. I don’t think the only problem here was my expectation; nobody makes a good living making wooden toys by hand in this day and age.

“This Is How We Remember” by Jaime Lee Moyer is a powerful tale of sharing and memory. Like “The Toymaker’s Grief,” Moyer’s story is also about grief, but unlike Duncan’s offering, Moyer’s story is a braid in which grief is only one strand. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I know Jaime well and have published some of her poetry. This story revealed to me a new aspect of her writing, characterized by strengths that simply don’t apply to poetry.

Darkness held the sounds of day in suspended animation, the constant shrill screech of birds and monkeys replaced by soft trills of tree frogs and the monotone buzz of crickets. Even the village dogs slept at this hour, curled up on woven mats in front of each house.

I…flopped onto my cot, bunching the pillow under my head. Clouds, tattered as old lace curtains, veiled the moon, hiding his grief. Mist filled the space between stars. At some point I closed my eyes and dreamed for the first time in days. Dreams of leaping shadows stretching across the ground, of drums and flames reaching for the sky.

I look forward to seeing more of her fiction.

The last story in this issue is “Needle and Thread” by Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky. This is a standard story of how mortal power, the sidhe, and ordinary folk interact. Once again, grief plays a big role. Here, as in “This Is How We Remember,” grief shows up as something to be overcome, but “Needle and Thread” is uplifted by skillful characterization and a richness of storytelling not common even in prestigious periodicals. However, because nothing here is particularly surprising or unfamiliar, it had the potential to be much better.

And now for the poetry:

“Seven Steeds” by Elizabeth Bear is layered in allusion. This is the norm for good poetry, but this one has no real surface layer. If you don’t “get” it, you have nothing. So read it again, slowly. It is worth the effort.

In “What the Stars Tell,” Rusty Barnes sugarcoats a pill. The pill is a warning, and, well, maybe the coat’s not so sweet after all. I should mention that I disagree with the poem’s thesis, although I don’t think one has to agree with a poem to like it. But both this and “Seven Steeds” are mainstream poems written about genre subjects, and I don’t particularly care for such things—my personal prejudice.

Sonya Taaffe’s “Logos” is the last and most accessible of the three poems in this issue. Sonya Taaffe is the perfect person to write a poem about words and about people who think about words:

who might never have laid
ten words together in his life, but his memory
browses on them like blood.

If those aren’t shiversome words about a librarian, I don’t know what are!

I also don’t know why Eric Marin chose such different works in poetry and in prose for this issue of Lone Star Stories. One can read the six items that comprise this issue in any order, but the three stories are listed first, followed by the three poems. This is the order in which I read them and how I believe most readers will peruse them. The stories are as direct as narrative can be; the poems play Twister with your mind. Maybe it’s the same aesthetic principle that made sweet and sour sauce a staple of Chinese cooking. Can’t say it’s a bad thing, but these poems are likely to appeal to a completely different set of people than those who enjoy the stories.