Lone Star Stories #30 begins with Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s “Dream Seed,” the only Christmas-themed story in this issue. Damara is the youngest of two siblings, and her elder brother, Scott, has a tendency to ruin everything that is important or precious to Damara. Not only does Scott invade Damara’s privacy when he reads her diary, he ruins her social life when he exposes its contents to the girls who have come for a sleepover. This is not the first of Scott’s misdemeanours, and neither is it the last. Each time Scott does something to ruin Damara’s life, their Aunt Eileen sends Damara a special gift to comfort her.

With the onset of Christmas, Damara wonders what gift her aunt will give her. After having lost her friends and her boyfriend due to Scott’s interference, Damara has been on guard, and Scott has been unable to play any of his usual tricks on her. As they open their presents on Christmas Day, Damara’s mom hands her a small present from her Aunt Eileen. Inside the box is a tiny seed and a note:

“Dream Seed,” it said.

“Plant this in dirt, water with tears or milk, wait a night, and see what grows.”

Damara follows the instructions and what blooms from this seed isn’t at all what either Damara or the reader expects.

Hoffman has a strong voice and keeps the reader’s attention from the get-go. The sibling rivalry and bickering between Damara and her brother are realistic and down-to-earth. However, the dénuouement when it came, felt rushed, and I barely had time to appreciate what it was all about before the end.

Overall, “Dream Seed,” is solid and well written; however, I feel it would have worked better if Hoffman had taken the time to let me absorb and understand the magic of the seed. Hoffman is a fantastic writer, but this isn’t her strongest work.

In “The Andrassii Agreement” by Stephanie Burgis, Helen has a gift for organizing parties, mediating, and being quite the diplomat when it comes to averting conflict and crises. Hosting a party for the visiting Andrasii, Helen picks up rumours of an impending announcement concerning an agreement reached between the British government and the Andrasii. This agreement seems to be quite pertinent in the light of her mother’s relationship with the visiting Andrasii Ambassador.

Burgis ups the tension early in the story by introducing Helen’s father and his resentment of her mother’s affair with the Andrasii Ambassador who happens to be a woman. One tense episode follows the other, and readers will find themselves on Helen’s side as she strives to deflect possible confrontations. Just when we think fisticuffs are inevitable, Helen forces the dramatic reveal. What results is laugh-out-loud fun. Using a backdrop of politics and intrigue, Burgis provides us with a read that is witty, tart, and satisfying. Recommended.

In Josh Rountree’s “Veronica,” Peter Morningstar pays a visit to Veronica along with someone who is referred to only in the second person. As Peter tries to convince Veronica to go with him, Veronica, our invisible second person, and Peter travel the lanes of memory.

Rountree’s prose is rich in imagery and evokes an emotional response from the reader. While Rountree utilizes genre tropes (magic and Peter Morningstar a.k.a. Peter Pan) there is so much here that transcends genre. “Veronica” is one of those stories that touches us because it reminds us of our own childhood, our own mortality, the fleeting quality of life, and of how magic and magical friends are often vehicles we use to reconnect with our true selves. Rountree’s story resonates the strongest and emerges as the standout of this issue. Highly Recommended.

Eileen Tabios, a contemporary poet whose work I admire, often speaks of poetry as a vehicle of engagement, and of how poetry, like art, would be incomplete without the reader’s response. The effectiveness of a poem then depends on the poet’s skill at wielding language in order to evoke a response whether it be cerebral or emotional.

What I enjoyed about the three poems presented in this issue of Lone Star Stories is the attention to language and the passion for words revealed by each poet in the writing, and by the editor in his choice of these poems.

Read straightforwardly, Gemma Files’s “Speedometer” seems to be merely about time travel. However, if we look beneath the surface, the reader understands how there is more to this than meets the eye. Perhaps the clue to what this is all about lies in:

Dust clogs the heart’s dead coils. The skull
becomes a shell, bone carapace stuffed full
of odds and sods, rag-hanks and hair, old fears.

I love how this poem points a finger towards time travel and uses it to represent how speculative fiction has often been a means to leave behind the now. Files uses her words as a sculptor uses a sculpting knife. The extraneous is chipped away, and we are on the road in this speed machine that brings us back to where we were.

“Speedometer” has an air of melancholy about it. In particular, the final lines make us question the inevitability of life and this journey.

“All the Daughters of This House” by Nicole Kornher-Stace is a triptych presenting to the reader the three stages of a house and the women/daughters who have dwelled in it. The house’s life and the lives of the daughters who lived there are like open windows providing the reader a more meaningful glimpse not only into chronological time, but also into the struggles each generation encounters.

The recurring line: “go to sleepy, little baby, mama’s here” provides us with a clear image of how house and women are bonded together in this pact to care and protect. While each stanza is beautifully crafted, the last one, and specifically the last lines of the last stanza, are particularly engaging. This is where the house succumbs to final demise as its dwellers flee:

only pausing once: to stoop (like any witch)
and reach long nails to claim its own,
the last kernel of its fragile weary windburnt heart;
to nestle it and lullaby as soft as snow
as the fires build bright towers on all sides
and the bombs drop down like golden apples in the dark.

Kornher-Stace leaves us this poignant image and moves the reader to reflect on women, children, and the innocent who are forced to flee their homes. That the reader is moved to think on what lies beyond the poem is proof of the effectiveness of the conversation between poet and reader. The poet has achieved her objective by making the reader think beyond what takes place on the page.

“Damascus Divides the Lovers by Zero or The City Is Never Finished” is a collaboration by Amal El-Mohtar and Catherynne M. Valente. I found myself quite enchanted by this conversation between two lovers who search for each other within the confines of a city. El-Mohtar and Valente evoke a clear sense of place, so one is almost able to see and taste the dust in the marketplace and the cool, dusky interior of the Umayyad mosque. For all that this poem is about two lovers who are separated, there is something whimsical about the way it is written, and one never feels that this separation is truly tragic.

I’m sure that readers will find enough in this issue of Lone Star Stories to think over and ruminate upon. Overall, a satisfying read.