Tincture Journal, Issue Four, Summer 2013 by Daniel Young

Tincture Journal, Issue Four, Summer 2013 Reviews

• 
  Rudi Landmann

  Standard Tincture disclaimer: I have a personal connection to the editor and publisher of this journal. I don’t “get” free verse, so I don’t review it.
  
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  First up, what’s in this issue? A total of 15 short stories, a non-fiction piece, a short play, and 11 free-verse poems.
  
  I think the quality and the range of material published in Tincture remains very high. No, not everything in there appeals to me, but I’ve never felt that the lack of appeal for me in any piece was through a deficit in its craft. As usual, I’ll confine my comments in this review to the pieces that really stood out to me personally.
  
  First up, a kind of honourable mention to two stories, Candace Petrik’s “The Dead” and Frank Scozzari’s “Children of the Tides”.
  
  “The Dead” is a sad portrait of loss, told through the eyes of a child. Beautiful and poignant, my reception of this story was hampered by my never fully buying that I was hearing the inner thoughts of a seven-year-old; it’s something that frequently bothers me when reading stories told from the point of view of very young narrators. I don’t know why something in me insists on this particular piece of verisimilitude, and if you don’t share my hangup, you’ll likely take to this story more than I did; it really is very fine.
  
  Similarly, my appreciation for “Children of the Tides” was hampered by expectations that I was bringing as a reader. The story deals with a surfer swept far from land by ocean currents who is led home by ocean animals. The story is written in a purely naturalistic style, but the structure of the story made me think this was a fable. Then, when I realised that the third animal wasn’t coming, and that the protagonist wasn’t here to learn a lesson from each encounter, I felt very disappointed: this was indeed a purely naturalistic tale, and read on those terms, I questioned its plausibility. But Scozzari didn’t owe me a fable, or for a naturalistic tale to be plausible to me. That’s all mine, so other readers will no doubt fare better.
  
  As usual, my personal biases favour the speculative fiction pieces, and of the five stories that I really liked in this issue, four of them can easily wear that label. Of these, three explore well-worn tropes of speculative fiction, but in each case, I think do something fresh with it: Andrew G. Bennett’s ”Keith vs The Ones”, Fikret Pajalic’s “Transference”, and Emilia Batchelor’s “Heatwaver”.
  
  The idea of a magic item that might be as much a curse as it is a treasure isn’t a new one in fantasy, but I still enjoyed Bennett’s take on it. In particular, I think this is due to how well he concealed the shape of the story right to the end.
  
  Similarly, the healer who can take others’ pain and wounds into themselves, even to the point of endangering their own lives is an old trope. What makes it new again in “Transference” is Pajalic’s highly naturalistic treatment of this character -- what would it be like to be such a person? Pajalic humanises this character to give his story real emotional punch.
  
  “Heatwaver”, by Emilia Batchelor, is a familiar apocalyptic scenario presented in a most unfamiliar way. In a series of disconnected snippets of text, it depicts Australia suffering through a heat wave of tremendous proportions. Some of these fragments are literal and documentary, but most are highly surreal. In these, if the words can’t be taken literally, at least their mood and imagery might be. I found the effect quite unnerving, disorienting, and ominous. I really enjoyed this one!
  
  Two stories stand out to me in this issue, one is the other spec-fic piece, the other is not spec-fic (or, at least, not unambiguously so). I find it impossible to choose a favourite between them, so if I mention Rhett Davis’ “Man in City has City” first, it’s only to put it in the context of the three spec-fic pieces I’ve just discussed. It’s a highly surrealist piece without perhaps much story at all in it. Rather, it’s a sketch of a most unusual and unreal situation. To describe it further would be to retell it poorly, so I won’t say anything more about its content. Whimsical and quirky, it grabbed my attention and held it fast.
  
  The other story is a morality tale: Kaylia Payne’s “One Big Apology”. In this, Payne nails the genre completely and precisely. Yes, the premise is extraordinary, but no magic is required for it to succeed. The twist in its tail is quite delicious, and again, to say more would be to reveal too much.
  
  So again, a very diverse group of stories, of which three really appealed to me and two more blew me away. I feel very confident that most people could find a similar quantity of stories to love in these pages, and that their choices would be different from mine.
  
  It’s been a wonderful first year for Tincture, and I look forward to 2014!
  
• 
  Curious Reeds

  Well it really was amazing, OK?