Reviews & Honors
This is where I archive reviews (good, bad, or indifferent) and the like.
The Fish Girl
Alex Daly MacFarlane, Tangent Online:
The genre element is slight, especially if you decide that Yanina's encounter with the man is a dream—something I have not yet determined, and perhaps won't. Such distinctions matter little against the simple strength of this story, the growing-up lesson about herself and her life that Yanina learns from the man and the changes she decides to make because of it.
Destroyer
Honorable Mention, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (17th Annual Collection)
David Soyka, SF Site
review:
Beth Adele Long's "Destroyer" depicts a similar pondering in the case of a woman who meets a young girl claiming to be a "black hole" and who seems to know a lot about the woman's problems. "Aren't you afraid of anything" Ruth asked. "Do you ever agonize over anything. Do you never feel the world is your enemy." The black hole Ruth stumbles in to leads her to understand that, as Pogo used to say, "we have met the enemy and he is us."
The Rose Thief
Honorable Mention, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (17th Annual Collection)
Rich Horton, Speculative Literature Foundation commentary:
From Spring I was particularly pleased with Beth Adele Long's "The Rose Thief", a lovely atmospheric fantasy...
Martin Lewis, SF Site review:
Beth Adele Long's "The Rose Thief" concerns a mysterious breed of thieves who descend on rose bushes to consume their petals. This premise sounds worryingly whimsical but Long's prose has an icy quality that makes for a very strong story.
Alan Lattimore, Tangent Online review:
Beth Adele Long takes us to the realm of mythic fantasy with "The Rose Thief." Rose Thieves love beauty and their right to possess it. When they find the rose tree, they strip it and destroy it in their obsession to consume. All except one thief, who waits, finds the last rose and places it within his heart. This is not the natural order for Rose Thieves or the roses they consume, and disaster is sure to follow.
The story seeks to bring about reconciliation between the devourer and the devoured, and succeeds within its own rights. I liked the story: I could have liked it more. The writing tends to devolve into vague emotionalism at critical points in the text, leaving me without a compass in otherwise skilled writing.