Rich Horton reviewed two of my short stories in the June 2012 issue of Locus, and put one of them, “Twa Sisters,” on the magazine’s monthly Recommended Reading List. That’s the first time that’s happened to me, so needless to say I’m thrilled.

Here’s what Rich had to say:

In the second April issue [of Beneath Ceaseless Skies] I enjoyed Mike Allen’s “The Ivy-Smothered Palisade”, another very dark story, about a girl orphaned when her parents are murdered for rebelling against a cruel Lord, who escapes her orphanage only to come to the sinister Manse Lohmar, where she encounters great kindness, but a horrible secret as well. The only weakness is a deliberately off-center telling — a letter from the protagonist to a lover we never meet, long after the central action — I think I see where Allen is going with this strategy, but in the end I think it frustrates the reader more than needed.

Mike Allen is good again in Not One of Us for April, with a very odd SF story, “Twa Sisters”, set in a city controlled by the Hierophant, and beginning with a deliberately retro painter encountering a person half tree/half woman and just getting stranger from there.

Posted in Fiction, Reviews, Short stories, Writing