Review of Apex Magazine: 2021
Apex Magazine: 2021 collects the stories published in Apex Magazine in 2021 into a single volume. Containing eight issues worth of new stories, this is a thick volume with a wide array of speculative fiction stories ranging from humorous to heartbreaking.
It’s hard to select only a few favorites from a collection such as this. Every story was wonderful in its own way, though there are a handful that stuck out for me. “Mr. Death” by Alix E. Harrow was an absolutely heartrending but also heartwarming story of a person responsible for taking souls. I adored “The Amazing Exploding Women of the Early Twentieth Century” by A.C. Wise for showcasing a lesser known piece of film history and adding a speculative element that fit so perfectly. Kelly Sandoval’s “What Sisters Take” was an absolutely horrific story about unexpected twins taking their sibling apart bit by bit. And “Soil of Our Home, Storm of Our Lives” by Renan Bernardo was packed to the brim with wonderful characters and a look at the history of a family.
As is the case with every anthology, every reader will find different stories that speak to them. To list all of those stories for me, I would basically be giving the entire table of contents. Though some stories were disturbing and others did not stick with me as solidly, there was not a bad story in the entire collection.
Apex Magazine: 2021 will be available December 20, 2022, but you can pre-order it now.
The publisher provided me with a copy of this anthology in exchange for review consideration.
Comments