Kzine #27-Kindle Edition (e-magazine review).

‘Kzine’ is a little English magazine that publishes a wide variety of genre fiction. It’s available in paperback or eBook format from Amazon. The latest issue features the stories below.

‘A Phone Call Away’ by Trisha Ridinger McKee is the sad tale of a six year-old little girl called Frankie with a rough home life. Mother has a bad temper and her boyfriend Rob isn’t any better. Her sister, Charlie, is eleven and argues a lot but our heroine has learned to keep quiet and not upset mummy, plus she has an imaginary friend. Rather a tragic look at everyday life for too many children with a fantastic element thrown in. Makes you think.

‘My wife Deb pried her machete from the skull of the lifeless corpse at her feet’. So begins ‘Till Death Do Us Part’ by RW Goldsmith, with a childless couple, Deb and Peter, trying to reach a rescue boat on the coast. Escape! And all they have to do is get through the zombies in the way. Then they find a little girl. Zombies are pretty darn ubiquitous lately but you can still make a good story by focusing on the humans and RW Goldsmith does just that.

‘A Godless Man’ by Matthew X Gomez is an honest piece of pulp fiction right out of ‘Weird Tales’ or ‘In The Tradition Of Conan’ as a blurb writer might put it. Our hero Liam relies on wits, steel and sorcery rather than gods. Hence the title. Captured by a band of slavers in the desert, he seems to be in serious trouble which gets worse when they’re attacked by a scorpion as big as a horse. Here’s some thoroughly enjoyable hokum. Loved it.

Stephen King would probably have made a big thick novel from the premise of ‘Death Sentence’ but DA Lewis keeps it down to a few well-chosen words. It’s a prison story in which trustee Jacob Christian, serving seven years for aggravated vagrancy, eases his sentence by serving in the prison hospital. Here he encounters the worst of men in their last days, making the final moments more comfortable for serial killers and mass murderers and he’s mute. The gritty realism is laced with black humour.

‘Somebody’s Stolen Grandma’ by Charlotte Platt is a kind of horror-comedy romp in which Alice and Frankie have to recover their grandmother’s body before other very powerful people find out it’s missing. This brings them up against an assortment of dangerous characters, including a Djinn. Magic and mayhem and a bit of a caper but good light entertainment.

‘The Bad Ones Are Always The Best’ by Michelle Ann King starts off with grandad Marty getting computer help from his grandson Garrett and takes a dark turn as Marty remembers his past and reveals the true reason he’s bought the young fellow over. As a grumpy old man myself, I enjoyed Marty’s views on the youth of today and the twist on an old fantasy premise was original.

‘The Loneliness Patrol’ by Kent Rosenberger was a delightful romance in which shy Dustin watches a pretty lady move into the house opposite and wonders how he might make her acquaintance. His shadow knows. I enjoyed the elaborate ‘Guys And Dolls’ style dialogue and the general sentiment of this very nice fantasy. The author has published a few collections and they could well be worth looking at. I really did like this.

Greg is a smart tech guy who has developed an app that helps with his particular form of epilepsy. He’s also made an on-line friend and, when an opportunity comes up to get a free ticket to her home city, the ultra-modern Contrivance, he snaps it up. The ‘free’ ticket turns out to be from a company that wants to recruit him. ‘Seized Memory’ by LB Spillers mixes friendship, town planning and old SF trope with several clever twists and a neat ending. Damn near perfect.

Editor Graeme Hurry continues to make excellent choices for the stuff he puts in ‘Kzine’, providing a nice mix of genres and moods in stories that are all worth reading. Eight of them for less than the price of a pint of beer. Bargain!

Eamonn Murphy

June 2020

(pub: Kimota Publishing, 2020. 96 page kindle e-magazine. file: 2951kB. Price: £ 2.15 (UK0, $ 2.62 (US). ASIN: B088WQ7BRJ)

check out website: http://www.kzine.co.uk/  but more importantly, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kzine-Issue-27-Graeme-Hurry-ebook/dp/B088WQ7BRJ