★★★☆☆
(High Fantasy) Two lovers in academia exchange letters ostensibly about newly discovered rodents, but it quickly becomes clear there’s more than meets the eye. (3,508 words; Time: 11m)
"Every Tiny Tooth and Claw (or: Letters from the First Month of the New Directorate)," by Marissa Lingen [bio] (edited by Scott H. Andrews), appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue 295, published on January 9, 2020.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2020.063 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: It’s a nice surprise when you realize that many items in the letters are code for different things. I started looking for that once I saw Aranth was praising the new Directorate too much. We’re reading about someone escaping from persecution under a dictatorship—not rodents.
Con: It’s hard to know (until the last letter) what’s real and what’s code. I didn’t expect the shrews to be real animals, for example.
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Marissa Lingen Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: It’s a nice surprise when you realize that many items in the letters are code for different things. I started looking for that once I saw Aranth was praising the new Directorate too much. We’re reading about someone escaping from persecution under a dictatorship—not rodents.
Con: It’s hard to know (until the last letter) what’s real and what’s code. I didn’t expect the shrews to be real animals, for example.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Marissa Lingen Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
Nice job of "read between the lines" worldbuilding here. I recommend the podcast. They use two narrators, one for each letter writer. And they did a great job of hinting there was more going on than what was being said.
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