Review: Cirsova Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense #22/Spring 2025
Techno-thrillers, good old-fashioned fantasy, and planetary romance all meet in this issue of Cirsova Magazine!
Summer is almost here but that is hardly a reason to let Cirsova’s 2025 Spring issue lie unread. With entries from the inestimable Jim Breyfogle, Richard Rubin, Michael Tierney, JD Cowan, and others, this is a collection of short stories you will not find anywhere else! The fantasy installments lift readers to new heights of wonder and awe while the space opera has all the derring do a reader could want. Add some spine-chilling but not overwhelming horror from the techno-thrillers, and you are good to go!
Let us dive in and take a closer look at these stories, shall we?
The Story
First is the latest entry in Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars saga, “Flight from Reckoning.” It opens with Fastrick, a Starrior, and his son Gilrick aiding in the preparation of a rogue planet for movement within the Wild Stars. They are also making a star map so that the Wild Stars’ path through the universe will be smooth and clear. Since Gilrick is a newly minted Starrior, his father is following him to test him. But that all changes when a mysterious Starrior appears with a cryptic warning minutes before the Wild Stars’ enemies, the Brothans, arrive.
In the shelling, Gilrick is killed, and Fastrick is left holding his remains.
Many years later, Fastrick follows his adopted daughter – Tamarick – on her first mission as a Starrior to test her. He did not want her anywhere near the job but he also could not bear to stay with her or his wife after losing Gilrick. So she went into the Starrior corps despite his best efforts; she is now learning alongside Tall Trees Wolf and her mother, Songwolf. It should be a routine shuttle flight.
Except that there is an infiltrator aboard. He has a vendetta against all the Wild Stars, but also special animosity toward Tamarick, who has no idea who he is – or where she is from….
“Salt Roses” by Jim Breyfogle follows Aelia, a young diver from a fishing village. Today she is tasked with watching to make sure the dreaded Mer do not arrive unannounced and kill the divers, but she must climb a nearby crest to keep one particular ship in sight. Didyme, the captain of this errant boat, is such an idiot with his dreams of finding the Emperor’s sunken lost treasure. If she could, she would ignore him, but her job is to keep everyone in sight. That includes morons like him.
But scaling the crest to keep his ship in sight makes her invisible to the other divers. When the Mer attack her warnings go unheard, and all that is left are empty boats – including her sister’s.
Ashamed and horrified, Aelia flees to the rotting city of Kolaki, where a drunk healer teaches her to heal and fight. When a drug lab explodes and she must help to tend the survivors, one of the men who got hit with the drug prophecies that she will find the emperor’s crown and restore the Empire. But that’s utter nonsense. The emperor is dead. The dead cannot be brought back to life….
Can they?
Richard Rubin returns in “The Siege of Verisa,” a sequel to his story in Cirsova’s 2021 Winter issue. Burke Fletcher is an Earthman trapped on Rigel IV, a planet where science and sorcery are one. He married Llana, one of the blue-skinned native inhabitants, and helped her steal the legendary Alchemist’s Stone. Now, though, he must rescue his wife from the clutches of a cult that seeks to use the relic to withstand the very baron he and Llana stole it from!
How much has man lost since going to the stars and spreading across the galaxy? This is the question which Galactic Enforcer Brandon Stone ponders in “Void Railway.” Stone, his friend Ronan Renfield, and several others guard their principle for this mission: a rich man named Duke who is heading to New Eden. Duke has a lot of money and he is paying...but he may have brought something truly Dark with him on this ride. The only immediate clue five days into a week-long job is a strange smell both Stone and Renfield detect before entering Duke’s room.
The Space Railway filters air. There shouldn’t be a smell, much less a scent of creek water and earth….
Jaime Faye Torkelson’s “Machine Dreams for Wired People” follows a family in a cyberpunk future. But they aren’t just any family – they are all special operators. Hitters and hackers who will do legitimate jobs for the right fee, and their new client wants his drug-addicted daughter back. Only problem is, she is addicted to digital dreams peddled by the Müllerwerks Corporation. Müllerwerks Corporation specializes in BioAI – that is, stripping your brain bare, pulling it out of your body, and hooking it up to an AI to help the machine run the programs that the corporation sells. If they don’t get her out of there in time, she is as good as a Legion drone from Asato Asato’s light novel series 86 – Eighty-Six.
“Cracking the Cyber Ziggurat” by Kevin Larson combines The Matrix with Tron and stories like Sword Art Online or Log Horizon. The Web is where anyone not rich enough to live in the real world is trapped in a simulation that can warp and transform your avatar. Whether or not that has an effect on your body in the pod – well, Abraham Kursk might know, but that rich old monster doesn’t even care about the children he sires.
Hector should know, since he is one of Kurk’s illegitimate children, and he got thrown in the Web early in his life and joined a crew of Web pirates. So when his captain, Forkbeard, is given a contract to break into the vault where Kursk keeps information on the political and rich who back him...well. Turnabout is fair play, and Hector wants vengeance as much as the rest of the crew does. But will they actually be able to pull it off? Or will they all die trying?
The Characters
Among the standout characters in this issue are Fastrick, Tamarick, and Songwolf in Tierney’s “Flight From Reckoning,” as well as Aelia in Jim Breyfogle’s “Salt Roses.” To those who know these authors’ work this is not really a surprise, but both writers truly brought their A-game to the stories this time. Aelia in particular is a fascinating heroine who will prompt readers to return to her story again and again so they can relive her exploits.
Hector and the Colonel in Larson and Torkelson’s tales also stand out from the crowd. So does Peacekeeper Glease in “The Demacron,” while Burke and Llana also get their time to shine in “The Siege of Verisa.” Readers are spoiled for choice of favorite characters to read about in this issue, that is for sure!
The World
Each world is sketched quickly but effectively, taking a reader from the shining waters of Aelia’s world to the dark, dank tunnels of a dying planetoid with ease. JD Cowan’s “Void Railway” is especially good at atmosphere, as is Torkelson’s “Machine Dreams for Wired People.” Along with the characters, a reader is spoiled for choice of which world they like best and want to reread most!
Content Warning
Drug use appears in several stories while “Machine Dreams for Wired People” shows people being broken down into parts so organs can be sold; the rest of the body is turned into “biowaste” that is flushed. There are also some brief gory scenes and allusions or hints to sex in numerous stories. Horrific mass murder is described as well. This issue is best read by those in their mid-to-late teens and by adults.
Who is it for?
Fans of Tierney and Breyfogle, full stop. This issue contains some of their best work to date and readers who do not already know them would be remiss not to pick it up and learn about these storytellers so they stop missing out on good tales. Noir and cyberpunk fans will love Torkelson’s entry in this issue, while those who liked Tron and The Matrix will definitely want to read Larson’s short story. Meanwhile, Cowan’s fans and those who want a space opera cyberpunk adventure will be upset if they do not grab “Void Railway” right now. Rubin’s “The Siege of Verisa” will appeal to Andre Norton fans – if you have not already heard of his work, this is the issue to pick up in order to become familiar with him. The Grande Dame of Science Fiction would approve of his handling of science and magic. Poetry fans will also want to read this new work by Jim Hutchings, as you do not find a poet this good very often these days. General interest readers looking for something fun should be perfectly happy with this issue, too, as it is a good introduction to Cirsova Magazine and the writers they publish.
Why buy it?
Do you need something to read while waiting at the dentist’s office or while the kids are practicing for soccer, in dance class, or otherwise occupied? This issue of Cirsova will have you so engrossed they will need to shake you to get your attention. Don’t take my word for it – read it for yourselves and see what you think!