Website: apex-magazine.com

"A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" Author: Alix Harrow Main Characters: Unnamed Main Elements: Fantasy - Witches "Work, and Ye Shall Eat" Author:Walker McKnight Main Characters: Karen Main Elements: Science Fiction - Post-Apocalypse "Ghost Marriage" Author: P. Djeli Clark Main Characters: Ayen, Malith Main Elements: Fantasy - Spirits Non-Fiction Interview with Alix Harrow by Andrea Johnson Interview with Cover Artist Justin Adams by Russell Dickerson A Discussion with Tal M. Klein, Author of The Punch Escrow by Lesley Conner

"A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" is a Hugo award nominee. I really enjoyed the idea of libraries as magical places and some librarians being witches that can tell exactly what kind of book a person needs when they walk in the door, and can also feel the emotions of the books, those that are smug because the reader stayed up all night to finish them, or those that are outdated and are feeling neglected. I actually also found other people's comments on the story to be interesting too, from the real-world librarian who wants to point out they are normal people that love their job, but still need to fight to get people to pay their late fees and have no real magical powers at all, to the black kid who thinks librarians are not social workers and should leave that to the experts (though in this case I argue the librarian, being magical, probably knows best of all). I mean, this is a fantasy story, about maybe the way we wish things could be rather than about what they are. The story ends with the boy escaping through a portal and we assume a happy ending, but for all we know he popped right into a dragon's lair and got eaten. But this was meant as a story of hope, of something to aspire to, and not a reflection of reality. I enjoyed it immensely, especially as the thought of working in a magical library (not a regular one, I hate dealing with people) would be my dream job.

"Work, and Ye Shall Eat" was written by an author that likes to write about the Weird...and this one was definitely weird. You have a group of people fenced off from the rest of the world but you don't know why. Over time the military vehicle that made sure they stayed inside (or something else stayed out) disappeared. Then Karen starts seeing people in period dress riding horses encouraging them to come out...but there's something a little off about them. In the end...well, I couldn't quite figure out what happened in the end, what the fence was for, who the strange people were, if they were good or bad...I guess the reader is intended to be left wondering.

"Ghost Marriage" is a tale about a woman who dies and in the tradition of her tribe, she marries his "ghost", which intending to really a be a marriage with her husband's brother, actually ends up literally marrying her to her husband's vengeful ghost. As she wanders the barren lands in search for the witch woman who could help her, she is both protected and tormented by his presence. And just when you think the story will wrap up in the expected way, it keeps going. I enjoyed (though was also disturbed) by this story, but found there was one last thing tossed in at the end that left the story with more of a cliffhanger, leaving me wondering if this was a short story from a series (it isn't).