Blurb:

Grimdark Magazine presents the darker, grittier side of fantasy and science fiction. Each quarterly issue features established and new authors to take you through their hard-bitten worlds alongside articles, reviews and interviews. Our stories are grim, our worlds are dark and our morally grey protagonists and anti-heroes light the way with bloody stories of war, betrayal and action.

Review:

I make no secret on whatever platform is foolish enough to let me join and spout my opinions on things about how much I love R.R. Virdi’s works. “But didn’t he–” Nope, don’t want to hear it. I love it, the writing is beautiful and lyrical, he’s a master storyteller. 

Now, because he’s a master storyteller, I shouldn’t have been surprised at how intensely emotional and captivating his short story, Reed Lions, is. And yet, there I was, some 30-odd PDF pages later with actual chills. 

If you’re like me and you watch too many BBC dramas set in WWI and/or WWII, this story might remind you of the Indian soldiers of WWII who were there to be cannon fodder – I mean, lay mines in the desert. Soldiers of another country, fighting for an empire that generally saw them as ‘lesser’. Now, I mentioned this to R.R. who unsurprisingly confirmed that was intentional. It’s not just nods to the historical sacrifices of so many, but there are sprinkles of iconic sci-fi culture as well (looking at you, Red vs Blue). It brings a little smile to an otherwise haunting story. 

I loved the presentation of the Reed Lions throughout, and I think part of what made them so excellent was the reference to them by their nicknames throughout. We get to connect with and see them as the other soldiers see them. This is particularly noticeable with the discussions of the Reed Lions they lost. Ones we never meet but can so easily imagine them fitting into the troop we get to know. 

I could talk about this story for days. I have talked about this for days. But to say more than what I have done here would spoil a story that I hope hits for others as hard as it hit for me. It has lived rent free in my head for weeks. The plot, the characters, the carefully laid out references and reveals, they are just flawless. If you only read one short story, or one Grimdark story, or just one thing this year, make it Reed Lions.