Harare Review of Books

256 pp. April 21, 2026, Tachyon Publications. SF.

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“The God-King always dies in the end. That is what it means to be a God-King.” 

That’s the fantastic assertion at the beginning of the story that opens this collection. I had read just one story by Mills before (surprisingly, or more likely unsurprisingly, if you know me—I’m often late to the literary party) and it was not the award-winning “Rabbit Test” (Nebula, Hugo, Sturgeon!): My first Mills was “Strange Waters,” about a fisherwoman lost in time and trying to get back to her children, which I believe I encountered in 2019’s excellent The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman. Strange Waters was indeed strange and so wonderful, with time travel, but a kind of medieval feel; it made a home in my head. I re-read it with pleasure in this volume, and found many other stories to love.

“Adriana in Pomegranate” is a terribly mournful story about grief and loss through the lens of wizardry. What I loved most about this story was the nerding out (lots of it) over various inks and papers; not sure if all writers are secretly into calligraphy and things, but I am, and apparently so is Mills.

“A Shadow Is a Memory of a Ghost” is about sisters, always a fun thing to explore in fiction. These two hate each other with a deadly passion—but at its core, it’s really the usual story of sibling rivalry. Neither sister seems worth liking, so readers won’t have to choose one over the other.

Two stories in particular make this a fiercely feminist collection. “The Limits of Magic” is a complex little story about women’s escape from ‘duty’ (read: marriage), finding refuge in the desert from their society’s oppressive rules. The women in this story can fight guards and make magic, even to suppress their menstrual cycle to prevent a betrothal; but still there are some things even they can’t do—

“The women of Polenka spend their lives simmering in resentment and perfecting ways to hide it. The worse their burden, the more fiercely they embrace it, because if they pause for one moment, if they look back at the course of their lives and acknowledge what has been done to them, they will collapse with grief.”

But mothers can break the cycle, the story says, if only they would choose to; and the protagonist’s act of rebellion becomes the seed of a revolution. 

The second feminist story, “Rabbit Test,” educated me: The rabbit test (also known as a Friedman Test) was a crude pregnancy test where a woman’s urine was injected into a young female rabbit, after which the rabbit was killed, dissected and examined for ovarian changes. “Rabbit Test” goes back and forth through time relating the right of women to access abortion services, or the fight for bodily autonomy across the ages. In this story, there’s a regression to a complete ban by 2091, which seems not implausible.

There’s also, in the collection, “One Part Per Billion,” which is feminist in a different way—and which is also funny. “Spindles” is heartbreaking for its subtext, and it has all of the best parts of a fairytale. And Kiki Hernández is the guitar-playing, demon-defeating hero of the story that tells you what it’s about in its title: “Kiki Hernández Beats the Devil.” 

This collection is both intelligent and serious; it has important things to say about the world it inhabits, and generalisations about (mostly “Western”) society. In the most powerful of these stories, Mills is on a soapbox (complimentary)—whether directly, as in “Rabbit Test,” or indirectly as in “The Limits of Magic.” The mood, unintended or not, is mostly grim; even the most light-hearted story, “One Part Per Billion,” really … isn’t. But all of this feels like it’s because Mills cares: about the state of the (/her) world, about the rights of women, and about motherhood. And so, ideally, readers will approach this volume with equal gravity, to hear what she has to say.

Thanks to Tachyon Publications and NetGalley for DRC access.

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Find out more about Rabbit Test and Other Stories from the publisher’s site here.