A review by pearseanderson
LONTAR #1 by Jason Erik Lundberg, Bryan Thao Worra, Paolo Chikiamco, Kate Osias, Chris Mooney-Singh, Elka Ray, Zen Cho, Ang Si Min, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kristine Ong Muslim

3.0

The Gambler was a great tale, but of course Bacigalupi pulled it off, riding that Pump Six wave. Overall, I love Lundberg's project here. Southeast Asian speculative fiction deserves its own study, magazines, mythos. But I didn't love this issue. The pieces did not feel as coherent (incoherent != experimental) as I think they should have been. I know if I was a citizen of Kuala Lumpar or Jakarta or Manila I would get more out of them, but should such a broad magazine attempt to write only to a local audience? I don't think that's Lontar's intention, yet I came away from most of the collection feeling like that was the case. I will start issue two soon, so I'm excited to see if the stories build on each other and if I care about the included prose poems. This is by no means bad SEA SFF, like the majority of Flesh/Heat/Trash, but I'm not drawn to it.