The July issue of Locus is out now, with a couple of reviews of Flytrap. First, from Nick Gevers:

Flytrap returns after a hiatus with its fifth issue, not quite as strong as previous iterations but well written and diverting all the same. ‘‘Cows, Water, Whiskey’’ by Haddayr Copley-Woods is an amusing triptych of folk tales told by an old village woman to a youth who constantly second-guesses her; each of the three morals is zanily unpredictable, and the boy is gracefully trumped at the end. ‘‘Teotihuacan’’ by Barth Anderson is a good fantasy vignette interrogating the feasibility of wish-fulfillment; ‘‘I Can’t Touch Them’’ by Nina Kiriki Hoffman places sibling rivalry in a dark, melancholy light; ‘‘The Apocalypse: A Pamphlet’’ by Meghan McCarron considers human responses to the possibility of the world’s end in quirky, offbeat terms; and ‘‘Learning to Leave’’ by Christopher Barzak is a tale of family dysfunctionality with little hope of egress. The best story must however surely be Ruth Nestvold’s ‘‘Sailing to Utopia’’, an epistolary progress by an Oregonian woman through the perfect societies imagined by Edward Bellamy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Thomas More, from each of which she departs without reluctance.

Next, from Rich Horton:

The highlights at Flytrap #5 include a smart Ruth Nestvold story, “Sailing to Utopia”, in which a young woman from Ecotopia decides to visit various other famous utopias, learning of course that there is always a dark side to these societies. David Ira Cleary’s “Perfect Pitch” is nice science fiction about a girl whose parents had her gene-tweaked for musical talent – but it went wrong and she’s tone deaf, or “amusic.” She has to deal with a new school, her father’s problems with a new job, and new friends (or the lack thereof). Typical YA, perhaps, but quite nicely done and effectively using the SF ideas.

The Locus Poll results are also discussed in that issue. My novel Rangergirl came in fourth in the first novel category, after Elizabeth Bear's, John Scalzi's, and David Marusek's books. Those novels are all SF, which means mine is the first fantasy novel to place in the category, which is pretty cool, I think.