WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT! 
 last year, amy(other amy) tipped me off to this cool thing she was doing: the short story advent calendar, where you sign up to this thingie here and you get a free story each day. 
 i dropped the ball and by the time i came to my senses, it had already sold out, so for december project, i'm going rogue and just reading a free online story a day of my choosing. this foolhardy endeavor is going to screw up my already-deep-in-the-weeds review backlog, so i don't think i will be reviewing each individual story "properly." i might just do a picture review or - if i am feeling wicked motivated, i will draw something, but i can't be treating each short story like a real book and spending half my day examining and dissecting it, so we'll just see what shape this project takes as we go. 
 and if you know of any particularly good short stories available free online, let me know! i'm no good at finding them myself unless they're on the tor.com site, and i only have enough at this stage of the game to fill half my calendar. <--- that part is no longer true, but i am still interested in getting suggestions! 
 DECEMBER 10 
 Kao Yu's own wisdom and long experience generally governed his considerations in court, and his eventual rulings. But he was uniquely different from all other judges in all of China, in that when a problem came down to a matter of good versus evil--in a murder case, most often, or arson, or rape (which Kao Yu particularly despised), he would often submit that problem to the judgment of a unicorn. 
 oh my god, wow. this is an ALL-NEW story by peter s. beagle who proves he's still got it at 77 years old. this is a spectacular story, kids. the beautiful prose you expect from the man who gave us the much-beloved The Last Unicorn, but the "unicorn" this time out is not a unicorn-unicorn, but the chinese chi-lin, which seems more like a quirk of translation than anything resembling a horn'ed pony. 
 this one is brandy-new to the tor site, and i'm completely bewildered by the low-star GR ratings on here so far. the reviews attached to them help to clarify what wasn't working for those readers, but me? i freaking LOVED it! unreservedly. i think it is beautifully-written and i appreciate its ending, which is classic beagle - haunted, melancholy, permeated with loss. that's exactly what i like outta my stories. 
 read it for yourself here: 
 http://www.tor.com/2016/12/07/the-sto... 
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