Locus Online

Abeni’s Song, P. Djèlí Clark (Starscape 978-1-25082-582-7, $17.99. 336pp, hc) July 2023. Cover by Michael Machira Mwangi.

P. Djèlí Clark makes his middle grade de­but with Abeni’s Song, the first in a new fantasy trilogy, and it is everything you’d expect from Clark, and then some.

The morning of Abeni’s 12th birthday begins with excitement. In her mother’s golden wrap and with fresh oils rubbed into her skin, ...Read More

The Road to Roswell, Connie Willis (Del Rey 978-0-593-49985-6, $28.00, 416pp, hc) June 2023.

Connie Willis’s loyal readers have long known of her fascination with the whole Roswell/UFOlogy circus. More than 20 years ago she published a hilarious chapbook called Roswell, Vegas, and Area 51: Travels with Courtney, in which she described extensive road trips over much of the Southwestern United States, visiting those and other oddball land­marks, ...Read More

The Moon Represents My Heart, Pim Wang­techawat (Blackstone 979-8-21234-003-8, $25.99, 272pp, hc). June 2023.

Pim Wangtechawat’s debut novel, The Moon Represents My Heart, is an am­bitious, timey-wimey, multigenerational saga about love, grief, and healing, although for me it never quite reaches its emotional po­tential. The story revolves around a family of British-Chinese time travelers whose frequent forays into the past influence their relations in the present. Joshua and ...Read More

The Salt Grows Heavy, Cassandra Khaw (Tor Nightfire 978-1-25083-091-3, $21.99, 112pp, hc) May 2023. Cover by Morgan Sorensen.

Cassandra Khaw has cemented their status as horror royalty, once and for all, with their lat­est novella, The Salt Grows Heavy. All hail and long live!

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not even sure how or where to start telling you about The Salt Grows Heavy. Nothing I say can ...Read More

Ink Blood Sister Scribe, Emma Törzs (William Morrow 978-0-06325-346-9, $30.00, 416pp, hc) Cover by Elina Cohen.

Sometimes I wonder whether creatives are reaching a point where all the possible ways that magic and its uses can be explored have already been explored. And then I read books like Emma Törzs’s debut novel Ink Blood Sister Scribe, and I realise that nope, there is definitely still scope for new ...Read More

I know you love books! Check out this week’s offering in SFFH!

Greetings from beyond the paywall! We have been posting new content monthly on our Patreon Archive Feed – scans of vintage Locus and audio clips from author interviews and more – and wanted to share a little of what that feed looks like by making some of our earlier posts public. Check out this post with the entire issue 39 of Locus.

In addition to all the benefits of lower ...Read More

GigaNotoSaurus 4/23 Flash Fiction Online 4/23 Lightspeed 5/23

May’s GigaNotoSaurus presents a video game-centered tale in Andrew Dana Hudson’s “Any Percent”. In the story, Luckless is a player of a simulation game where in the span of an hour people can live through sometimes multiple lives in-game, sometimes just experiencing life outside of themselves, and sometimes upping the stakes to try and speed-run a rise to the ...Read More

Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman (Soho/Sceptre) has won the 2023 annual Arthur C. Clarke Award. Beauman receives £2,023 and an engraved bookend. Other finalists were:

• The Red Scholar’s Wake, Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz)
• Plutoshine, Lucy Kissick (Gollancz)
• The Anomaly, Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Michael Joseph)
• The Coral Bones, E.J. Swift (Unsung Stories)
• Metronome, Tom Watson (Bloomsbury)

The 2023 judges were Francis Gene-Rowe ...Read More

The Shadow Sister, Lily Meade (Sourcebooks Fire 978-1-7282-6447-9, $18.99, hc, 336pp) June 2023. Cover by Shaylin Wallace.

When did Lily Meade’s The Shadow Sister grab my attention? With the first sentence, which sets the tone for everything that follows: ‘‘My sister is a bitch, but that doesn’t mean I want her dead.’’ Sutton is missing, and Casey, of course, wants her found. No sister would want any different, no ...Read More

On July 29, 2023, the city of Lake Forest Park, WA held a ceremony to name a section of 37th Avenue NE “Octavia Butler Avenue,” in honor of author Octavia E. Butler. The section includes the house where Butler lived from 1999 until her death in 2006. The ceremony was opened by city council vice-chair Phillippa Kassover, deputy mayor Tom French, and council member Tracy Furutani. Other speakers included Caren ...Read More