Locus Online

The Immortal King Rao, Vauhini Vara (Nor­ton 978-0-393-54175-5, $27.95, 384pp, hc) May 2022.

Along with Adam Roberts’ The This and Jenni­fer Egan’s The Candy House, Vauhini Vara’s debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, is the third book I’ve read this year that imagines a future where people have direct neural access to social media and the internet. This growing literary trend, a mix of cyberpunk and transhu­manism, ...Read More

The Dark Ride: The Best Short Fiction of John Kessel, John Kessel (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-058-7, $45.00, 582pp, hc) June 2022.

I love big career-retrospective single-author collections, especially when the author provides notes on genesis and biographical context. John Kessel’s turn has come with The Dark Ride, a gathering of 20 stories from 1981-2021 that shows his command of a wide range of motifs and styles and his recurring ...Read More

Fusion Fragment 3/22 Lightspeed 4/22 Fantasy 4/22

March also sees the first 2022 content from Fusion Fragment, with their tenth issue. Jennifer Hudak kicks things off with the bittersweet “The Topogra­phy of Memory”, which finds a narrator returning home for the first anniversary of her brother’s death, only to find she can’t quite find her way. The story is weighted with guilt as the narrator navigates their own ...Read More

Among Strangers, Robert Silverberg (Subterranean Press 978-1645240693, hardcover, 760pp, $50.00) June 2022.

This generous new compilation containing a choice selection from Robert Silverberg’s vast output from his mid- to late-career apex allows us to do several things simultaneously. First, and primarily, we get to enjoy some excellent fiction which might be otherwise hard to come by. (I note on ISFDB that recent editions for the three novels herein are ...Read More

All the Seas of the World, Guy Gavriel Kay (Berkley 978-0-59344-104-6, $28.00, 528pp, hc) May 2022.

Based on absolutely no evidence other than a handful of conversations, I suspect that Guy Gavriel Kay’s large and loyal readership extends along a fairly definable spectrum. At one end are the pure fantasy readers, who value his torqued version of actual historical settings as a kind of worldbuilding all its own, even ...Read More

The Next Time I Die, Jason Starr (Hard Case Crime 978-1789099515, trade paperback, 256pp, $14.95) June 2022.

I have been an aficionado of the Hard Case Crime line of mysteries ever since its debut in 2004. What great books they issue! But I confess that I tend to read only their reprint volumes, the classic, forgotten, vintage stuff. It’s just my quirk that I prefer the older goods. So ...Read More

Greetings from beyond the paywall! We have been posting new content monthly on our Patreon Archive Feed – scans of vintage Locus and older audio clips from author interviews and more – and wanted to share a little of what that looks like.

In addition to all the benefits of lower tiers, including a digital subscription and other perks, patrons pledging $15+ monthly have access to the Archive content (AKA ...Read More

Results of the 2021 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Awards have been announced.

Fevered Star, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga 978-1-53443-773-9, $27.99, 400pp, hc) April 2022.

Fevered Star picks up almost immediately after the end of Black Sun, the first book in Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between the Earth and Sky series. The city of Tova is in turmoil, the sun is locked in a perpetual eclipse, and the clans across the Meridian are hastily forming alliances in preparation for all-out war. Old scores are ...Read More

The 2022 YA Book Prize shortlist features a number of titles of genre interest, including:

• Skin of the Sea, Natasha Bowen (Penguin)
• Afterlove, Tanya Byrne (Henry Holt)
• The Upper World, Femi Fadugba (Penguin)
• House of Hollow, Krystal Sutherland (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

The £2,000 YA Book Prize is awarded to a YA title written by an author living in the UK or Ireland. The panel of judges ...Read More

Poguemahone, Patrick McCabe (Unbound 978-1-80018-111-3, £20.00, 624pp, hc) April 2022. (Biblioasis 978-1-77196-473-9, $21.95, 600pp, tp) May 2022.

Weighing in at more than 600 pages and written entirely in free verse, I can understand that some readers will be a little intimidated by Patrick McCabe’s 13th novel, Poguemahone. I’m here to tell you that despite the comparisons to Ulysses and Ducks, Newburyport, despite the Gaelic salted through the ...Read More

The Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror (AEFCFT) has announced the finalists for the 2022 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards).

Aspects, John M. Ford (Tor 978-1-250-26903-4 $26.99, 496 pp, hc) April 2022.

Sixteen years after his untimely death, we finally have John M. Ford’s last novel, Aspects, or at least a substantial portion of it. The whole would have been even more substantial, since a half dozen completed sonnet-epigraphs suggest a six-part structure that could have run to more than 1000 pages, so perhaps a two-decker or even ...Read More

Sally Williamson has been promoted to editorial director at the Bantam imprint of UK publisher Transworld and will report to publisher Frankie Gray. Editorial director Francesca Best is returning from parental leave and will also report to Gray. Alice Rodgers is taking on the role of commissioning editor, transitioning from covering for parental leave, and will report to Williamson. Transworld Publishers is now known as Transworld, and Bantam Press is ...Read More

Malorie Blackman won the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize, announced June 21, 2022 by English PEN.

The prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world and shows a “fierce intellectual determination… to define the real truth ...Read More

Hexagon 3/22 Fireside 3/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/10/22, 3/24/22

Hexagon Magazine opens its 2022 releases with its eighth issue, featuring five original stories. While the publication does publish stories in English and French (a trend I’ve been happy to note here and in publications like Omenana as well), all the works in this issue are English originals. All the works are also what I’d classify as fantasy, with some interesting ...Read More

The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (IAMTW) announced the nominees for the 2022 Scribe Awards, honoring excellence in licensed tie-in writing. Nominees of genre interest follow.

PulpFest has announced the nominees for the 2022 Munsey Award, given “to an individual or institution that has bettered the pulp community.” Nominees are selected by the general pulp community, with the winner selected by a vote of past Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Awards winners. The nominees are:

The 2021 Ladies of Horror Readers’ Choice results have been announced. The top ten winners are:

• “Become a Flute, Become a Spy Glass, Become a Knife”, Elou Carroll (Grimm & Dread: a Crow’s Twist on Classic Tales)
• Earthly Bodies, Susan Earlam (Speleorex)
• Till We Become Monsters, Amanda Headlee (Woodhall)
• The Night Library of Sternendach, Jessica Lévai (Lanternfish)
• Bad Witch Burning, Jessica Lewis (Delacorte)
• The

The 2022 Walter Scott Prize went to News of the Dead by James Robertson (Hamish Hamilton). The prize “celebrates outstanding historical novels published in the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth.” Titles and authors of genre interest on the shortlist also included The Magician by Colm Tóibín (Viking).

Prison of Sleep, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-0-85766-942-1, $14.99, 400pp, tp) April 2022. Cover by Kieryn Tyler.

Prison of Sleep is the concluding volume of Tim Pratt’s multiverse duology. At this remove, I can’t remember much about the first volume, Doors of Sleep (2021), except for four things: the first-person narrator, Zax, whirled unwillingly from world to world when he slept, pursued by a nemesis; the fact that he’s ...Read More

Siren Queen, Nghi Vo (Tor 978-1-25078-883-2, $26.99, 288pp, hc) May 2022.

From Nathanael West to Tim Powers, the vision of Hollywood as a kind of halluci­nogenic inferno of ambition, lust, corrup­tion, and betrayal has nearly become a literary convention, both in fiction and nonfiction. While most novels about Hollywood history succumb to the temptation to name-check real-life movie personalities, even if only as walk-ons, Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen reverts ...Read More

City of Orange, David Yoon (Putnam’s 978-0593422168, hardcover, 352pp, $27.00) May 2022.

For those readers intent on firmly categorizing books—and I admit to having my own moments of fussy classifying obsessiveness—David Yoon’s excellent and engrossing debut novel presents some issues. And even speaking of those issues with specific examples is tricky, because this reviewer hesitates to spoil the twists and turns of the book. I shall confine myself to ...Read More

A Comb of Wishes, Lisa Stringfellow (Quill Tree Books 978-0-06-304345-9, $16.99, hc, 272pp) February 2022.

In some ways, Lisa Stringfellow’s A Comb of Wishes, which was heavily influenced by her father’s West Indian immigrant culture, is a classic ‘‘be careful what you wish for’’ fantasy. With a young protagonist, Kela, who is reeling from her mother’s accidental death only a few months earlier, the novel offers a poignant ...Read More

Penguin Random House has announced a new imprint, Random House Worlds, ‘‘dedicated entirely to licensed book publishing.’’ The imprint will be home to media-related books from ‘‘Star Wars, Minecraft, Stranger Things, Garfield, Magic: The Gathering, Lore Olympus, Critical Role, and others.’’ Vice-president and Del Rey deputy publisher Keith Clayton will serve as publishing director. All licensed brands published by Del Rey and other imprints ‘‘under the Random House division will ...Read More