The Sky on Fire, Jenn Lyons (Tor 978-1-250-34200-3, $29.99, 448pp, hc) July 2024. Cover by Michael Rogers.

Jenn Lyons made her debut with The Ruin of Kings, first of a five-book series (“the Chorus of Dragons”) that took epic fantasy, shook it, subverted it, and played entertaining games with the pieces that fell out. The Sky on Fire is not at all related to that series, except that ...Read More

The Knife and the Serpent, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-1915202802, $18.99, 400pp, tp) June 2024.

Between Tim Pratt novels, I always forget just how unabashedly pulp he is as a writer. I say pulp as a compliment, not a criticism. Pratt has a gift for embracing the ridiculous and turning it into entertainment: playing the emotional field with seriousness while rolling around in weird and wacky SFFnal propositions. In ...Read More

Foul Days, Genoveva Dimova (Tor 978-1-250-87731-4, $17.99, 368pp, tp) June 2024. Cover by Rovina Cai.

Foul Days is Scotland-based Genoveva Dimova’s debut novel. It mixes folklore and modernity, setting itself between the walled ghetto-city of Chernograd – where monsters roam the streets, magic is as commonplace as poverty, and in order to leave you have to pay people-smugglers to get you across the wall – and the prosperous city ...Read More

Lady Eve’s Last Con, Rebecca Fraimow (Solaris 978-1-83786-159-0, $16.99, 368pp, tp.) June 2024.

Lady Eve’s Last Con is Rebecca Fraimow’s debut novel, and what an interesting debut it is. Set in a far-future solar system in the glittering, elite high society of New Monte, it stars a small-time grifter who’s decided to run a long con for revenge, only to find herself falling for her mark’s half-sister.

Ruthi Johnson ...Read More

In the Shadow of the Ship, Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-147-8, $40.00, 96pp, hc) September 2024. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri.

In the Shadow of the Ship is the latest Xuya universe story from Aliette de Bodard. A short novella or a long novelette, it clocks in at around 90 pages of text, and it has many of the elements I’ve come to expect from de Bodard: elders who ...Read More

Road to Ruin, Hana Lee (Saga 978-1-66803-561-0, $18.99, 368pp, tp.) May 2024.

For a debut novel, Hana Lee’s Road to Ruin is a tour de force. Inventive and entertaining, it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through.

Jin-Lu makes her living crossing the wasteland. She’s a courier, one of the few who travel outside the safety of the walled cities known as kerinas, delivering ...Read More

Necrobane, Daniel M. Ford (Tor 978-1-25081-568-2, $28.99, 304pp, hc.) April 2024.

Speaking of romps, Daniel M. Ford’s Necrobane, sequel to 2023’s The Warden (which concealed much entertainment behind its bland title), is a classic adventure in the sword-and-sorcery mode. It follows The Warden in style, tone, and content, and opens directly after The Warden’s striking cliffhanger.

A Warden is part magistrate, part law enforce­ment, part general magical ...Read More

Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom 978-1-25032-488-7, $20.99, 176pp, hc) July 2024.

With Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard flexes her space opera muscles in a slightly different direction, in a universe that draws as much on the ‘‘cultivation fantasy’’ of xiānxiá as on the atmosphere and aesthetics that underpin her Xuya universe novels. Navigation­al Entanglements opens new vistas in a world where space travel is accomplished through the ...Read More

The Fireborne Blade, Charlotte Bond (Tordotcom 978-1-25029-031-1, $20.99, 176pp, hc) May 2024.

It’s always interesting to review a novella, and this month I have three. Or three very short novels, at least: the line blurs. Charlotte Bond’s The Fireborne Blade harks back to the adventure style of sword-and-sorcery fantasy that had its most recent great flowering (to the best of my knowledge) in the 1980s. Everything old is new ...Read More

A Magical Girl Retires, Park Seolyeon (HarperVia 978-0-06337-326-6, $21.99, 176pp, hc) April 2024. Cover art by Kim Sanho.

A Magical Girl Retires is award-winning Korean writer Park Seolyeon’s first novel to be translated into English. It’s a weird, delightful little book, simultaneously grim and breezy, and the trans­lation (by Anton Hur) communicates a fluid, straightforward and self-deprecatingly humorous first-person narration. This breezy grit is further illuminated by Kim Sanho’s ...Read More

Cascade Failure, L.M. Sagas (Tor 978-1-25087-125-1, $17.99, 416pp, tp) March 2024.

Clearly this is the month for me to discuss debut novels. Cascade Failure is the first novel from L.M. Sagas: a science fiction adventure in the high-octane tradition. Stories set in futures ruled by soulless corporations have multiplied in recent years, perhaps as the naked greed of unfettered capitalism has grown more blatant since the de­cade-defining financial crash ...Read More

Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW 978-0-75641-885-4, $28.00, 320pp, hc.) April 2024.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is award-winning short fiction writer John Wiswell’s debut novel. I went in expecting good things, and I wasn’t disappointed. The most straightforward shorthand I have to describe it is: ‘‘It’s as if T. Kingfisher wrote one of her fantasy romance novels from the point of view ...Read More

The Principle of Moments, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson (Gollancz 978-1-47323-419-2, £18.99, 520pp, hc.) January 2024.

Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson’s The Principle of Moments, the debut original novel from the first winner of the UK’s Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy & Science Fiction Writers of Colour (in 2020), feels like an answer to the question of: What happens if you cross Star Wars with Doctor Who? And then make it queer (queerer ...Read More

Fathomfolk, Eliza Chan (Orbit US 978-0-316-56492-2, $19.99, 448pp, tp) February 2024. Cover by Kelly Chang.

Eliza Chan has racked up several short fiction pub­lications in recent years, but Fathomfolk represents her debut novel. And it is an interesting debut, albeit one that, on the whole, didn’t come together as I might have hoped.

Fathomfolk takes place in a world dominated by water, apparently in the aftermath of a process ...Read More

The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom 978-1-250-88178-6, $18.99, 160pp, tp) February 2024. Cover by Andrew Davis.

It seems to me that I’ve read more books that have to do with weird forests over the last couple of years (some kind of Otherness, other land, or strange and inimical powers deep within the woods) than I have in a long while: Hannah Whitten’s fantasy-romance For the Wolf comes ...Read More

All the Hidden Paths, Foz Meadows (Tor 978-1-250-82930-6, $29.99, 520pp, hc) December 2023. Cover by Micaela Alcaino.

Foz Meadows’s All the Hidden Paths is a direct sequel to their A Strange and Stubborn Endur­ance. Velasin and Caethari have survived the plot against their diplomatic marriage, though it cost the lives of Caethari’s father and his sister Laecia. Their newlywed status and tentative happiness, however, is about to run ...Read More

Fallen, Melissa Scott (Candlemark & Gleam 978-1-952456-20-6, $22.45, 302pp, tp) December 2023. Cover by Eleni Tsami.

Melissa Scott’s Fallen might lack the sheer bloody energy of These Burning Stars, but it has instead the precise and understated competence of a writer who’s been honing her craft for four decades. Few of Scott’s novels are alike: while Fallen returns to the space opera universe that made its debut in ...Read More

These Burning Stars, Bethany Jacobs (Orbit US 978-0-316-46332-4, $19.99, 423pp, tp) October 2023.

These Burning Stars is Bethany Jacobs’s debut novel, and it’s an interesting and ambitious space opera – and a surprisingly self-contained narrative for an entry in that typically sprawling subgenre. Jacobs has the confidence to go big, and the control to bring her debut to a satisfying conclusion: I feel that fans of Megan E. O’Keefe’s ...Read More

The Hurricane Wars, Thea Guanzon. (Harper­Voyager US 978-0-06-327727-4, $30.00, 480pp, hc) October 2023.

Hate is another kind of passion. This is a truism repeated by the characters of The Hurricane Wars, Thea Guanzon’s debut novel, and it might go some way towards explaining why the central relationship of the novel leaves me cold: I’ve al­ways found hatred to be a rather chilly emotion, not passionate at all.

The ...Read More

Shield Maiden, Sharon Emmerichs (Head of Zeus 978-1804545553, £20.00, 416pp, hc) Febru­ary 2023. (Redhook 978-0-316-56691-1, $18.99, 416pp, tp) October 2023.

Sharon Emmerichs is a lecturer in early mod­ern and medieval literature at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. Shield Maiden is the first novel she’s published under her own name, though she has an interesting array of academic publications to her credit, and her academic bi­ography states that other ...Read More

The Fractured Dark, Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit US 978-0-316-29113-2, $18.99, 544pp, tp.) Sep­tember 2023.

The Fractured Dark is the second novel in Megan E. O’Keefe’s Devoured Worlds trilogy. The first book, The Blighted Stars, is a fast-paced and viciously readable planetary opera adventure with intelligent fungus, AI descending into dysfunc­tion, ecological critique, explosions, banter, and a touch of inadvisable romance to make the whole cocktail go down more ...Read More

A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, Anna Smith Spark (Flame Tree Press 978-1-78758-839-4, $16.95, 336pp, tp) September 2023.

I haven’t read Anna Smith Spark’s work before, though I understand her debut, The Court of Broken Knives (2018), received some critical attention. Her latest, A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, is a peculiar, ambitious novel. It delib­erately sets out, with its use of language, its use of repetition and ...Read More

A Multitude of Dreams, Mara Rutherford (Inkyard Press 978-1335457967, $19.99, 394pp, hc.) August 2023.

If you don’t think too deeply about Mara Ruther­ford’s A Multitude of Dreams, it’s a smooth and readable young-adult novel borrowing strongly from the gothic and romantic traditions: a sealed castle, a masquerading princess-who-is-not-a-princess, a mad king, a plucky young gentleman, a terrible disease, a monster wearing the face of a benevolent master, secret ...Read More

Where Peace Is Lost, Valerie Valdes (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-3085930, $19.99, 392pp, tp) August 2023. Cover art by Serena Malyon. Cover by Owen Corrigan.

Valerie Valdes’s Where Peace is Lost is her fourth novel, after a well-received debut space opera trilogy. Where Peace is Lost sets itself in a different science fiction continuity, with differ­ent characters, and spends most of its time on a single planet: It feels like ...Read More

Daughter of Winter and Twilight, Helen Corcoran (O’Brien Press 978-1-788493703, €14.99/£13.99, 566pp, tp) September 2023. Cover by Emma Byrne.

Helen Corcoran’s Daughter of Winter and Twilight is both like and un­like her debut novel, Queen of Coin and Whispers. Like, in that it is a compelling coming-of-age narrative with strongly drawn characters and a vivid world. Unlike, in that where Queen of Coin and Whispers focused heavily on ...Read More

System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom 978-125082-697-8, $21.99, 256pp, hc) November 2023. Cover by Jaime Jones.

The seventh of Martha Wells’s Murderbot long-form stories, System Collapse is a novel-length sequel to Network Effect, picking up within days of that novel’s conclusion. Murderbot fans are unlikely to be disappointed here: Wells is on form with the series’ trademark black humour, razor-sharp tension, Murderbot’s all-too-relatable interpersonal interactions, action, and high stakes. ...Read More

A Fire Born of Exile, Aliette de Bodard (JAB Books 978-1-6256-7652-8, $9.99, 406pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Ravven. (Gollancz 978-1-47322-343-1, £18.99, 432pp, hc) October 2023. Cover by Alyssa Winans.

A Fire Born of Exile is Aliette de Bodard’s second novel-length Xuya universe space opera. It’s a compelling, atmospheric tale of consequences, romance, and revenge. (I should note that I’m mentioned in the acknowledgements, which may cause you to ...Read More

Cassiel’s Servant, Jacqueline Carey (Tor 978-1-25020-833-0, $30.99, 548pp, hc) August 2023. Cover by Mélanie Delon.

Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey’s debut novel, was first published in 2001. I read it perhaps two or three years after that, when I was 17 or so: I remember being terribly annoyed at myself when I cracked the spine on the UK trade paperback almost as strongly as I remember the impact ...Read More

Devil’s Gun, Cat Rambo (Tor 978-1250269355, $27.99, 288pp, hc) August 2023.

Cat Rambo’s Devil’s Gun is the kind of lightly entertaining space opera that left little strong impression in its wake. Little on me, at least: this sequel to You Sexy Thing rolls along at as fast a pace as its predecessor, but it feels more like a collection of disparate incidents than a complete narrative, and its oddball ...Read More

He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan (Tor 978-1529043433, £20.00, 496pp, hc) August 2023.

Shelley Parker-Chan’s highly accomplished debut novel, She Who Became the Sun, first volume in the Radiant Emperor duol­ogy, came out to great acclaim in 2021. Set in a lightly fantasised version of historic China at the period of upheaval and civil war around the transition between the Yuan and Ming dynas­ties, it focused on ...Read More

The Master of Samar, Melissa Scott (Candle­mark & Gleam 978-1-952456-16-9, $22.95, 340pp, tp) June 2023. Cover by H. Won.

Melissa Scott’s long career is one filled with interesting and ambitious novels. Her second-world fantasies have always struck me, with one or two exceptions, as strongly influenced by ideas of the Renaissance city. This is true for The Master of Samar, Scott’s latest standalone fantasy novel: a novel with ...Read More