A Feast for Flies, Leigh Harlen (Dancing Star Press 978-1-73214-186-5, $11.99. 163pp, pb) November 2023. Cover by Vitalii Ostaschenko.
Leigh Harlen has only published a collection and one novella, but I loved the latter so much that they immediately became one of my auto-buy authors. Queens of Noise is a riot of a novella, a fierce, funny story about were-punks trying to stop a corporate takeover of their favorite ...Read More
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Him, Geoff Ryman (Angry Robot 978-1-91520-267-3, $18.99, 376pp, tp) December 2023.
The central conceit of Geoff Ryman’s Him is to imagine an alternative history where Jesus is born biologically female but identifies as male. It’s a provocative premise that seems designed to offend many people of faith. And yet, while gender identity is a crucial aspect of the novel, Him is, in fact, a respectful and somewhat authentic rendition ...Read More
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The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Fifteen, edited by Ellen Datlow (Night Shade 978-1949102727, trade paperback, 432pp, $19.99) January 2024
“Curation” is an overworked word these days, when, on the internet, everything from a collection of Pez dispensers to an Instagram stream of dinner photos is deemed to be “curated.” And yet there’s really no better term to be applied to an assemblage of art put together by ...Read More
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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
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Diabolical Plots 10-11/23 Understudies, Priya Sridhar (Hiraeth) February 2023. Samovar 10/23/23 Strange Horizons 10/30/23, 11/6/23
Over at Diabolical Plots, the publishing schedule has been temporarily compacted, leading to an October and November with only one story each instead of the regular two. Both stories are quite good, though, and both stay in the Halloween spirit with witches and ghosts aplenty. Both also twist expectations regarding these classic elements, as ...Read More
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The Glass Box, J. Michael Straczynski (Blackstone 979-8212007795, hardcover, 350pp, $25.99) January 2024
We are lucky that Mr. Straczynski—hereafter, the familiar JMS—has taken some time off from his comics and television work to gift us with a fine new novel. Considering also his heavy duties administering the estate of Harlan Ellison—I for one eagerly await the reprinting of Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, and the birth of ...Read More
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Chaos Terminal, Mur Lafferty (Ace 978-0-59309-813-4, 369pp, $17.00, tp) Cover by Will Staehle. November 2023.
I have watched a lot of episodes of the British TV show Midsomer Murders. They follow a predictable format: There’s the murder (or three) and the investigation, and the final triumphant reveal of whodunit. In the course of the investigation far more problems than just the murder will turn up, some of which are ...Read More
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Nordic Visions, Margrét Helgadóttir, ed. (Solaris 978-18378-60296, 341pp, $16.99, tp) October 2023.
The most haunting story in Nordic Visions is one of the shortest. “I am hanging from the lowest bar,” says the narrator of Rakel Helmsdal’s “The Abyss”, by way of introduction, “as I have been for a while now. Knowing there is nothing to see I still stare into the fog.” They cannot recall when they were ...Read More
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A Necessary Chaos, Brent Lambert (Neon Hemlock Press 978-1-95208-646-5, $13.99. 156pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Cathy Kwan.
Switching gears, let’s dive into novella A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert. In a world where technology and magic collide live two gay Black men, Althus and Vade. Every so often, the boyfriends are able to carve time out of their busy work schedules to meet, usually at some touristy party ...Read More
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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
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Inversion, Aric McBay (AK Press 978-1-8493-5504-9, $17.00. 240pp, tp) November 2023. Cover by Bob Kayganich & T.L. Simons.
Every once in a while, I run into a new science fiction story that feels remarkably classic, as though it had been written at the height of some previous era and only recently discovered. Or classical, perhaps – so well-versed in its themes and tropes that you can immediately see where ...Read More
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Asimov’s 11-12/23 Clarkesworld 11/23 khōréō 3.2
Asimov’s November/December issue includes three novellas, along with an assortment of short stories and novelettes. The wide variety of themes and styles in this issue work well, with stories evoking classic science fiction, stories with an epic science fantasy feel, and others taking a quiet slice-of-life approach. “Berb by Berb” by Ray Nayler is one of the most effective pieces in the ...Read More
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The Wolfe at the Door, Gene Wolfe (Tor 978-1-25084-620-4, $29.99, 480pp, hc) October 2023.
With its punny title, The Wolfe at the Door is the second collection of Gene Wolfe’s work to be published this year (and the third book to come out since his passing in 2019). Where The Dead Man and Other Horror Stories from Subterranean Press assembled Wolfe’s more chilling tales, Tor’s The Wolfe at the ...Read More
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Bloom, Delilah S. Dawson (Titan Books 978-1-80336-575-6, $22.99, 208pp, hc) October 2023. Cover by Julia Lloyd.
I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I read anything by Delilah S. Dawson. I enjoyed her young adult speculative novels Hit and Servants of the Storm, comic book Ladycastle, her speculative romance stories, and her Weird West series The Shadow written under the pseudonym Lila Bowen. But for no reason ...Read More
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Cocktails & Chloroform, Kelley Armstrong (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-161-4, $45.00, 136pp, hc) December 2023. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri.
Fans of Kelley Armstrong’s Rip Through Time series with protagonist Mallory Atkinson will be happy with her heroine’s latest exploits in the novella Cocktails & Chloroform. Trapped in the Victorian era after a mysterious circumstance found the homicide detective stuck in the body of Catriona Mitchell, a housemaid who was strangled ...Read More
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The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Fourth Annual Collection, Allan Kaster, ed. (Infinivox 978-1-88461-261-9, $18.99, 286pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri.
Discussions around the place of robots and artificial intelligence have grown in relevance and urgency over the last couple of years; AI is gaining ever more presence in our “real” lives rather than just in fiction. Allan Kaster’s fourth collection of stories about robots and ...Read More
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Lightspeed 11/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/2/23, 11/16/23 GigaNotoSaurus 11/23 Flash Fiction Online 11/23 F&SF 11-12/23
The November Lightspeed shows a keen interest in storytelling forms, with stories framed as recipes, as reviews, as confessions, and with Regina Kanyu Wang’s “A Record of Lost Time” (translated by Rebecca F. Kuang) as a series of personal narratives surrounding a new technology called FastForward, which allows users to experience “sped ...Read More
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Skin Thief: Stories, Suzan Palumbo (Neon Hemlock Press 978-1-95208-672-4, $18.99, 186pp, tp) September 2023. Cover by Mia Minnis.
Anytime a book published by Neon Hemlock lands at my doorstep, I drop everything to read it. Every story is unique in content and powerful in its queerness. I never know what I’m going to get, except that it’s going to be good. When Brent Lambert’s A Necessary Chaos and Suzan ...Read More
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Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, Molly McGhee (Astra House 978-1662602115, $24.95, hc, 304pp) October 2023.
On the fourth page of Molly McGhee’s debut novel, the titular character Jonathan Abernathy is described as a young man drowning in financial debts. They primarily include ‘‘(1) a series of unpaid credit cards inherited after the death of his parents’’ and ‘‘(2) the legal culminations of the decisions he made as a 17-year-old ...Read More
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Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead, K.J. Parker (Orbit 978-0316668903, $18.99, 359pp, tp) October 2023.
Saevus Corax Captures the Castle, K.J. Parker (Orbit 978-0316668910, $18.99, 352pp, tp) November 2023.
Readers of K.J. Parker are by now familiar with his affable scoundrels – by turns digressive, philosophical, deeply cynical, petulant, and somehow both self-loathing and self-justifying in the same breath. Saevus Corax, the playwright-turned-battlefield-scavenger who is the protagonist of ...Read More
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Horror Unmasked: A History of Terror from Nosferatu to Nope, Brad Weismann (becker&mayer! 978-0760376799, $24.99, 232pp, hc) September 2023.
Brad Weismann, author of Lost in the Dark: A World History of Horror Film, has with his latest offering accomplished something praiseworthy indeed: He has managed to compress a whole century of international genre film history into a concise but highly informative, lavishly illustrated guide that will entrance newcomers ...Read More
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Frost Bite, Angela Sylvaine (Dark Matter INK 978-1-95859-803-0, $17.99. 280pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Eric Hibbeler.
In Angela Sylvaine’s Frost Bite, winter has hit Demise, North Dakota hard. Snow and ice have blanketed the town, making everything as cold and miserable as Realene feels. She was on her way out of town, but when her mom was diagnosed with a fatal health condition, Realene’s future crumbled away. ...Read More
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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 10/5/23, 10/19/23 Escape Pod 10/12/23, 10/19/23, 10/26/23 Worlds of Possibility 10/23 Cast of Wonders 10/14/23, 10/25/23, 10/27/23
Beneath Ceaseless Skies celebrated their 15th anniversary in October with a special double issue including Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko’s novella, “Between Blades”, which unfolds in a world where some people can adopt “swordform,” wherein one in a pair of people becomes a living weapon – a sword ...Read More
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Dry Land, B. Pladek (University of Wisconsin Press 978-0-29934-394-1, 264pp, $18.95, tp) September 2023.
Dry Land, B. Pladek’s debut novel, is historical climate fiction that meditates upon man’s fraught relationship with the natural environment and the limits of magical powers, enlivened with evocative sketches of the Wisconsin wilderness. Set against the backdrop of the First World War, the story revolves around Rand Brandt, a young man whose ...Read More
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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023, R.F. Kuang & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Mariner 978-0-06-331574-7, $18.99, 292pp, tp) October 2023.
Now in its ninth year, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 predictably offers a stimulating and eclectic selection of tales, three of which made the Hugo ballot and a few of which are nothing short of brilliant. But it also raises a few questions of ...Read More
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The Reformatory, Tananarive Due (Saga Press 978-1-982-188344, $28.99, 567pp, hc) October 2023.
Nothing is more horrific than real life. Tananarive Due takes a personal family connection to the terrors of the Dozier School – a reform school operated by the state of Florida from 1900 to 2011 known for its brutal abuse and deaths of incarcerated boys – and the abomination of the Jim Crow South and combines them ...Read More
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What Kind of Mother, Clay McLeod Chapman (Quirk Books 978-1-68369-380-2, $21.99, 304pp, hc) September 2023.
Clay McLeod’s Chapman’s What Kind of Mother is a great horror novel in which creepiness and body horror take a back seat to grief and the horror it pushes people to do. A story that’s as harrowing as it is sad and strange, What Kind of Mother is a superb addition to McLeod’s catalog and ...Read More
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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
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Fantasy 10/23 Flash Fiction Online 10/23 GigaNotoSaurus 10/23 Baffling 10/23
Unfortunately, October brought the final issue of Fantasy, which closed in impressive fashion. First, in fiction, Ruoxi Chen’s “Fandom for Witches“, finds Lara, a Chinese-American girl lightly obsessed with the (definitely not Supernatural) fictional television show Sanctuary Road. The story deals with yearning, with fitting in, with all the messy bits of growing up and feeling alone and ...Read More
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Bittersweet in the Hollow, Kate Pearsall (Putnam 978-0-59353-102-0, $18.99, 384pp, hc) October 2023. Cover by Imogen Oh.
Linden James is the third of four sisters, and like all the James women, she and her sisters have some sort of magical ability. Linden can taste and recognize other people’s emotions; her second sister can tell when someone is lying, while the fourth sister can contact the spirits of the dead. ...Read More
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The September House, Carissa Orlando (Berkley 978-0-59354-861-5, $27.00, 352pp, hc) September 2023. Cover by Daniel Brount.
Books that can make you feel things are special, and Carissa Orlando’s The September House will make readers feel a lot of different things. The September House is a strange horror novel in which the horror elements are mostly dealt with using the kind of nonchalance people display while waiting in line at the ...Read More
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Analog 9-10/23 Clarkesworld 10/23 Flash Fiction Online 10/23
Analog’s September/October issue opens with the excellent novelette “The Apotheosis of Krysalice Wilson” by Howard V. Hendrix. Teenage figure skater Krysalice is approached with the opportunity to implant experimental technology that will give her better reaction times and improve her sense of spatial relations – a kind of natural GPS akin to the way birds navigate as they migrate – enhancing ...Read More
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