Locus Online

The Thing in the Snow, Sean Adams (Morrow 978-0063257757, hardcover, 288pp, $27.99) January 2023

An enormous, spooky, half-abandoned, cryptic building, whose inhabitants pursue ceremonies and rituals with unthinking adherence, while menaces hover both within (due to interpersonal conflicts) and also on the perimeters. We must be talking about Peake’s monumental and essential Gormenghast series, right? Not at all. Instead we are concerned with Sean Adams’s second novel, The Thing ...Read More

The Sunday Morning Transport 10/16 & 11/20/22 Slate Future Tense 9/24/22 New Edge Sword and Sorcery Fall ’22

Catching up with The Sunday Morning Transport in the fall, one of my favorites is “Trinity’s Drag­on” by Holly Lyn Walrath. Trinity is an older woman and space veterinarian, which means she actually has a chance when a sick space dragon wraps itself around her spaceship. Against the advice ...Read More

All Nightmare Long, Tim Lebbon (PS Publish­ing 978-1-78636-851-5, $32.68, 417pp, hc) May 2022. Cover by Daniele Serra.

Sometimes reviewing a big (400+ pages) short story collection can be complicated because there are often a plethora of voices, themes, and approaches – not to mention a variety of different tales – in its pages. When that happens, the easiest thing to do is to go with some of the overarching ...Read More

Revelations: Horror Writers for Climate Ac­tion. Seán O’Connor, ed. (Stygian Sky Media 978-1639510054, $40.00, 344pp, hc) April 2022.

Revelations: Horror Writers for Climate Action begins with the charred landscape of a California wildfire. Writing of her family’s vaca­tions in northern California, and her more recent experiences with its intensifying fires, horror reviewer Sadie Hartmann offers a focused and passionate introduction to the anthology: climate change is real, it is affecting ...Read More

Worlds of Possibility 10/22 Baffling 10/22 Cast of Wonders 10/14/22, 10/23/22, 10/29/22, 10/31/22

I’m quite happy that Julia Rios is back in an editing chair, and Worlds of Possibility makes for an interesting next chapter for them. As sad as I was to see Mermaids Monthly come to a close at the end of 2021 (and as much as I’m hoping that project will still find a way to return ...Read More

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. Come check out this post on our Patreon featuring some photos and letters collected from Ursula K. Le Guin ...Read More

Unbreakable, Mira Grant (Subterranean, 978-1-64524-103-4, $45.00, 152pp, hc), De­cember 2022.

Have you ever had a book sneak up on you? I mean, had something about the title, maybe the cover art, the back description make you think, ‘‘Meh, this will be okay,’’ but then – then you read it – and it smacks you upside your head because it was so unexpectedly, so unbelievably good?

Yeah, Seanan McGuire’s (writing ...Read More

RUIN, Cara Hoffman (PM Press 978-1-62963-931-4, $25.95, 136pp, hc) April 2022.

I was halfway through the ten stories in Cara Hoff­man’s latest collection, RUIN, before I was able to start to understand how to read them – and then, nearly done with all of them when it became clear why the collection fit in Locus at all. Highly liter­ary, strikingly stylized, and mondo experimental, RUIN is a collection ...Read More

Madeline McIntosh will leave her position as CEO of Penguin Random House US following a transition period:

I am stepping down from my position as your U.S. CEO. I’m not leaving right away; instead, Nihar [Malaviya] and I are working very closely together to determine the best plan for the U.S. organization going forward. I know you’ll be in good hands with Nihar and the U.S. Board. They know and ...Read More

The Golden Enclaves, Naomi Novik (Del Rey 978-0-59315-835-7, $28.00, 416 pp, hc) Sep­tember 2022.

Naomi Novik’s The Golden Enclaves wraps up her Scholomance trilogy. If you’ve not read A Deadly Education or The Last Graduate, I’d suggest skipping this review in order to read the first book fresh. This is definitely a series better enjoyed if you begin at the beginning, where you’ll meet El and what become ...Read More

HarperCollins and the striking members of the HarperCollins Union have agreed to enter mediation to settle their differences.

Publishers Weekly reported on a company-wide HarperCollins memo that says,

We entered negotiations eager to find common ground, and we have remained committed to achieving a fair and reasonable contract throughout this process…. We are optimistic that a mutually agreed upon mediator can help find the solutions that have eluded us so ...Read More

Artist Andrew Jones (AKA Android Jones) suffered a tragedy when his studio in Colorado burned down on January 18, 2023. Jones said,

My father designed and built this barn with his hands. I grew up in this barn. Nearly every material thing I cared about was inside. Decades of sketchbooks, all my archived originals, drawings and paintings, all of my art materials, terabytes of over 20 years of digital art, ...Read More

The 70-title longlist for the Dublin Literary Award has been announced. The list includes many titles and authors of genre interest, such as Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo (Viking), Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner), The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (Harper), Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark (William Morrow), and The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (Viking). The winner receives €100,000.

The longlist for the 2023 Branford Boase Award has been announced, and includes several titles of genre interest.

• The Eternal Return of Clara Hart, Louise Finch (Little Island)
• The Spectaculars, Jodie Garnish (Usborne)
• The Miraculous Sweetmakers, Natasha Hastings (HarperCollins Childrens)
• The Whisperling, Hayley Hoskins (Puffin)
• Wishes Come in Threes, Andy Jones (Walker)
• Seed, Caryl Lewis (Henry Holt)
• Rebel Skies, Ann Sei Linn (Walker)

The longlist for the 2023 International Dylan Thomas Prize has been announced. Titles and authors of genre interest include Limberlost by Robbie Arnott (Atlantic), Things They Lost by Okwiri Oduor (Oneworld), and Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens (Picador).

Amanda Rutter has joined Rebellion imprint Solaris as commissioning editor. Rutter said, “I am a big fan of the Solaris imprint so I am utterly delighted to become part of such a brilliant team.”

Prior to Solaris, Rutter was an agent with Azantian Literary Agency. She has also worked for Red Sofa Literary Agency, Angry Robot, Aconyte, and Titan.

For more information, see the announcement in The Bookseller.

While you ...Read More

Twice in a Lifetime, Melissa Baron (Alcove Press 978-1-63910-136-8, $17.99, 336pp, tp) December 2022. Cover by David Drummond.

The blurb suggests that this debut novel is ‘‘The Time Traveller’s Wife meets Oona Out of Order’’, but the premise is unlike either of those: there is no genetic condition and no hopping around in time. Rather, Melissa Baron is using an idea familiar from the 2006 film The ...Read More

The Scarab Mission, James L. Cambias (Baen 978-1982192396, hardcover, 288pp, $18.00) January 2023

This rousing, unstoppable, non-stop adventure follows Cambias’s The Godel Operation (reviewed here), which introduced his cosmos of the Billion Worlds: a future where our Solar System is overstuffed with a zillion habitats, polities and species (human and other wise), some struggling for supremacy, others just following their mundane blisses. It’s a definite post-scarcity—if not even posthuman—environment, ...Read More

The Atlas Paradox, Olivie Blake (Tor 978-1-250-85509-1, $27.99, hc, 416pp) October 2022. Cover by Jamie Stafford-Hill.

Blake returned in October with the latest installment in The Atlas series, The Atlas Para­dox, and quickly tossed readers into more intrigue with the Society of Alexandrians and the drama surrounding its newest members. Fans of the first book, The Atlas Six, will be well aware of the major twist and ...Read More

Knot of Shadows, Lois McMaster Bujold (Subterranean 978-1-64524-114-0, hardcover, 160pp, $45.00) January 2023.

It’s time for another nigh-aleatory pairing of two novellas, as we dip into the current state of this fascinating artform, which, it has been said, is almost ideal for works of fantastika: long enough for worldbuilding and deep speculations; short enough not to grow wearisome or bogged down.

Today’s offerings both come from the fabulous Subterranean ...Read More

Kaleidotrope 10/22 Diabolical Plots 10/22 F&SF 11-12/22

Kaleidotrope’s October issue is positively burst­ing with flash fiction – twenty stories in all. The focus on shorter works gives the issue a breadth of ideas while allowing readers to move quickly from piece to piece, from world to world. It’s a speculative smorgasbord mixing fantasy, sci­ence fiction, and horror of all stripes and flavors. Ziggy Schutz provides a story of fae and ...Read More

The World Fantasy Awards Administration has announced an update to their previously announced judge panel.

Peter Dennis Pautz said:

Due to personal circumstances, Mary Anne Mohanraj has stepped down from acting as a World Fantasy Awards judge. Information on a new judge will be sent as soon as possible.

For more information on the previously announced judges, see our post. For more information about World Fantasy 2023, see their website. ...Read More

The Lies of the Ajungo, Moses Ose Utomi (Tordotcom 978-1-25084-906-9, $19.99, 96pp, hc) March 2023. Cover by Alyssa Winans & Christine Foltzer.

Indebted to the wicked Ajungo Empire, all citi­zens of the City of Lies have their tongues cut out when they turn 13. Not only do they sacrifice their blood, but their history. In return for their tribute, they receive just enough water from the Ajungo to keep ...Read More

Beyond the Burn Line, Paul J. McAuley (Gollancz 978-1-39960-371-3, £22.00, 455pp, hc) September 2022.

Paul McAuley also makes use of bifurcated time­lines in Beyond the Burn Line, but on a much vaster scale, and he also considers the global ef­fects of the Anthropocene Era, already relegated to the mists of ancient history as his tale rather modestly begins. Eventually we learn that the “burn line” is the historians’ ...Read More

Singer Distance, Ethan Chatagnier (Tin House 978-1-95353-443-9, $27.95, hc, 280pp) October 2022.

In the slightly altered Earth history of Ethan Chatagnier’s Singer Distance, Mars made contact in 1896, but not in the way readers may likely expect. Rather than the bold arrival of a spacecraft, this interplanetary communication was prefaced by a Dutch astronomer’s large scale art carving of parallel marks in a Tunisian desert in 1894. When ...Read More

K-Ming Chang, Gods of Want (One World 7/22) A stellar collection getting plenty of critical praise, Chang’s latest explores the lives and myths of Asian American women in 16 stories, many with super­natural elements – including ghosts, goddesses, and women out of fairy tales – a powerful mix of darkness, humor, the strange, and the everyday.

N.K. Jemisin, The World We Make (Orbit US & UK 11/22) ...Read More