New Books, 28 May 2024
Barnet, Frankie: Mood Swings
(Astra House 9781662602597, $26, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 05/31/2024)
Humorous, near-future SF novel. An Instragram poet starts an affair with the California billionaire who destroyed all the animals on Earth after they started attacking humans, but now promises a time machine that will make everything “normal” again. A first novel.
For a novel that doesn’t feature a single paradox, time loop, or change to history, Mood Swings offers up an incisive critique of time-travel narratives. It’s not just the absurd plan, conjured up by a multinational, to introduce solar technology to the Industrial Revolution (‘‘it would pretty much solve the weather crisis’’); it’s also the vox pops that are peppered through the narrative where people are asked what they would do if they could go back in time. Several of the replies are what you’d expect – kill Hitler or win the lottery – but more often than not, the responses are reflective, melancholy, poignant.
Bond, Charlotte: The Fireborne Blade
(Tordotcom 9781250290311, $20.99, 176pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 05/28/2024)
Fantasy novel, the first in a series. The knight Madileh tries to prove herself by recovering the Fireborne Blade, while her squire wants to rescue his sister abducted by the infamous dragon who has the sword.
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 again! That’s not a bad thing. [. . .] This is an entertaining story, with some vividly inventive dragon-related-worldbuilding, and a compelling dragon-battle showdown.
—Liz Bourke, Locus, April 2024
Couch, Robbie: Another First Chance
(Simon & Schuster 9781665935302, $19.99, 363pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 05/28/2024)
Young-adult queer speculative romance novel. After his best friend dies in a car accident, River is stuck in the “Affinity Trials” — a study observing teens who are struggling socially. But bizarre developments make him wonder what the researchers are actually studying.
Gibson, S.T.: Evocation
(Angry Robot UK 9781915202680, $25.2, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 05/28/2024)
Contemporary fantasy novel, the first book in the quartet The Summoner’s Circle of queer-occult-exes-to-rivals-to-lovers in a magic-riddled Boston, with demons, haunted houses and a “polyamorous endgame.”
Maberry, Jonathan: NecroTek
(Blackstone/Weird Tales Presents 9798200688401, $27.99, 350pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 05/28/2024)
Deep space cosmic horror novel, the first in the NecroTek series about space pilots called back from the dead to fight ancient eldritch beings including an army of Shoggoths.
Nahil, Emmett: From the Belly
(Tenebrous Press UK 9781959790082, $19.99, 244pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 05/30/2024)
Horror novel. After a whaling vessel catches a whale with a living man in its belly, things start to go wrong on the ship, and it seems the crew are being punished for their greed and destruction.
Palmer, Suzanne: Ghostdrift
(Astra House/DAW 9780756418878, $28, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 05/28/2024)
SF novel, the fourth in the Finder series about interstellar repo-man and con artist Fergus Ferguson. A dangerous space pirate needs help finding out what happened to his twin sister, who mysteriously disappeared at the edges of space years ago, and makes Fergus an offer he can’t refuse.
Rozakis, Caitlin: Dreadful
(Titan Books UK 9781803365473, $17.99, 352pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 05/28/2024)
High fantasy novel. Gav awakens with no memories in a castle full of goblins and a princess locked in a cell, only to realize that this is his castle, and he’s the evil wizard. A first novel.
Schauer, Gret & Ackley-McPhail, Danielle, eds.: Other Aether: Tales of Global Steampunk
(eSpec Books 9781956463330, $15.95, 160pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 06/01/2024)
Anthology of steampunk stories. Authors include Beth Cato, Aaron Rosenberg, David Lee Summers, Jeff Young, Hildy Silverman, Christine Norris, Cynthia Radthorne, James Chambers, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, and Ef Deal.
Swinden, Deirdre: Somnium
(Crystal Lake B0D2YKPHYV, $4.99, 273pp, formats: ebook, 05/31/2024)
SF horror novel. An accident traps Gillian Hardie in a perpetual dream state, and she must somehow find her way out of the nightmare before her dreams kill her due to a glitch in Somnium Corporations dream advertising technology.
