New & Notable
Sarah Rees Brennan, Long Live Evil (Orbit US 8/24). A dying woman makes a magical bargain to become the villainess in her favorite fantasy series in this first volume in the Time of Iron series, an entertaining look at women’s roles and options in fantasy and ‘‘a wholehearted embrace of, and a commentary on the high-fantasy high-angst high-romance end of the fantasy genre… It’s very entertaining.’’ [Liz Bourke]
M.R. Carey, Echo of Worlds (Orbit 6/24) In this suspenseful SF space opera novel, second and final in the Pandemonium duology, a team seeks a way to stop a war and multiversal disaster. ‘‘The cosmic stuff is as full of old-school Doc Smith sensawunda, keenly modernized, as you could wish… [while exploring] ‘‘topics much more primal and non-technological: freedom, communication, responsibility, home, maturity, the destiny of sentience in an ambituous creation.’’ [Paul Di Filippo]
James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods (Orbit US 8/24) This first volume in the Captive’s War space opera series has been getting critical acclaim. Humans captured by an alien hive-empire are forced to help battle a deathless enemy, but come up with some dramatic ideas of their own; while the plot features some familiar tropes, they’re given plenty of new twists in a vast background of alien worlds and marvels. Corey is a pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.
Kerstin Hall, Asunder (Tordotcom 8/24) Fantasy novel about a woman who, thanks to an unbreakable compact with a terrifying otherworldly being, can speak with the recently deceased, and investigates suspicious deaths. ‘‘A thoughtful novel, complex and deep. It’s also a fast-paced, tense ride through a world that doesn’t hold back from glittering weirdness…I can’t recommend it highly enough.’’ [Liz Bourke]
Gabino Iglesias, House of Bone and Rain (Mulholland 8/24) Teens in Puerto Rico plot vengeance against a drug kingpin, even as an oncoming hurricane brings evil spirits in its wake, in this violent and visceral horror novel of loyalty, loss, revenge, and hope.
Wen-Yi Lee, The Dark We Know (Gillian Flynn 8/24) After her abusive father dies, Isadora returns to her hometown, an oppressive small mining town where, as a bisexual Chinese-American, she always felt threatened, and now an estranged friend says their old friends were killed by a supernatural evil, and he wants her help to stop it. A young-adult horror novel full of eerie atmosphere and mystery, this is an impressive first novel by a writer to watch.
Tobi Ogundiran, In the Shadow of the Fall (Titan UK 7/24; Tordotcom 8/24) This African fantasy novella, the first in the Guardians of the Gods duology, expands on Ogundiran’s story ‘‘Guardian of the Gods’’, about an acolyte who can’t hear the gods – and decides to try catching one, with entertaining consequences. ‘‘Immersive, entertaining, and well-crafted, with an atmospheric tone and an intriguing cast of characters, In the Shadow of the Fall is a small African epic fantasy with big scope and big stakes.’’ [Wole Talabi]
Nnedi Okorafor, She Who Knows (DAW 8/24) Okorafor returns to the far-future Earth of the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Who Fears Death for this prequel science fantasy novella, the first in a series. Najeeba, a 13-year-old girl, gets a call only males are supposed to experience, to mine salt at the Dead Lake; she’s delighted at the chance to see more of the world, but her presence changes everything. ’’She Who Knows is its own tale of courage and defiance, and one that is eminently readable even to those unfamiliar with Who Fears Death.’’ [Gary K. Wolfe]
Helen Phillips, Hum (Marysue Rucci 8/24) A dystopian near-future SF novel getting a lot of media attention, this follows a woman who loses her job to AI, and undergoes an experimental procedure that makes her undetectable to surveillance in a city populated by intelligent robots called hums. ‘‘Hum effectively shows us that no one (bar the exceedingly rich) will be protected from the effects of climate change or a deregulated AI revolution.’’ [Ian Mond]
Nikhil Singh, Dakini Atoll (Luna Press Publishing UK 8/24) Singh returns to the hallucinogenic, Hollywood-inspired, African SF world of Club Ded in this sequel, which picks up in the aftermath of the destruction of Club Ded. Singh’s high-gear brand of African SF examines the future through a global and postmodern lens, this time giving a posthuman twist to the Buddhist dakini, female demon/goddess figures that can create or destroy, as two women who seek control and fame through extreme technological body modification.
Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 7/24) Horror novel about a ghostwriter who returns to her Florida hometown during the pandemic, and learns things have gotten weird: her mother’s running a cult, people go missing, and there are strange new virtual reality devices around, not to mention sinkholes, ominous cats, and an uncanny connection to the author she works for. ‘‘This is a Florida where even the Florida Man would struggle to compete with all the weirdness…. confidently and seamlessly the novel switches between the hilarious, the speculative, the surreal, and the emotional.’’ [Ian Mond]
From the October 2024 issue of Locus.
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