The Year in Review 2024 by A.C. Wise

February 26, 2025February 17, 2025 locusmag 0 Comments A.C. Wise

It’s been a year, hasn’t it? Has it? Honestly, it feels like 2024 just began, and here we are at the end, staring down the uncertainty of the year to come. However, as always, my fiction reading – both for my review columns and for myself – has been a comfort and a highlight. I know I’ve missed out on many wonderful works. There are sadly only so many hours in a day to read, and no matter how hard I try, I’ll never catch up! That said, here are a few of the things that I did manage to read that have stuck with me and feel deserving of a shout-out.

Slow Burn by Mike Allen is a thoroughly enjoyable fiction collection. It was a pleasure to revisit stories I’d read previously, along with discovering ones that were new to me, and the interior illustrations by Paula Arwen Owen also deserve a mention. Some of the standout stories for me were “Strange Wisdoms of the Dead” co-written with Charles M. Saplak, “Falling is What it Loves”, the titular “Slow Burn”, and “The Butcher, the Baker”. Many of the stories in the collection share a world and characters. There’s a nice mix of body horror, cosmic horror, and general weirdness, but even amidst the darkness, the collection is also full of genuine moments of humanity and heart.

Limelight by Lyndsey Croal is another excellent collection published in 2024. The opening story, “Patchwork Girls”, grabbed me immediately and stayed with me throughout, exploring fetishized violence against women on film. Another story that particularly stuck with me was “Hush, Little Sister”, exploring different ways of coping with loss and grief. Croal does a wonderful job of using speculative fiction as a lens to examine the human condition, showing the horror in the mundane, but also highlighting hope and the unbreakable human spirit that pushes through adversity to triumph on the other side.

Death Aesthetic by Josh Rountree is a slim collection, but one that packs a punch. “The Green Realm”, which is original to the collection, and “We Share Our Rage with the River” were two of my favorites. The first is quietly eerie, playing with uncertainty and memory as the main character revisits a mystery from their youth, and the second offers up a wonderful take on an animal bride story as women are fished from the river and forced into marriage.

The anthologies that impressed me the most in 2024 were The Crawling Moon: Queer Tales of Inescapable Dread edited by dave ring, which is full of decadent, Gothic-influenced stories; Northern Nights edited by Michael Kelly, an anthology of Canadian horror whose stories are moody, atmospheric, and have a great sense of place; and Death in the Mouth Volume 2 edited by Cassie Hart and Sloane Leong. All three anthologies feature new, original fiction, and The Crawling Moon and Northern Nights are further evidence of the strength of the work published by Neon Hemlock and Undertow Books overall.

Neon Hemlock also continued its trend of publishing fantastic novellas in 2024, including The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui, which was one of my favorites this year. It’s a sweeping space opera that feels epic even at a short length, telling a story of desire and revenge, looking at the lengths one former pilot is willing to go to, and the sacrifices she’s willing to make, after her life if ravaged by war. A novella that touches on similar themes is Countess by Suzan Palumbo. Similar to Sui’s novella, Palumbo’s takes its inspiration from space opera, but also mixes in classic literature, specifically The Count of Monte Cristo. Countess also has an epic feel, taking place over a span of many years, exploring the lasting damage and trauma of colonialism, and the themes of sacrifice and revenge.

Psychopomp, the publishers behind The Deadlands, launched their novella line this year and thus far, I am thoroughly impressed. Their books are gorgeous, and I’ve enjoyed each one that I’ve read. A Voice Calling by Christopher Barzak weaves together multiple hauntings occurring in a single house. From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsey Manusos is a lush and evocative novella centered on two women who are forced to serve the endless revels of a group of people who peel their skins off every night and cavort around as skeletons. Lovely Creatures by KT Bryski evokes Ray Bradbury with its traveling carnival, centering on a woman determined to get her sister back from said carnival, where she is currently the star attraction – sleeping in a glass coffin and trailed by rumors that if she wakes, the world will end.

Tordotcom also continued its traditional strength in novella publishing, with two in particular that stood out for me this year. The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed is dark and gorgeous, with worldbuilding that feels like it extends beyond the page. As the only person who has survived entering the woods, Veris is recruited to rescue two lost children, bringing her face-to-face with a world of monsters and the ghosts of her own past. The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo is an excellent piece of historical horror, centered on a frontier nurse who finds himself faced with a reluctant, suspicious population and a town full of secrets. The novella is rife with the slow-building tension that Mandelo does so well.

Along with novellas published as standalone books, there were several excellent novellas published in online and print magazines this year. Two that I found particularly memorable were “The Indominable Captain Holli” by Rich Larson, published in Clarkesworld, which sees a young girl tasked with a dangerous quest by a virtual companion with questionable motives, and “Une Time Machine, S’il Vous Plaît” by Peter Wood, published in Asimov’s, centered on two actors from a Star Trek-like series, who find themselves yanked out of time and thrown back into their own pasts.

There were so many excellent short stories and novelettes published in 2024, that as always, it’s going to be a challenge to shout out just a few. That said, I will try to limit myself and keep my list somewhat manageable.

“Nothing of Value” by Aimee Ogden, published in Clarkesworld, is a lovely and heartbreaking story playing on the ship of Theseus thought experiment as the protagonist travels back to Mars to meet with their former lover, after years of traveling via Skip technology, which destroys the original and creates a new copy. “The Blue Glow” by Lisa Hosokawa, published in khōréō, is a painful story of a suicide bomber returning home to his haunted village after his bomb failed to detonate. “Buddy Raymond’s No-Bullshit Guide to Drone Hunting” by Laura Secord, published in Diabolical Plots, adopts a folksy tone and packs an emotional punch, framed as practical advice in a world where America is at war with Canada and surveillance drones are everywhere.

“There are three children jumping over a can outside a bodega” by Mark Galarrita, published in Nightmare Magazine, manages a lot in under two thousand words, exploring social media, authenticity, and human beings as a consumable commodity for influencers and streamers, with a satisfying dash of cosmic horror at the end. “Those Who Smuggle Themselves into Slivermoon” by Varsha Dinesh, published in Strange Horizons, is a lovely reflection on immigration, access to opportunity and access to basic human rights, and economies designed to uphold the status quo, as well as being a heartbreaking story about trusting the wrong person.

Joanna’s Bodies by Eugenia Triantafyllou, a novelette published by Psychopomp, examines a toxic relationship between best friends, as after her death and accidental summoning as a ghost, Joanna forces Eleni to continually find her new bodies to inhabit. “The Five Rules of Spirit Binding by Sunil the Undying (Edited by Farah, Age 13)” by M. Banerjee-Sholars, published in Augur 7.1, sees the titular character come across a guide to binding demons and showing compassion to both the demon and the original author of the text, all while dealing with her own loss and grief. “Wiremother” by Laura Mauro, published in The Dark, evokes fairy tales as it explores a claustrophobic relationship between a mother and daughter, centered on guilt.

“The Circumambulation” by James Van Pelt, published in Analog, takes a unique approach to an alien invasion story by keeping the focus on a couple trapped in a crumbling marriage on separate but parallel journeys as the world burns around them. “The V*mpire” by P.H. Lee, published at Reactor, looks at bad faith online culture as a trans girl trying to explore her identity in a safe space falls under the sway of an abusive vampire. “Because Flora Had Existed. And I Had Loved Her” by Anna Martino, published in Samovar, is a twisty story of a man unmoored in time meeting the love of his life and having to continually redefine his relationship to her based on their respective timelines.

“The House That Stands Over Your Grave” by Kyle Piper, published in PseudoPod, is lovely, melancholy, and tense all at once, as Lew tries to impress the new kid in town by agreeing to accompany her to the local haunted house. “A Stranger Knocks” by Tananarive Due, published in Uncanny, is set in the age of silent cinema, as a young couple accepts a job offer from a mysterious stranger who appears to be using his films to lure and drain victims. “Spread the Word” by Delilah S. Dawson, published in Apex, is an uneasy story about a boy named Will who moves to a new town with his mother, trying to leave behind the trauma of his past, but quickly discovers that whatever darkness infected his father and turned him violent has followed him and is spreading among his new friends and their fathers.

As always, I feel like I’m merely scratching the surface. There are so many other works I could talk about, and there are so many other things I have yet to read. This is just a brief sampling of what I loved this year. And now, a small bit of gratitude to close things out. Thank you to all the authors, artists, editors, publishers, essayists, convention organizers, award juries, and fiction reviewers for everything you did in 2024. Keep writing, keep reading, and keep shouting about the works you love.

A.C. Wise is the author of the novels Wendy, Darling, and Hooked, along with the recent short story collection, The Ghost Sequences. Her work has won the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and has been a finalist for the Nebula Awards, Stoker, World Fantasy, Locus, British Fantasy, Aurora, Lambda, and Ignyte Awards. In addition to her fiction, she contributes a review column to Apex Magazine.

This review and more like it in the February 2025 issue of Locus.

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