Reviews

Books Reviews 

Gary K. Wolfe and Adrienne Martini Review Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson

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Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Neal Stephenson (Morrow 978-0-06-245871-1, $35.00, 896pp, hc) June 2019.

Neal Stephenson’s idea of a novel isn’t quite the same as anyone else’s, and for the most part this has served him remarkably well. His Baroque Cycle trilogy was really no more a trilogy than was Asimov’s Foundation series, except that while Asimov’s narrative units were stories and novellas, Ste­phenson’s were entire novels – and ...Read More

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Liz Bourke Reviews Broken Shadow by Jaine Fenn

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Broken Shadow, Jaine Fenn (Angry Robot US 978-0-85766-803-5, $12.99, 432pp, tp) May 2019. Cover by Andreas Rocha.

Jaine Fenn’s Hidden Sun, out from Angry Robot Books last year, introduced the reader to the world of shadowlands and skylands. In the shadowlands, or at least the ones with which the novel concerns itself, a powerful Church restricts scientific development and unorthodox thought, while a patriarchal society relegates women to ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Rich Horton Reviews Short Fiction: Analog, Asimov’s, and Space and Time

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Analog 5-6/19 Asimov’s 5-6/19 Space and Time Spring/Summer ’19

The May-June Analog opens with a fun alternate history from Harry Turtledove, “Bonehunters“, retelling a version of the fossil wars of the late 19th century in a timeline where, apparently, dinosaurs never became extinct, and two separate intelligent species evolved from raptors. The story is told by Rekek, a “greenskin” who serves as a guide. His stepson Junior ...Read More

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Katharine Coldiron Reviews Amnesty by Lara Elena Donnelly

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Amnesty, Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor 978-1-25017-362-1, $18.99, 384pp, tp) April 2019.

“It is not easy,” Aristide Makricosta tells a gathered crowd early in Amnesty, “to destroy your life. To coat the things you love in kerosene and light a match.” He is talking about Cordelia Lehane, a burlesque dancer turned resistance leader, who did exactly that when she decided to fight against the fascism sweeping across Amberlough. Cordelia ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews Triangulum by Masande Ntshanga

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Triangulum, Masande Ntshanga (Two Dollar Radio 978-1937512774, $17.99, 367pp, tp) May 2019.

I was predisposed to enjoy Masande Ntshanga’s Triangulum. Some of my favourite books are “found manuscript” novels, including James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, David Means’ Man Booker Prize longlisted Hystopia, and the granddaddy of them all, Mark Z. Danielewski’s breathtaking House of Leaves. Triangulum doesn’t feature the ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Karen Burnham Reviews Short Fiction: Clarkesworld, Apex, Capricious, Apparition, and Aurealis

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Clarkesworld 4/19 Apex 3/19 Capricious SF #11 Apparition #5 Aurealis #119

April’s Clarkesworld brings us the first in a planned run of stories translated from Korean, starting with “The Flowering” by Soyeon Jong (translated by Jihyun Park & Gord Sellar). This is a sly story told in interview style, with the sister of a known subversive who’s been working to literally ‘plant’ organic biotech routers to get ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Iron Dragon’s Mother by Michael Swanwick

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The Iron Dragon’s Mother, Michael Swanwick (Tor 978-1-250-19825-9, $26.99, 366pp, hc) June 2019.

There are hints of the afterlife in Michael Swanwick’s The Iron Dragon’s Mother, but it’s hard to accuse a fantasy world of pretentiousness when it cheerfully includes living metal dragon jet fighters along with Hello Kitty backpacks, or in which the streets of a magical underwater city are lined with Vuitton and Dolce & Gabbana ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh

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Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, Temi Oh (Saga 978-1-53443-7401 $16.99, 528pp, tp) March 2019.

First, this book is a doorstop. I am not kid­ding, it’s a book about a deep space mission that doesn’t even leave the ground until more than 100 pages in. It has a big cast of char­acters (six living teens, one dead one, four adults, plus mentions of various parents and assorted other living and ...Read More

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Russell Letson Reviews The Warship by Neal Asher

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The Warship, Neal Asher (Night Shade 978-1-59780-990-0, $26.99, 369pp, hc) May 2019. Cover by Adam Burn.

Okay, now it’s getting complicated. I called Infinity Engine (2017), the finale of Neal Asher’s Transformation trilogy, “sprawling and shaggy,” a description that ap­plies as well to his new book. The Warship is the plot-thickening middle volume of a trilogy that is also part of the Polity future history series that so far ...Read More

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Adrienne Martini Reviews Ragged Alice by Gareth L. Powell

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Ragged Alice, Gareth L. Powell (Tor.com Pub­lishing 978-1-250-22018-9, $14.99, 202pp, tp) April 2019.

In this novella, Powell introduces DCI Holly Craig, a London-based detective who has de­cided to move back to her native Wales in this Broadchurch-esque mystery. The detective grew up in the seaside town Pontyrhudd, where things aren’t always what they seem and the residents are colorful. A young woman has been murdered and Craig’s untangling ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Ian Mond Reviews Red Birds by Mohammed Hanif

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Red Birds, Mohammed Hanif (Bloomsbury 978-1408897188, £16.99, 304pp, hc) October 2018. (Grove/Black Cat 978-0802147288, $16.00, 304pp, tp) May 2019.

Mohammed Hanif draws on his own experience as an Air Force pilot for his fourth novel, Red Birds, a hit-and-miss satire on America’s attitude toward foreign policy, set in a refugee camp located in an unnamed Arabic country.

The narrative alternates between three charac­ters, the first of which is ...Read More

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Liz Bourke Reviews Descendant of the Crane by Joan He

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Descendant of the Crane, Joan He (Albert Whitman 978-0-80751-551-8, $17.99, 416pp, hc) April 2019.

I more than liked Joan He’s debut fantasy. Descendent of the Crane sets itself in a world deeply influenced by Chinese history and culture. It’s a lush, deeply realised world, full of laws and ministries and red-light districts, scents and textures and presences, histories and legacies. (I’m almost certainly missing references and reso­nances that would ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Rich Horton Reviews Stories from Sofía Rhei, Greg Egan, and Juliana Rew

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Everything is Made of Letters, Sofía Rhei (Aqueduct) March 2019. Perihelion Summer, Greg Egan (Tor.com Publishing) April 2019. Hidden Histories, Juliana Rew, ed. (Third Flatiron) April 2019.

I was really impressed by Sofía Rhei‘s Everything is Made of Letters. Rhei is a Spanish writer, and this slim book contains five recent stories, all as far as I can tell appearing here for the first time ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews Spectacle by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

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Spectacle, Jodie Lynn Zdrok (Tor Teen 978-0-7653-9968-7, $17.99, 359pp, hc) February 2019.

Author Jodie Lynn Zdrok’s Paris initially reads as quite familiar to fans of historical fiction. It’s 1887 and the Eiffel Tower is under construction, the Cata­combs are open for tours, and every morning bodies “found in the public domain” are displayed at the morgue. Anyone and everyone lines up for a brief glimpse of the dead. The ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, Edited by Tarun H. Saint

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The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, Tarun K. Saint, ed. (Hachette India 978-93-88322-05-8, RS599, 382pp, hc) March 2019.

Over the past several months, we’ve looked at anthologies of Chinese, Korean, and Israeli SF, all largely geared towards familiarizing ”outsiders” – namely, English language readers – with these vari­ous national voices. The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, edited by Tarun K. Saint, is a little different. ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Paula Guran Reviews Short Fiction: Uncanny, Black Static, The Dark, Nightmare, and Tor.com

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Uncanny 3-4/19 Black Static 3-4/19 The Dark 3/19, 4/19 Nightmare 4/19, 5/19 Tor.com 4/17/19

Uncanny is one of my favorite periodicals because, even if the stories are not always 100% top-notch (no magazine’s content can be!), they are all 100% enjoyable to read and each issue always offers variety. That’s rare and welcome.

Whether intentional or not, the March/April issue has an appropriately springtide theme. Five – maybe all six ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Paul Di Filippo Reviews Radicalized by Cory Doctorow

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Radicalized, Cory Doctorow (Tor 978-1250228581, $26.99, 304pp, hc) March 2019.

There’s a glib and half-serious theory that the career of every SF writer is contained in embryonic form in their first short-story sale. For Cory Doctorow, this critical trick holds partially true. His first major work – “Craphound” from 1998 – displayed his affinity for droll humor laced with melancholy; his hipness and intimacy with trends, fads, and bubbling-under ...Read More

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Adrienne Martini Reviews Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

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Early Riser, Jasper Fforde (Viking 978-0-670-02503-9, $28.00, 416pp, hc) February 2019. Cover art by Patrick Leger.

Given how popular Jasper Fforde’s Friday Next books are, I feel like I have to preface this review with a disclaimer: Early Riser is the first Fforde I’ve ever read. As far as I can tell, it does not fit into his most popular series. I also can’t tell you if it is ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Russell Letson Reviews No Way by S.J. Morden

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No Way, S.J. Morden, (Orbit US 978-0-316-52221-2, $15.99, 372pp, tp) February 2019.

In One Way (2018), S.J. Morden mashed up two kinds of procedural: a very hard-SF planetary-pioneering adventure (the building of the first Mars base) and a countdown murder mystery modeled on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. That book ends with the murders solved and the surviving character facing an un­certain future. The sequel, No ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Paul Di Filippo Reviews Stealing Worlds by Karl Schroeder

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Stealing Worlds, Karl Schroeder (Tor 978-0-7653-9998-4, $29.99, 320pp, hardcover) June 2019

There are a handful of SF writers whose novels are both vastly entertaining and which also serve as engineer-level blueprints for refashioning the world. In this category I would put Kim Stanley Robinson, Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and Charles Stross. Now, with a shift in his focus from far futures ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews Station Zero by Philip Reeve

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Station Zero, Philip Reeve (Oxford University Press 978-0-19-275915-3, 7.99, 288pp, tp) Janu­ary 2018. (Capstone 978-1684460540, $17.95, 313pp, hc) February 2019.

Having now finished reading Station Zero, the final book in Philip Reeve’s fabulous Railhead trilogy, I remain confused about why this science fiction series is not far more popular. It has politi­cal intrigue, smart and gutsy teens of all shapes, sizes, races, and genders, more than one battle ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Little Animals by Sarah Tolmie

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The Little Animals, Sarah Tolmie (Aqueduct 978-1-61976-161-2, $20.00, 378pp, tp) May 2019.

Sarah Tolmie’s approach to the intersection between the historical and the marvelous is comparatively minimalist. The Little Animals is, for the most part, a straightforward account of the early career of the 17th-century Delft scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, as he discovers and records various “animalcules” through his homemade single-lens microscopes and tries to get his findings recognized ...Read More

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Liz Bourke Reviews The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde

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The Fire Opal Mechanism, Fran Wilde (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-250-19654-5, $14.99, 208pp, tp) June 2019. Cover by Tommy Arnold.

The Fire Opal Mechanism is billed as a sequel to an earlier novelette by award-winning author Fran Wilde (Updraft, Cloudbound, Horizon). That novelette was The Jewel and Her Lapidary, a work with elegant prose, a deeply compelling friendship between two young women, and an am­bivalent – ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews Lanny by Max Porter

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Lanny, Max Porter (Faber & Faber 978-0571340286, £12.99, 224pp, hc) March 2019. (Graywolf 978-1555978402, $24.00, 160pp, hc) May 2019.

I picked up Max Porter’s debut, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, when it was nominated for The Goldsmiths Prize back in 2015. It was unlike anything I’d ever read, a glorious, experimental fusion of poetry and prose, capturing the raw, jagged emotions of a father and his two ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews The Things She’s Seen by Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina

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The Things She’s Seen, Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina (Knopf 978-1-9848-4937-3, $17.99, 208pp, hc) May 2019.

First, a non-spoiler plot point about The Things She’s Seen: the primary narrator, 16-year-old Beth, is dead. Readers learn this in the first pages, and the reality of Beth’s deadness grounds the narrative. Beth can see (and hear) things because she is a ghost, while the fact that her father can clearly see ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Ghost Clause by Howard Norman

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The Ghost Clause, Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 978-0544987296, $27, 256pp, hardcover) July 2019

Never having read any of Howard Norman’s previous dozen widely acclaimed books, I was eager to have cause to trek through his newest, due to its falling within my fantastika remit. I discovered a charming, meticulously crafted, laid-back ghost story, a kind of inversion of Thorne Smith’s Topper, not quite so absurdist. Whereas, in that ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Lent by Jo Walton

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Lent, Jo Walton (Tor 978-0-7653-7906-1, $26.99, 384pp, hc) May 2019.

Jo Walton goes full multiverse in Lent, her fascinating examination of the life, or possible lives, of the Florentine cleric and prophet Girolamo Savonarola. Except for serious history buffs, Savonarola is mostly remembered for his famous Bonfire of the Vanities – which Walton, in an afterword, insists was “more like Burning Man” than a traditional repressive book burning ...Read More

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Russell Letson Reviews Perihelion Summer by Greg Egan

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Perihelion Summer, Greg Egan (Tor.com Pub­lishing 978-1-250-31378-2, $10.39, 215pp, tp) April 2019.

Once again the imagination of disaster is upon us, haunting our dreams and filling our entertainments with scary scenarios. What is disaster that we should be mindful of it in an entertainment? Or, to be precise, what is there in scary, disaster-haunted storytelling that goes beyond the threats and thrills followed by the relief that comes from ...Read More

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Liz Bourke Reviews Theater of Spies by S.M. Stirling

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Theater of Spies, S.M. Stirling (Ace 978-0-399-58625-5, $16.00, 464pp, tp) May 2019.

Since the 1980s, S.M. Stirling has been writing novels that revel in the minutiae of technological development, generally with a militaristic bent and frequently with an alternate-history (or alternate-present) setting. This attention to technological minutiae accom­panies an interest in cultures and societies, and the ways in which those cultures approach military conflict. Theater of Spies, a ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Rich Horton Reviews New Suns, Edited by Nisi Shawl

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New Suns, Nisi Shawl, ed. (Solaris 978-1-78108-578-3, $15.99, 279pp, tp) March 2019.

New Suns is subtitled “Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color”. I hope it’s not news to anyone that there are a lot of people of color who write spectacular speculative fiction. This book includes writers of Hispanic heritage, those from all over Asia, those of Native American heritage, and of course African and African-American writers. It ...Read More

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Katharine Coldiron Reviews Gather the Fortunes by Bryan Camp

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Gather the Fortunes, Bryan Camp (John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 978-1-328-87671-3, $24.00, 384pp. hc) May 2019.

Last year, I reviewed Bryan Camp’s first novel (and the first of his Crescent City novels), The City of Lost Fortunes. Even though I found that novel flawed, I still looked forward to the next one in the series. Camp had invented an interest­ing alternate New Orleans, and his idea of the ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Rus­sell

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Orange World and Other Stories, Karen Rus­sell (Knopf 978-0525656135, $25.95, 288pp, hc) May 2019.

Given my taste for narratives that straddle the literary and the fantastic, it might come as a surprise to know that I’ve never read Karen Russell’s fiction. It’s not that I haven’t been aware of her work; it’s hard to ignore the Pulitzer she was a finalist for in 2012 for her debut novel Swamplandia! ...Read More

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