Books

Books Reviews 

Katharine Coldiron Reviews The Princess Beard by Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne

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The Princess Beard, Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne (Del Rey 978-1-52479-780-5, $27.00, 384pp, hc) October 2019.

The Princess Beard, the third of the three-book Pell series co-written by Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne, is half swash­buckler and half set piece. Like the other two books in the series, it stands alone, with reference to but without dependence on its predecessors, and its tone sits primarily in ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

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Frankissstein: A Love Story, Jeanette Winterson (Jonathan Cape 978-1787331402, £16.99, 352pp, hc) May 2019. (Grove Press 978-0-8021-2-9499, $27.00, 352pp, hc) October 2019.

We’re all familiar with the story. In 1816, on a miserable summer’s day in Lake Geneva, Lord Byron challenges Doctor John Polidori, Percy Shelley, and Percy’s soon to be wife Mary Godwin, to invent their own tales of the supernatural. This, the most famous rainy-day activity in ...Read More

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Amy Goldschlager Reviews Magic for Liars Audiobook by Sarah Gailey

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Magic for Liars, Sarah Gailey; Xe Sands, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25022786-7, $19.99, digital download, 9 hr., unabridged) June 2019.

Harry Potter is the person you want to be, but Ivy Gamble is the person you probably are. Ivy lives in a Potter-like version of Oakland, in the sense that magic, a magical bureaucracy, and a magical system of education all exist, largely un­known to those ungifted with magical ability. ...Read More

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Liz Bourke and Carolyn Cushman Review Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Pub­lishing 978-1-250-31319-5, $25.99, 448pp, hc) September 2019. Cover by Tommy Arnold.

Gideon the Ninth, debut novel by much-hyped new voice Tamsyn Muir, is a book that spent several months on my shelf while I wrestled with my mixed feelings about how very hyped it has been since I first heard of it. Lesbian necromancers in space! Gothic cutthroat politics! Epic shit! You’ll ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Shadows in the Stone by Jack Dann

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Shadows in the Stone, Jack Dann (IFWG Publishing 978-1-925956-36-8, $18.99, 362pp, trade paperback) November 2019

The Christian “heresy” of Gnosticism offers a fascinating mythos, a disturbing philosophy, and a ready-made set of fantasy props and beings that could be adapted for fictional narratives. Put very simply, Gnosticism holds that all of material creation, rather than standing as the shining example of a benign creator’s will, is a diseased prison ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

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House of Salt and Sorrows, Erin A. Craig (Delacorte 978-1-9848-3192-7, $18.99, 416pp, hc) August 2019.

Drawing from the classic fairy tale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”, Erin Craig’s House of Salt and Sorrows is a heavily at­mospheric novel set in a world that historically echoes our own and brings all the mystery, drama, and horror that readers could want. Sis­ters are dying, a strange and secretive passage to distant and ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Gary K. Wolfe and Rich Horton Review The Mythic Dream, Edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

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The Mythic Dream, Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe, eds. (Saga 978-1-5344-4228-3, $24.99, 368pp, hc) September 2019.

With two well-received anthologies already to their credit (The Starlit Wood and Robots vs Fairies) Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe can’t possibly believe that their idea for the third one – retellings and reshap­ings of world myths – is going to strike anyone as wildly innovative. Not only are there many ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews Masterworks and Other Stories by Simon Jacobs

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Masterworks and Other Stories, Simon Jacobs (Instar Books 978-1682199053, $20.00, 208pp, hc) August 2019.

Until recently, Simon Jacobs has enjoyed the coveted honour of being on the list of authors whose books I own but whom I’ve never read. I purchased his first novel, Palaces, more than a year ago because it looked right up my alley and, since then, it’s been collecting virtual dust on my Kindle ...Read More

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Adrienne Martini Reviews The History of Living Forever by Jake Wolff

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The History of Living Forever, Jake Wolff (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-374-17066-0, $27.00, 384pp, hc) June 2019.

Jake Wolff’s The History of Living Forever isn’t really science fiction, but it isn’t really not science fiction, either. It falls into that interstitial space. (And a hat tip to Ellen Kushner and friends for popularizing that term.)

Most of the story is set in a world we all rec­ognize, especially if we’ve ...Read More

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Amy Goldschlager Reviews Three Audiobooks by P. Djèlí Clark

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A Dead Djinn in Cairo, P. Djèlí Clark; Sue­hyla El-Attar, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062446-8, $1.99, digital download, 1.75 hr., unabridged) August 2019. The Haunting of Tram 015, P. Djèlí Clark; Julian Thomas, narrator (Recorded Books 978-1-9800-3186-4, $13.99, digital download, 3.25 hr., unabridged) February 2019. The Black God’s Drums, P. Djèlí Clark; Chan­nie Waites, narrator (Recorded Books 978-1-9800-3186-4, $13.99, digital download, 3 hr., unabridged) March 2019.

I first encountered ...Read More

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Alvaro Zinos-Amaro Reviews The Time Machine Hypothesis by Damien Broderick

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The Time Machine Hypothesis: Extreme Science Meets Science Fiction, Damien Broderick (Springer 978-3030161774, $27.99, 244pp, pb) July 2019.

J. Richard Gott III’s epigraph in Damien Brod­erick’s engaging survey may contain a mission statement of sorts: “To appreciate what scientists are studying now, an excellent first step is to explore major time-travel themes in science fiction, where many ideas in this arena were first advanced.” Brod­erick undertakes this exploration with ...Read More

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Paula Guran Reviews The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry

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The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, H.G. Parry (Redhook/Orbit 978-0-316-45271-7 $26, 464pp. hc) July 2019.

The idea of a reader being able to bring fictional characters to life is hardly a new one – Jasper Fforde, Jim C. Hines’s Magic Ex Libris series, Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library, and, for younger read­ers, the Inkworld series by Cornelia Funke come readily to mind – but H.G. Parry’s twist in ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Best of Uncanny, Edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas

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The Best of Uncanny, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, eds. (Subterranean 978-1596069183, $40, 680pp, hardcover) December 2019

In this challenging, ever-mutable internet era, when publishers are continually searching for ways to find an audience and stay alive, a magazine can take many forms. Some remain old-school print-only. Some are exclusively web-based. Others are hybrids on a regular basis. But one other interesting business model for zines that ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Rich Horton, Liz Bourke, and Amy Goldschlager Review Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney

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Desdemona and the Deep, C.S.E. Cooney (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-250-22983-0, $14.99, 222pp, tp) July 2019. Cover by Kathleen Jen­nings.

I’ve been looking forward to C.S.E. Cooney‘s Desdemona and the Deep for quite a while, and having arrived, it doesn’t disappoint. This is the third of her Breakers novellas (though it stands completely alone), centered around a set of houses called Breakers in three different worlds: the hu­man world, the ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews Last Bus to Everland by Sophie Cameron

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Last Bus to Everland, Sophie Cameron (Mac­millan Children’s Books 978-1-509-85318-2, £9.99, 288pp, tp) May 2019. (Roaring Brook Press 978-1-250-14993-0, $17.99, 327pp, hc) June 2019.

After last year’s thoughtful Out of the Blue, author Sophie Cameron returns again to her native Scotland with Last Bus to Everland. In this “magical doorway” fantasy (that title was chosen for a reason), teenager Brody Fair finds the place he has al­ways ...Read More

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Russell Letson Reviews Stealing Worlds by Karl Schroeder

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Stealing Worlds, Karl Schroeder (Tor 978-0-7653-9998-4, $29.95, hc) June 2019. Cover by Stephane Martinière.

Thanks to its depiction of a tech-based, street-smart, stick-it-to-the-man coun­terculture, Karl Schroeder’s Stealing Worlds will inevitably be compared to classic cyberpunk, but the vibe is quite distinct and not nearly as noirish. The setting is a just-over-the-horizon heterotopian future that nevertheless had me thinking of the much more exotic and farther-out worlds of Schroeder’s earlier ...Read More

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Adrienne Martini Reviews The Municipalists by Seth Fried

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The Municipalists, Seth Fried (Penguin 975-0-14-313373-5, $16.00, 268pp, tp) March 2019. Cover design by Lucia Bernard.

Imagine Metropolis, the fictional comic book-based city that feels loosely based on Manhattan. Now imagine, instead of Super­man flying around and saving the day, the hero is a city planner, one who only feels satisfaction when the sewer system’s efficiency is improved by 4.73 percent, which is .03 percent above requirements. In Seth ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Broken Places & Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor

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Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected, Nnedi Okorafor (Simon & Schuster 978-1-5011-9547-2, $16.99, 96pp, hc) June 2019.

Nnedi Okorafor’s surprisingly and sometimes achingly personal account of her battle with sco­liosis and post-surgical paralysis, Broken Places & Outer Spaces, isn’t exactly a literary memoir, but one anecdote strikes me as ironically emblematic of her unique relationship with SF: when she was hospitalized, she was ...Read More

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Amy Goldschlager Reviews Spellswept and Snowspelled Audiobooks by Stephanie Burgis

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Spellswept and Snowspelled, Stephanie Burgis; Emma Newman, narrator (Tantor Audio 978-1-40012121-2, $19.99, digital download, 7.25 hr., unabridged) May 2019.

I have a great fondness for those stories where the romance and the fantasy genres kiss and com­mingle. Snowspelled, book one of the Harwood Spellbook, and its prequel novella, Spellswept, definitely hit that sweet spot for me.

This previously self-published series is set in an alternate world ...Read More

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Katharine Coldiron Reviews The Last Supper Before Ragnarok by Cassandra Khaw

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The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, Cassandra Khaw (Abaddon Books 978-1-78108-645-2, $11.99, 352pp, pb) June 2019.

What an odd book Cassandra Khaw has written. It’s extraordinarily immediate, inherently diverse, jammed with whip-fast wisecracks, and peppered with language so precise and sophisticated it awes. But the book is also chaotic, unevenly character­ized, and weakly plotted. The difficulty comes in judging the book as a whole, because its ele­ments divide so steeply ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Rich Horton and Gary K. Wolfe Review Anthologies Edited by Jonathan Strahan

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Mission Critical, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (So­laris 978-1781085806) July 2019.

Jonathan Strahan’s new anthology is Mission Critical. The theme is characters responding to desperate situations, when something goes pear-shaped. Oddly, many of the stories, all well executed, seem a bit too much the same in adher­ing to the theme. The best are “Hanging Gar­dens” by Gregory Feeley, and “Cyclopterus” by Peter Watts. Feeley’s ...Read More

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Amy Goldschlager Reviews Four Tor.com Audiobooks

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As Good as New, Charlie Jane Anders; Frankie Corzo, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062443-7, $1.99, digital download, 0.75 hr., unabridged) August 2019. The President’s Brain Is Missing, John Scalzi; P.J. Ochlan, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062438-3, $1.99, digital download, 0.75 hr., unabridged) August 2019. This World Is Full of Monsters, Jeff Vander­Meer; Vikas Adam, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062445-1, $1.99, digital download, 1.5 hr., unabridged) August 2019. Warm Up, ...Read More

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John Langan Reviews Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud

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Wounds, Nathan Ballingrud (Saga Press 978-1-534-44992-3, $26.99, 288pp, hc) April 2019.

Wounds, Nathan Ballingrud’s stellar sophomore collection, is bracketed by a pair of stories concerning Hell. In “The Atlas of Hell”, an antiquarian bookseller is sent by a local gangster deep into the Louisi­ana bayou to retrieve the titular object; while in “The Butcher’s Table”, a group of 18th-century diabolists undertake the perilous sea voyage to the near ...Read More

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Adrienne Martini Reviews Vultures by Chuck Wendig

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Vultures, Chuck Wendig (Saga 978-1481448772, $27.99, 416pp, hc) January 2019.

Chuck Wendig’s Vultures is the sixth and fi­nal book in his Miriam Black series. If you’re already familiar with this “take-no-shit, give-no-fucks kinda lady,” as she describes herself, you know if her foul mouth and pitch-black sass are your jam. Wendig sticks the landing on the series – and, possibly, sets up a tangential new series, should he so ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Ivory Apples by Lisa Goldstein

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Ivory Apples, Lisa Goldstein (Tachyon 978-1-61696-298-2, $15.95, 276pp, tp) September 2019.

In a career now well into its fourth decade, Lisa Goldstein has made something of a habit of confounding expectations: she made a stun­ning debut with her Holocaust fantasy The Red Magician, veered off into student revolutions and Surrealism in The Dream Years, dabbled with dystopia in A Mask for the General and her own brand ...Read More

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Liz Bourke Reviews To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

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To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton 978-1-473697164, £12.99, 140pp, hc) August 2019. (Harper Voyager 978-0-062-93601-1, $12.99, 176pp, tp) September 2019.

I wish I had enjoyed Becky Chambers’s To Be Taught, If Fortunate nearly as much. Where Chambers’s previous works (The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and Record of a Spaceborn Few) took place in ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

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The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa (Pantheon 978-1-101-87060-0, $25.95, 288pp, hc) August 2019.

The Memory Police is, by my count, the fifth book by Yoko Ogawa to be translated into English (all by Stephen Snyder). These include The Div­ing Pool: Three Novellas, which was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award back in 2008. While it’s only a small slice of a career that spans three decades and the publication ...Read More

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Tom Whitmore Reviews Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

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Escaping Exodus, Nicky Drayden (Harper Voy­ager 978-0-06-286773-5, $15.99, 300pp, tp) Oc­tober 2019.

On a generation ship, two young people from different classes meet and fall in love. One rises, one falls, and their complex and forbidden rela­tionship causes a major rupture in the society. This is a classic SF trope: Drayden takes it to new places.

In Escaping Exodus, people use a pod of space whales as generation ...Read More

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Paula Guran Reviews Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, Edited by Ellen Datlow

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Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Saga 978-1-53441-346-7, $32.99, 816pp, hc) August 2019.

Ellen Datlow has delved into ghost story-themed anthologies twice before: the all-original The Dark: New Ghost Stories in 2003 and Hauntings, a reprint compilation, in 2013. This massive (over 200,000 words in 816 pages, 30 stories) tome is one of the best works yet by Datlow – and, considering her stellar ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

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A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley 978-1984802583, $16.00, 336pp, tp) September 2019

Readers of Sarah Pinsker’s Nebula Award-winning novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road” (included in her collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, reviewed here in March) might be as curious as I was to learn more about the gritty near-future America of that story, and in particular of the plight ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The New Voices of Science Fiction, Edited by Hannu Rajaniemi & Jacob Weisman

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The New Voices of Science Fiction, Hannu Rajaniemi & Jacob Weisman, eds. (Tachyon 978-1-61696-291-3, 432pp, $17.95) November 2019

In the deep past of our genre, how did one become a notable new writer? The first step back then was always the same as it is now: publish some good, standout stories as your apprentice and journeyman work. But subsequent public recognition in the days when print magazines dominated the ...Read More

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Stefan Dziemianowicz Reviews Growing Things by Paul Tremblay

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Growing Things, Paul Tremblay (Morrow 978-0-06-267913-0, $25.99, 352pp, hc) July 2019.

Growing Things is Paul Tremblay’s latest short fiction collection, after Compositions for the Young and Old and In the Meantime, some of whose contents it shares. It’s also his first book after a trio of novels – A Head Full of Ghosts, Disappear­ance at Devil’s Rock, and The Cabin at the End of the World ...Read More

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