Rest in Peaches, Alex Brown (Page Street YA 979-8-89003-070-2, $18.99, 336pp, hc) October 2024.
Get ready for another great young adult horror comedy with Rest in Peaches by Alex Brown (not me!). Quinn is about to do the biggest, most important thing she’s ever done in her whole 17 years of life. At this year’s Homecoming game, she will don a brand new Peaches the Parrot mascot costume and ...Read More
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The Lies We Conjure, Sarah Henning (Tor Teen 978-1-259-84106-3, $19.99, 400pp, hc) September 2024.
As The Lies We Conjure opens, sisters Ruby and Wren are finishing up a summer stint working at a local Renaissance Fair when they get an offer that impetuous Wren cannot pass up. A customer offers them each $2,000 to attend a family dinner at the local landmark mansion and pretend to be her grandchildren. ...Read More
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Breath of Oblivion, Maurice Broaddus (Tor 978-1-25026-512-8, $30.99, 400pp, hc) November 2024.
Breath of Oblivion is the second instalment in Maurice Broaddus’s highly anticipated Astra Black trilogy. The first book in the series, Sweep of Stars, was a Locus Award finalist in 2023 and garnered favourable reviews for his Afrofuturist space adventure. Sweep of Stars clearly displays Broaddus’s admirable worldbuilding, as he imagines the year 2121, long after ...Read More
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Model Home, Rivers Solomon (MCD 978-0-37460-713-5, $28.00, 304pp, hc) October 2024. Cover by Abby Kagan.
Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is a novel about a haunted house in which said house sits in the background while haunted people take center stage. Stunningly written and full of the kind of trauma that can only come from family, this novel takes the haunted house trope and turns it into something that feels entirely ...Read More
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The Escher Man, T.R. Napper (Titan 978-1-80336-815-3, $17.99, 368pp, pb) September 2024. Cover by Julia Lloyd.
It’s 2101. Macau is filled with casinos and run by gangsters; Endel (aka Endgame), an Australian, is an enforcer for the main cartel, sent to kill traitors and anyone else who threatens the gang’s livelihood. Endel is a drunk and a gambler, and separated from his wife and child because of his behaviour. ...Read More
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Depth Charge, edited by Hank Davis & Jamie Ibson (Baen 978-1982193829, trade paperback, 288pp, $18.00) December 2024
Not so very long ago, the fantastika publishing ecology held open a niche for a species known as the “reprint anthology.” These creatures flourished under the expert hands of such caretakers as Damon Knight, Groff Conklin, Isaac Asimov, Richard Lupoff, Judith Merril and scores of other expert compilers. Their reason for living ...Read More
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Spells to Forget Us, Aislinn Brophy (Putnam 978-15586-1331-7, $20.99, 432pp, hc) September 2024.
In Aislinn Brophy’s new young adult romantic fantasy Spells to Forget Us, two Black teen girls have to balance falling in love with neglectful parents and harsh community expectations. Luna Gold and Aoife Walsh meet-cute at a high school football game. They flirt, they go out, they get together, they break up. Turns out, this ...Read More
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Disavowed, John E. Stith (Experimenter Publishing Company 979-8888315439, trade paperback, 510pp, $16.99) December 2024
I am extremely happy to see that John Stith’s career is experiencing something like a renaissance. His novel, Reckoning Infinity, the last in a continuous flow of fine books, appeared from Tor in 1997. We did not see another until Pushback in 2018—and that one was non-SF. Twenty-one years constituted a long gap for ...Read More
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The Way, Cary Groner (Spiegel & Grau 978-1-95411-842-3, $29.00, 304pp, hc) December 2024.
In Cary Groner’s second novel, The Way, a heavily mutated and infectious avian flu wipes out 80 percent of humanity. The event, dubbed ‘‘Mayhem’’ by the survivors, leads to the expected breakdown of civilisation – ‘‘starvation; migration; a brief, limited nuclear exchange; then finally the return of endemic diseases like TB, diphtheria, typhoid, cholera, malaria, ...Read More
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Castle of the Cursed, Romina Garber (Wednesday Books 978-1-250-86389-8, $21.00, 304pp, hc) July 2024.
The cover of Romina Garber’s Castle of the Cursed includes the line “The House is Always Hungry,” and readers should consider that a fair comment on the story within. As soon as recently orphaned Estela arrives at what she has only recently learned is her family’s “ancestral Spanish castle,” the house plays a huge part ...Read More
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Vilest Things, Chloe Gong (Saga Press 978-1-66800-026-7, $28.99, 384pp, hc). September 2024. Cover by Will Staehle.
Vilest Things picks up about ten minutes before the end of Immortal Longings. This review contains significant spoilers for that first book so interested readers should see my review in the August 2023 issue of Locus.
Vilest Things opens with Anton Makusa having just jumped his qi to crown prince August Shenzhi’s ...Read More
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We Lived on the Horizon, Erika Swyler (Atria 978-6680-4959-4, $28.99, 336pp, hc) January 2025.
Despite what Robert Frost may have thought, a lot of SFF writers really do love a wall. Walled and isolated cities, redoubts, or keeps (to use the term favored by The Science Fiction Encyclopedia) have proved useful to SFF for exploring everything from overpopulation to alien invasions to environmental catastrophe to those pesky tech ...Read More
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Mechanize My Hands to War, Erin K. Wagner (DAW 978-0756419349, hardcover, 320pp, $28.00) December 2024
Erin Wagner’s debut novel is a highly sophisticated tale, constructed in clever fashion, which revolves around the classic motif of human versus nonhuman, specifically man against android. It does not necessarily expand the frontiers of this theme—Wagner’s sociological and technological speculations about androids and their uses hew pretty closely to the standard SF textbook, ...Read More
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Voyaging, Volume One: The Plague Star, George R.R. Martin, art and adaptation by Raya Golden (Ten Speed Graphic, 978-1-98486-10-8-5, $19.99, 192pp. tp) October 2023. Cover by Raya Golden.
Hugo Award-nominated artist Raya Golden (Meathouse Man, Starport) brings her acclaimed expressive drawing skills, imagination, and sense of humor to Voyaging, Volume 1: The Plague Star, the winding tale of Haviland Tuf, tall, bald, eccentric space merchant ...Read More
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The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble 978-1-250-33397-1, $29.88, 384pp, hc) July 2024.
Author Sarah Beth Durst notes in her Acknowledgements to The Spellshop that writing her novel was sparked by hot chocolate and raspberry jam and a desire for “a book that felt like a warm hug.” (I get that sentiment because boy howdy, 2024 has been some kind of tough for a lot of us.) Plenty of pastries ...Read More
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Interstellar MegaChef, Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris 978-1-83786-233-7, $16.99, 400pp, tp) November 2024.
I’ve always loved a good cooking show. Back in the day, it was Top Chef (where a contestant always undercooked the chicken) and Great British Menu (where every pudding had to include rhubarb). Now, I’m obsessed with Uncle Roger’s YouTube channel. His takedown of Jamie Oliver’s Egg Fried Rice, with 28 million views and over one million likes, ...Read More
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Compound Fracture, Andrew Joseph White (Peachtree Teen 978-1-68263-612-1, $19.99, 384pp, hc) September 2024.
Teens fighting against the forces of empire or capitalism is a common theme in young adult fiction. Oftentimes, the teen protagonist has a couple sidekicks and a love interest or two who help them wage battle, but it’s up to our hero to defeat the Big Bad and save the day. The empire or corporation is ...Read More
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Dungeon Crawler Carl, Matt Dinniman (Dandy House 979-8-6885-9150-7, $13.99, 400pp, tp) September 2020. (Ace 978-0-59382-024-7, $30.00, 464pp, hc) August 2024. Cover by George Towne.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is not really a book; it’s a long joke, a gimmick, a video game turned into fiction. The thing is, it works. It has spots where it is juvenile or a little slow, but author Matt Dinniman clearly had a blast writing ...Read More
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Countess, Suzan Palumbo (ECW Press 978-1770417571, $16.95, 168pp, tp) September 2024
Trinidadian-Canadian author Suzan Palumbo draws on Caribbean history, culture, and experience in her space opera novella Countess. Palumbo has been previously best known for short fiction: Her collection Skin Thief was published by Neon Hemlock Press in 2023.
As a novella, Countess is a mixed bag. Its first half is genuinely compelling, while its second feelts to me ...Read More
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Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow 978-0-06-344578-9, $30.00, 448pp, hc) January 2025.
For a certain generation of academics, ‘‘the death of the author’’ is the title of an influential 1967 essay by Roland Barthes arguing against interpreting literature in terms of the author’s identity or psychology. Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author makes a brief and oblique reference to this in an early chapter in which the protagonist, ...Read More
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The Kwaidan Collection, Lafcadio Hearn, illustrated by Kent Williams (Beehive Books 978-1-948886-32-1) $100.00, 144+pp, hc) April 2023. Cover by Kent Williams.
The Kwaidan Collection is not only a fascinating illustrated volume of vintage supernatural Japanese folk tales, brilliantly interpreted by acclaimed multimedia artist Kent Williams, it’s historically significant. These stories were literally rescued by the eccentric multilingual world traveler Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) in the early 20th century when the ...Read More
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Remember You Will Die, Eden Robins (Sourcebooks Landmark 978-1-72825-603-0, $16.99, 336pp, tp) October 2024.
It has been another excellent year for unconventional narratives. There’s Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, which I called “a full-frontal deconstruction of narrative and genre”; there’s Rita Bullwinkel’s magnificent Headshot, a story structured around the intense, chaotic and balletic bouts of a junior girl’s boxing tournament; and there are the 1,281 F-bombs that punctuate the ...Read More
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Dream Machine: A Portrait of Artificial Intelligence, Appupen & Laurent Daudet (The MIT Press 978-0-26255-129-8, $29.95, 160pp, tp) August 2024.
The graphic novel Dream Machine is the brainchild of versatile Indian artist Appupen (known for Legends of Halahala, The Snake and the Lotus, and other inventive myth-building comics) and Laurent Daudet, a French physicist and AI researcher. Educational and engaging, the book delves into the wide-reaching ramifications ...Read More
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The Midnight Club, Margot Harrison (Graydon House 978-1-52580-988-0, $28.00, 368pp, hc) September 2024.
Margot Harrison’s The Midnight Club is one of those novels that defies categorization. At its core, this is a murder mystery (or a mystery about a suicide that some folks think could have been a murder). However, it’s also a narrative about the changing nature of friendship as well as a science fiction tale about a ...Read More
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Our Wicked Histories, Amy Goldsmith (Delacorte Press 978-0-583-70395-3, $19.99, 384pp, hc) July 2024. Cover by Marcela Bolivar.
The heroine of Amy Goldsmith’s Our Wicked Histories is Meg, a scholarship student at an exclusive private art school. In the opening pages she is still reeling from an episode a few months earlier when, at a school dance, she made a stupid drunken mistake that obliterated her social life (she has ...Read More
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Strange Horizons 9/16/24, 10/7/24, 10/14/24 F&SF Summer ’24 Kaleidotrope Autumn ’24
Strange Horizons has been firing on all cylinders lately, as with September’s “A War of Words” by Marie Brennan, a poem that imagines a war where the winners take more than wealth, more than land. They take language, leaving survivors without a way to contain their loss that isn’t filtered through the lens of their oppressors. ...Read More
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Thalamus: The Art of Dave McKean, Dave McKean (Dark Horse 978-1-50672486-7 $149.99, 600pp, hc) November 2023. Cover by Dave McKean.
A giant of the fantastic art field deserves a huge print retrospective, and for British artist Dave McKean, one of the most acclaimed and influential artists in the SF/F field and beyond, Thalamus fills the bill. A huge, slipcased, two-volume retrospective of McKean’s artwork, it’s a monument to one ...Read More
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The Final Orchard, C.J. Rivera (Angry Robot 978-1915998262, trade paperback, 400pp, $18.99) November 2024
As her CV informs us: until now, C.J. Rivera’s creative output has occurred in media other than print, making this not only her debut novel, but apparently her debut prose fiction of any sort. (ISFDB believes so too.) But we need fear not, because her skills earned elsewhere translate to a rousing good tale benefiting ...Read More
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Suite 13, David J. Schow (Subterranean 978-1645241621, hardcover, 384pp, $45.00) November 2024
When I reviewed Cixin Liu’s story collection A View from the Stars a few months ago, I made a big deal of how Liu had pulled a radical move by issuing a hybrid volume of fiction and non-fiction. Well, now comes an identical blend from master of shocks David Schow, half tales, half essays. There must be ...Read More
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The Wood at Midwinter, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury 978-1-63973-448-1, $16.99, 64pp, hc) October 2024.
Except for children’s books, I can think of relatively few authors for whom a relatively spare short story would be the occasion for a pricey hardcover, but between the holiday gift-book market, the 20th anniversary of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and the anticipation surrounding anything Susanna Clarke writes, one can hardly blame Bloomsbury for ...Read More
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A Conventional Boy, Charles Stross (Tordotcom 978-1-250357-847, $28.99, 224 pp, hc) January 2025.
Charles Stross expands his series about the highly secret and secretive counteroccult-threat agency nicknamed the Laundry with a volume made up of a new short novel, accompanied by a pair of previously published pieces. The novel, A Conventional Boy, is the origin story of a particular Laundry employee, as well as an homage to tabletop fantasy ...Read More
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Wooing the Witch Queen, Stephanie Burgis (Bramble 978-1250359599, $19.99, 304pp, tp) February 2025.
Given my hit-and-miss track record with fantasy romances – a record far more miss than hit – I didn’t expect to enjoy Stephanie Burgis’s Wooing the Witch Queen nearly as much as it turns out I did. But this playful, tongue-in-cheek, not-exactly enemies-to-lovers romp won me over with astonishing rapidity.
Felix von Estarion is an Archduke ...Read More
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