Reviews – Page 6 – Locus Online

Liz Bourke Reviews A Multitude of Dreams by Mara Rutherford

November 28, 2023December 4, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Liz Bourke

A Multitude of Dreams, Mara Rutherford (Inkyard Press 978-1335457967, $19.99, 394pp, hc.) August 2023.

If you don’t think too deeply about Mara Rutherford’s A Multitude of Dreams, it’s a smooth and readable young-adult novel borrowing strongly from the gothic and romantic traditions: a sealed castle, a masquerading princess-who-is-not-a-princess, a mad king, a plucky young gentleman, a terrible disease, a monster wearing the face of a benevolent master, secret ...Read More

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DIMENSIONS OF WONDER: George Saunders in a Haunted Mansion with Chocolate Mint by Eugenia Triantafyllou

November 28, 2023February 28, 2024 locusmag 0 Comments Eugenia Triantafyllou

Welcome to our special short fiction issue! We’ve got an interview with Carmen Maria Machado, best known for her National Book Award-nominated collection Her Body and Other Parties. We hosted a roundtable discussion with short story powerhouses Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik – among them they’ve won seven Nebula Award, five Hugo Awards, four World Fantasy Awards, and a couple of Stoker Awards, too.

We’ve invited some ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews Death Valley by Melissa Broder

November 27, 2023November 10, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Ian Mond

Death Valley, Melissa Broder (Scribner 978-1-66802-484-3, $27.00, 240pp, hc) October 2023.

Melissa Broder has been on my need-to-get-around-to-reading radar since I picked up her 2018 debut, The Pisces, about a woman who falls in love with a merman. To this day, the book remains unopened on my Kindle. So does Broder’s second novel, Milk Fed, about a lapsed Jewish woman on a strict, calorie-controlled diet who engages ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews Who Haunts You by Mark Wheaton

November 26, 2023November 8, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Colleen Mondor

Who Haunts You, Mark Wheaton (Off Limits Press 978-8-9879250-1-0, $13.00, 170pp, tp) September 2023.

Mark Wheaton’s Who Haunts You is a thriller featuring a determined teen detective who cannot be sure of anything she uncovers. Rebecca ‘‘Bex’’ Koeltl is a high school senior in a school that is suddenly suffering an alarming number of student deaths. Yunwen Lei runs off a cliff, Darrell Anolik drives into a delivery van, ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird edited by Jonathan Maberry

November 25, 2023November 15, 2023 LocEditor 0 Comments Paul Di Filippo

Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, edited by Jonathan Maberry (Blackstone 979-8200687992, hardcover, 200pp, $27.99) October 2023

I have yet to read any individual issue of the revived Weird Tales magazine, piloted by editor Jonathan Maberry. But I already know that this new periodical incarnation must be a class act, fully worthy of bearing forward into the future the celebrated name and lineage. My appraisal comes from enjoying this ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias S. Buckell

November 25, 2023November 8, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Gary K. Wolfe

A Stranger in the Citadel, Tobias S. Buckell (Audible Originals 978-1713646228, $24.99, CD, 7 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) September 2021. (Tachyon 978-1-61696-398-9, $17.98, 256pp, tp) October 2023.

Far-future societies which have forgotten or mythologized their history have been a staple of SF at least since H.G. Wells’s Eloi. If you shift the point of view from that of a visiting time traveler to an inhabitant ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction

Caren Gussoff Sumption Reviews Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go by Cleo Qian

November 24, 2023December 4, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments

Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go, Cleo Qian (Tin House 978-1-95353-492-7, $18.00, 256 pp, tp), August 2023.

Everyone – and everything – in Cleo Qian’s debut short story collection, Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go – feels deliberately, surpisingly out of focus, at least, to me. Edges are indistinct, images muddy and untrustworthy. It’s dizzying, disorienting, and, at times, heart-stoppingly effective.

The collection itself is difficult to describe. Neither ...Read More

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Liz Bourke Reviews Where Peace Is Lost by Valerie Valdes

November 23, 2023November 1, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Liz Bourke

Where Peace Is Lost, Valerie Valdes (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-3085930, $19.99, 392pp, tp) August 2023. Cover art by Serena Malyon. Cover by Owen Corrigan.

Valerie Valdes’s Where Peace is Lost is her fourth novel, after a well-received debut space opera trilogy. Where Peace is Lost sets itself in a different science fiction continuity, with different characters, and spends most of its time on a single planet: It feels like ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Cast of Wonders, Fantasy, The Book of Beijing, and F&SF

November 23, 2023November 17, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Charles Payseur

castofwonders.org/ Fantasy 8/23 The Book of Beijing, Bingbing Shi, ed. (Comma) July 2023. F&SF 9-10/23

Cast of Wonders ranged from poignant to bitingly sarcastic in its July originals, but I was most taken with its first August story, Dani Atkinson’s “The Raven Princess”, which quickly introduces readers to a classic fairytale setup – a princess trapped in the body of a raven, trying to help a ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Menewood by Nicola Griffith

November 22, 2023November 1, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Gary K. Wolfe

Menewood, Nicola Griffith (MCD/Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-37420-808-0, $35.00, 720pp, hc) October 2023.

When her novel Hild was published back in 2013, Nicola Griffith wrote a short essay for Tor.com addressing reviews which described her as a distinguished SF/F writer who had somehow jumped ship into historical fiction, or which asked whether the novel itself could be read as some sort of fantasy. I even saw it described as ‘‘speculative ...Read More

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Ian Mond Reviews Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

November 21, 2023November 1, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Ian Mond

Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward (Scribner 978-1-98210-449-8, $28.00, 320pp, hc) October 2023.

2017 was a terrific year for ghost stories that spoke to America’s two-hundred-and-forty-year history of racism against people of colour. There’s the astonishing soliloquy from Litzie Wright, one of the numerous ghosts from George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, detailing her experiences as an enslaved person. There’s the spirit of a Black musician from Hari Kunzru’s ...Read More

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Adrienne Martini Reviews The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei, Starter Villain by John Scalzi, and Winter’s Gifts by Ben Aaronovitch

November 20, 2023November 16, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Adrienne Martini

The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei (Flatiron Books 978-1-250-88553-1, $29.99, 416pp, hc) July 2023.

In Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky, a billionaire offers humanity hope after an overwhelming number of environmental calamities have come home to roost. She’ll provide starter funding for a one-way mission to Planet X. Each government that provides additional cash will get to place its citizens on board in proportion to the donation. That scheme ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews Being Michael Swanwick by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

November 19, 2023November 20, 2023 LocEditor 0 Comments Paul Di Filippo

Being Michael Swanwick, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Fairwood Press 978-1958880142, trade paperback, 328pp, $20.95) November 2023

Consider the case of author Fran Leibowitz. Essentially the creator of a one- or two-book oeuvre, and featuring an absence of new publications over several decades, she is still sought-after for frequent interviews, and even had a recent documentary made about her by none other than Martin Scorsese: Pretend It’s a City (2020). Justifiably or ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Privilege of the Happy Ending by Kij Johnson

November 19, 2023November 16, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Gary K. Wolfe

The Privilege of the Happy Ending, Kij Johnson (Small Beer 978-1-61873-211-8, $18.00, 302pp, tp) October 2023.

It’s been more than a decade since Kij Johnson’s second story collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, and while no one is likely to accuse her of reckless profligacy since then (she’s been busy with academia, among other things), no one is likely to accuse her of playing it ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Whole Mess and Other Stories by Jack Skillingstead

November 18, 2023November 15, 2023 LocEditor 0 Comments Paul Di Filippo

The Whole Mess and Other Stories, Jack Skillingstead (Fairwood Press 978-1958880128, trade paperback, 334pp, $20.95) November 2023

Reading Jack Skillingstead’s second story collection drives home two things:

One: short stories remain the essential mode whereby fantastika can experiment and develop, while delivering exquisitely compact and powerful aesthetic experiences, much more so than the vast majority of novels, however competent and enjoyable the longer, baggier works might be. (If one ...Read More

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Guardians of Dawn Zhara S. Jae-Jones cover

Archita Mittra Reviews Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine and Guardians of Dawn: Zhara by S. Jae-Jones

November 18, 2023October 31, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Archita Mittra

Maddalena and the Dark, Julia Fine (Flatiron Books 978-1-25086-787-2, 304pp, $28.99, hc) June 2023.

Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine is an exquisite and lyrical imagining of the lives of two girls, Maddalena and Luisa, who meet at a prestigious music school and whose devotion to each other slowly and carefully builds up to a devastating crescendo that unfolds against the decadence of 18th-century Venice. Fine’s prose, delicate ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

November 17, 2023October 31, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Colleen Mondor

Witch of Wild Things, Raquel Vasquez Gilliland (Berkley 978-0-593-54857-8, $17.00, 336pp, tp) September 2023.

Witch of Wild Things is exactly the sort of magical romance that pairs perfectly with a dreary fall evening. It’s all about making sweet conversation while tramping through the woods, cooking some amazing meals, and negotiating a ton of family drama. There is also a romance rooted in a years-past teen crush that carries its ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Flash Fiction Online, GigaNotoSaurus, and Diabolical Plots

November 16, 2023October 31, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Charles Payseur

Flash Fiction Online 8/23 GigaNotoSaurus 8/23 Diabolical Plots 8/23

The August Flash Fiction Online features stories about families, longing, and cycles. Not always in a positive way, as Phoenix Alexander shows in ‘‘Nancy Shreds the Clouds’’, which explores the complexities of agency, rage, and corruption. Nancy is a girl with a lot of anger, punished for her mistakes while others are not – unrewarded for her virtues while ...Read More

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Colleen Mondor Reviews House of Roots and Ruin by Erin A. Craig

November 15, 2023October 30, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Colleen Mondor

House of Roots and Ruin, Erin A. Craig (Delacorte Press 978-0-593-48254-4, $19.99, 544pp, hc) July 2023.

Erin A. Craig follows up House of Salt and Sorrows, her reimagining of the fairy tale ‘‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’’, with a new novel focused on the youngest of the sisters introduced in that title. House of Roots and Ruins is all about Verity Thaumas, who has lived with her older sister Camille ...Read More

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Niall Harrison Reviews You Are My Sunshine by Octavia Cade

November 14, 2023October 30, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Niall Harrison

You Are My Sunshine, Octavia Cade (Stelliform 978-1-77809-264-0, 206pp, $19.99, tp) September 2023. Cover by Rachel Yu Lobbenberg.

Octavia Cade’s new collection You Are My Sunshine begins with ecological fury. ‘‘Look at what we woke’’ is both the first line of and a repeated refrain throughout the first story, ‘‘We Feed the Bears of Fire and Ice’’, in which heatwaves and famines are imagined by the narrator as the ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction

Paula Guran Reviews Black Static, The Deadlands, The Sunday Morning Transport and Uncanny

November 13, 2023November 16, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Paula Guran

Black Static 7/23 The Deadlands 7/23 The Sunday Morning Transport 8/13/23, 8/6/23, 7/30/23, 7/16/23, 7/2/23, 6/25/23 Uncanny 7-8/23

Established by Andy Cox in December 1993, British SF/fantasy/slipstream/horror magazine The 3rd Alternative ran for 42 issues. It re-emerged in 2007 as Black Static with a tighter focus on weird fiction and horror. The magazine has always been an attractive publication with good black-and-white art, standout non-fiction, and consistently first-rate fiction. Combined ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Navigating Fox by Christopher Rowe

November 12, 2023October 30, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Gary K. Wolfe, wolfe

The Navigating Fox, Christopher Rowe (Tordotcom 978-1-250-80450-1, $18.99, 160pp, tp) September 2023.

Given what we think we know about foxes from just about every animal fable everywhere, the very title of Christopher Rowe’s The Navigating Fox seems to suggest treachery. Foxes, after all, are inveterate tricksters, and the idea of hiring one to lead you on a quest of any sort would seem to be a recipe for disaster. ...Read More

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Karen Haber Reviews Visions of Beauty by Kinuko Y. Craft and Found Worlds: Todd Lockwood by Todd Lockwood

November 11, 2023November 13, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Karen Haber

Visions of Beauty, Kinuko Y. Craft (Borsini-Burr Inc/Imaginary Realism 978-9-0784600-0-8, $225.00, 294pp, hc) January 2022. Cover by Kinuko Y. Craft

Kinuko Y. Craft: Visions of Beauty is massive with a capital M. You could use it for weight training. This coffee table volume has enormous visual impact and impressive production value. It’s a statement-making career summation for a giant of fantasy art. From the dust jacket to the gilt-edged ...Read More

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Liz Bourke Reviews Daughter of Winter and Twilight by Helen Corcoran

November 9, 2023October 30, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Liz Bourke

Daughter of Winter and Twilight, Helen Corcoran (O’Brien Press 978-1-788493703, €14.99/£13.99, 566pp, tp) September 2023. Cover by Emma Byrne.

Helen Corcoran’s Daughter of Winter and Twilight is both like and unlike her debut novel, Queen of Coin and Whispers. Like, in that it is a compelling coming-of-age narrative with strongly drawn characters and a vivid world. Unlike, in that where Queen of Coin and Whispers focused heavily on ...Read More

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Caren Gussoff Sumption Reviews Knife Witch by Susan diRende

November 9, 2023October 30, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Caren Gussoff Sumption

Knife Witch, Susan diRende (Aqueduct Press 978-1-61976-238-1, $18.00, 252 pp, tp), May 2023.

When K– (I won’t spoil the satisfying reveal of her true name) is faced with a horde of marauding, seafaring invaders, the kitchen girl’s infallible luck takes over. Instead of cowering, she, quite accidentally, stabs one of the leaders through the heart with a filet knife. This earns her an abduction by the inavders as a ...Read More

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Russell Letson Reviews War Bodies by Neal Asher

November 8, 2023November 13, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Russell Letson

War Bodies, Neal Asher (Tor UK 978-1-5290-5008-0, £20.00, 563pp, hc) July 2023. Cover by Steve Stone.

I have been trying to get a line on Neal Asher since first encountering his Polity universe two decades ago. My first thought was, here is a writer taking on many of the features, themes, and tropes that give, say, Iain M. Banks’s Culture books their New Space Opera appeal: a star-spanning, postscarcity ...Read More

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Archita Mittra Reviews The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson and The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten

November 7, 2023November 13, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Archita Mittra

The First Bright Thing, J.R. Dawson (Tor 978-1-25080-554-6, 352pp, $27.99, hc) June 2023.

The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson is crafted on an enchanting premise – a magical circus that can move through space as well as time, powered by people with special abilities called “Sparks.” The chief players are Rin, the Ringmaster who can bend time and space to her will; her wife, Odette, a healer; ...Read More

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Gabino Iglesias Reviews Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle and Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica

November 6, 2023October 30, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Gabino Iglesias

Camp Damascus, Chuck Tingle (Tor Nightfire 978-1-25087-462-7, $25.99, 256pp, hc) July 2023.

The mysterious Chuck Tingle built a career out of making all the right people angry. His work has always been out there, inclusive, and wildly entertaining; constantly pushing the boundaries while inhabiting a space between internet sensation and obscure indie writer. However, despite being a two-time finalist for the Hugo Award, many people looked at Tingle’s titles – ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction

A.C. Wise Reviews Short Fiction: Augur and khōréō

November 5, 2023April 10, 2024 locusmag 0 Comments A.C. Wise

Augur 6.1 khōréō 3.1

Augur issue 6.1 is packed with a mix of fiction and poetry and includes Bailey Macabre‘s “âniskac”, a comic which features lovely art and is set in a world recovering from environmental collapse looking back on the follies and failures of the past. Several of the stories and poems in the issue reflect on similar themes of climate change, regret over the past, ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews This Island Earth by Dale Bailey

November 5, 2023October 27, 2023 LocEditor 1 Comment Paul Di Filippo

This Island Earth: 8 Features from the Drive-In, Dale Bailey (PS Publishing 978-1786368973, hardcover, 266pp, $36.00) April 2023

When I first became lucky enough to find a publisher for my early story collections—the much-missed Four Walls Eight Windows, under John Oakes—I decided to make each volume a thematic assemblage. I had by then accumulated enough stories with prior magazine appearances to make such picking and choosing possible. The Steampunk ...Read More

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Karen Haber Reviews The Keeper, by Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes and Marco Finnegan; Spectrum Fantastic Art Quarterly: Volume Two edited by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner; The Corset and The Jellyfish: A Conundrum of Drabbles by Nick Bantock

November 5, 2023November 13, 2023 locusmag 0 Comments Karen Haber

The Keeper, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes & Marco Finnegan (Abrams Comic Art Megascope 978-1-4197-5155-4, $24.99, 150pp, hc) September 2022. Cover by Marco Finnegan.

The Keeper is a gripping tale of family love and the supernatural, guaranteed to grab anyone interested in urban horror served with a slice of poignancy and social realism. According to the afterword, it began life as a script that had a hopeful journey through Hollywood ...Read More

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Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Wolfe at the Door by Gene Wolfe

November 4, 2023October 27, 2023 LocEditor 0 Comments Paul Di Filippo

The Wolfe at the Door, Gene Wolfe (Tor 978-1250846204, hardcover, 480pp, $29.99) October 2023

Arriving just a few months after the publication of The Dead Man and Other Stories (my Locus Online review here), this mammoth compilation from Tor Books also helps to ensure—by its high-quality catholic selection (pun entirely intentional)—that Gene Wolfe’s reputation will continue to be justifiably burnished for future generations. There can be no legacy without ...Read More

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