Forged by Blood, Ehigbor Okosun (Harper Voyager 978-0-0631-1262-9, $32.00. 400pp, hc) August 2023.

Readers looking for a high-octane story with an equal amount of romance and fight scenes should look no further than Ehigbor Okosun’s Forged by Blood, the first in the debut author’s Tainted Blood duology. It’s the perfect summer adventure story.

Forged by Blood begins when Dèmi is a child living in desperate poverty with her ...Read More

A Song of Salvation, Alechia Dow (Inkyard Press 978-1-33545-372-3, $18.99. 352pp, hc) July 2023.

Although technically a standalone, Alechia Dow’s new young adult space opera A Song of Salva­tion is part of the larger world shared by her two earlier YA novels The Sound of Stars and The Kindred. It helps, but you don’t need to read the other two to enjoy and understand the third. That said, ...Read More

Vampires of El Norte, Isabel Cañas (Berkeley 978-0-59343-672-1, $28.99, 400pp, hc) August 2023.

I like historical fantasy as a subgenre, but I espe­cially love historical fantasy set in the American West with BIPOC protagonists encountering the horrors of colonialism and the supernatural in equal measure. Victor LaValle’s viciously impressive Lone Women is one of the best of the bunch of the last several years, but Isabel Cañas’ Vampires of ...Read More

Sordidez, E.G. Condé (Stelliform 978-1-77768-236-1, $16.00, 141pp, tp) August 2023. Cover by Paulina Niño.

In Sordidez, the debut novella from Taíno­futurist author E.G. Condé, we meet three Latinx people attempting to survive in the aftermath of colonial warfare and climate di­sasters. Vero, a trans man, lives in Puerto Rico, a place ravaged by American disinterest, global manipulation, and devastating hurricanes. Using his knowledge of his Taíno ancestral traditions, ...Read More