Staff Picks

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Jonathan Strahan chooses The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Gary K. Wolfe says, “At times The Ministry of the Future seems bent on exploding the notion of what a novel can be. Of Robinson’s 106 chapters, some are narrated by anonymous characters who never show up again (such as one of the pilots in In­dia’s aerial seeding program), some ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Arley Sorg selects Burning Roses by S.L. Huang, saying, “To simply say this is a tale of Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi misses the brilliance displayed within the confines of a very slender volume.”

You can read Katharine Coldiron’s review online or in the October 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Liz Bourke picks The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso: “I was a fan of Caruso’s work to start with, but with The Obsidian Tower she’s hit another level in terms of prose and tension. This is a truly ex­cellent fantasy, and an epic beginning for a new trilogy. I can’t wait to see what she does next.”

Read Liz’s full review online ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Russell Letson selects Pacific Storm by Linda Nagata: “in Pacific Storm, she explores an increasingly relevant near-future-nightmare territory, one that sits comfortably (or uncomfortably) next to recent work by Christopher Brown (Rule of Capture, Failed State), Greg Egan (Perihelion Sum­mer), Nancy Kress (Sea Change), and even the political-satirical side of Charles Stross (Dead ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Josh Pearce picks By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar. Ian Mond calls it “a jolt of pure entertain­ment, a brilliant, revisionist blend of magic, crime syndicates, and Kung-fu knights.”

Read Ian’s full review online or in the April 2020 issue of Locus, and Gary K. Wolfe’s review online or in the June 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Bob Blough chooses Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. Ian Mond calls it “a colourful and politically aware love letter to the British Invasion and the last, lingering days of the Summer of Love.”

Read Ian’s full review online or in the August 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Ian Mond and Jonathan Strahan choose We All Hear Stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman. Ian says it “is a remarkable feat of storytelling. Nine years in the making, it comprises over 100 pieces of fiction, spans three volumes (with introductions from Angela Slatter, Michael Marshall Smith, and Lisa Tuttle, and a “peculiar” middleword by Steven Moffat), and features exquisite black-and-white ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Gary K. Wolfe chooses The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison: “All of his fiction is distinguished by carefully crafted prose that can achieve sublime beauty even when slicing like a razor, and by characters that are somehow a lot more compelling to us than they are even to themselves.”

Read Gary’s full review online or in the ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Arley Sorg selects Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. Gabino Iglesias says it “is a wildly imaginative, superbly written narrative about friendship, magic, and fighting racism that occupies a strange interstitial space between historical fiction, fantasy, and body hor­ror. It is also a smart reimagining of history that pushes current racial tensions to the forefront and forces readers to remember that bigotry ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Paula Guran picks The Best of Michael Marshall Smith: “Smith writes stories that draw the reader in and keep them mesmerized as they worm their disquieting way permanently into the psyche. He’s a perceptive observer of human passions, weaknesses, and everything in between. His scrutiny thereof usually results in dark conclu­sions.”

Read Paula’s full review online or in the November 2020 ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Liz Bourke chooses Micaiah Johnson’s “fantastic, thoughtful, and thought-provoking debut” The Space Between Worlds: “in one sense, it’s a quiet, do­mestic novel about jobs and relationships, borders and class issues, and the problems of navigating structures of power as an outsider that those structures can crush with impunity… and then, from another angle, it’s a novel of action and in­trigue, revolution ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Josh Pearce picks Onward as a top film of 2020: “This movie was so good. I thought it was the saddest Pixar movie ever, sadder than Up. But I also think that Pixar movies are highly subjective, so your mileage may vary. Monsters, Inc. is still my favorite Pixar film, but Onward is not far behind it.”

Read the full review ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Arley Sorg chooses Big Girl by Meg Elison. Gary K. Wolfe says, “What this collection – three essays, three stories (two of them original), and the usual quirky interview with series editor Terry Bisson – shows is a voice that is at once affable yet angry, sharply satirical yet humane, visceral yet carefully controlled.”

Read Gary’s review online or in the July ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Colleen Mondor chooses The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune: “I just cannot bear a bleak dystopian future right now. I know that is unreasonable and even unfair to a lot of great authors, but it is where my head is at. I need something that gives me hope that humanity will rise to this latest challenge. I wasn’t looking ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Adrienne Martini picks Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher: “It’s that balance between light humor and dark consequences that keeps Vernon’s work grounded and propulsive. Paladin’s Grace is a smart, fantasy romance from a distinct (and delightful) voice in the genre.”

You can read her full review online or in the April 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Arley Sorg selects The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. Gary K. Wolfe says: “The basic premise, which was previewed in Jemisin’s 2016 story “The City Born Great”, is this: each great city reaches a point in its history when it literally comes alive and is embodied in an avatar who might otherwise seem an ordinary, undistinguished citizen. When this happens, ancient ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Tim Pratt picks Scott R. Jones’s debut, Stonefish, “cosmic horror science fiction with cryptids!” From publisher Word Horde: “Heart of Darkness meets The Magus meets bleeding-edge psychedelic gnosticism.”

Check out more online!

  ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Bob Blough picks Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett, the sequel to 2018’s Foundryside, set in a city that runs by industrialized magic.

You can find descriptions and links to reviews in our new books listing online. ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Josh Pearce and Paula Guran choose The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. Paula says, “Good horror novels often have you reading and turning the pages as fast as you can. With a great horror novel – one that so arouses a sense of dread, connects so profoundly with that which is just beyond the normal world, is written with such ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Arley Sorg picks Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi. Katharine Coldiron says, “Riot Baby is a good book, an angry book, a useful book. It drenches the reader in cold fire: fury and clarity at once, directed not at individuals but at the systems that make life unfair and treacherous for Black people in America.”

You can read Katharine’s review online or ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Liz Bourke picks Stormsong by C.L. Polk: “Polk writes a tense, compelling novel focused on aftermaths and the consequences of disrupting exist­ing power structures – even when those structures need to be challenged, the results aren’t clean-cut. As in Witchmark, it’s Polk’s talent for character that makes her work shine.”

You can read Liz’s full review online or in the April ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Russell Letson selects Resurgence and Divergence by C.J. Cherryh: “When C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner sequence began in 1994, it looked like it might have been the start of a mere trilogy. Over the last 25 years, it has become a string of trilo­gies – six and two-thirds of them now – that constitute a single continuous narrative with an ever-expanding cast, complicated relationships, ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Colleen Mondor picks Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold: “With Red Hood, author Elana K. Arnold has accomplished something so important and powerful that I strongly believe everyone should read this book. Girls should read it (for sure, girls should read it!), boys should read it, adults and teens should read it. If you love fairy tales, if you have no patience ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Tim Pratt chooses Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Gary K. Wolfe says, “With Piranesi, Clarke is knowingly taking a number of risks. In place of the wry, knowing Austenian voice of the earlier novel, she offers an ingenu­ous narrator who remains several steps behind the reader for most of the novel. Character roles remain shifty and indeterminate for much of the story, ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Gary K. Wolfe picks War of the Maps by Paul McAuley, “inventive high-concept SF (people questing around on the exterior of a Dyson sphere!) which reads like epic fantasy, with an archetypal protagonist called the Lucidor.”

You can read Gary’s full review online or in the March 2020 issue of Locus, and Paul Di Filippo’s review online here! ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Katharine Coldiron selects Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe: “a strange, limber, febrile collection of prose (with a smatter of poetry), full of surprises and stunners.”

You can read Katharine’s full review online or in the May 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Paul Di Filippo recommends The Vanished Birds: “Simon Jimenez’s touching, bold, surprising, gorgeous debut novel—a certain manner of postmodern space opera, despite the fantasy-resonant title—is not only the best debut novel I’ve read in ages, but simply one of the best SF novels in recent memory.”

Check out Paul’s full review online and Gary K. Wolfe’s review online or in the ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Russell Letson picks Failed State by Christopher Brown: “I called Rule of Capture ‘one long scary dream disguised as an entertainment,’ and that blurbable description fits Failed State as well – a book that continues the portrait of a near future made mean by kleptocracy, corruption, and cultural-ideological conflict-unto-warfare.”

Read Russell’s full review online or in the September 2020 issue of ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Paula Guran chooses Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: “Mexican Gothic has all the right ingredients: the romantic, fairytale-loving victim-bride; an uber-creepy cursed family with a malevolent mansion whose mysteries grow more bizarre by the page; isolated geography that obscures and ensnares; a cemetery of buried secrets; an unlikely hero; a village wise woman; foul fungi, and much more.”

You can read ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Arley Sorg selects Entanglements: Tomorrow’s Lovers, Fami­lies, and Friends, edited by Sheila Williams. Maya James says, “Midway through Entanglements, it becomes clear that technology, especially AI, is an “other” in these stories, and that it will eventually invade the relatively sanitized life of a household. We don’t ever catch a full glimpse of the dystopias that technology has brought upon ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Ian Mond selects Mordew by Alex Pheby. “I’ve been eagerly awaiting Alex Pheby’s Mordew – the first volume in a new epic fantasy trilogy – since publisher Galley Beggar Press announced it more than a year ago. (If you have the spare cash, I highly recommend subscribing to Galley Beggar Press, one of the best small press publishers who produce gorgeous, award-winning ...Read More

It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

Katharine Coldiron picks The Trials of Koli by M.R. Carey. “In short: if you loved M.R. Carey’s The Book of Koli, you will love The Trials of Koli just as much, if not more. Carey has delivered satisfac­torily on the promise of the Rampart Trilogy with a second volume just as absorbing, stunning, and emotionally rich as the first.”

You can ...Read More