Adrienne Martini

Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit 978-0-31628-971-9, $29, 432 pg, hc) June 2023.

With Translation State, Ann Leckie returns to the Radchaai universe she built in the Ancil­lary trilogy. This time, the focus shifts from the powerful and ritual-bound Radch to the rest of the humans who are just trying to live their lives without interference from system-wide events. That goes about as well as you’d think.

In the ...Read More

Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom 978-1-25082–6794, $28.99, 432 pg, hc) May 2023. Cover by Tommy Arnold.

‘‘I’m just trying to learn how everything works,’’ one of the secondary characters says in Martha Wells’s Witch King. Same, secondary character. Same.

For the last few years, Wells’s Murderbot stories have been collecting readers and awards across the genre. All of the praise is well-earned. These science fiction stories about a ...Read More

A House with Good Bones, T. Kingfisher (Tor 978-1-250-82979-5, $26.99, 256 pg, hc) March 2023. Cover by Karolis Strautniekas.

In A House with Good Bones, T. Kingfisher (AKA Ursula Vernon) travels back into the horror section like she did with What Moves the Dead. This time, the subject is roses rather than fungi, but rest assured, there are still the dead.

Sam, a 30-something archaeoentomologist, returns to ...Read More

Tsalmoth, Steven Brust (Tor 978-0-76538-284-9, $27.99, 288pp, hc) April 2023.

Steven Brust’s Tsalmoth is the 16th book in his (allegedly) 19-book series. Each book focuses on one house on the great wheel of power in Dragaera, but each story within the series concerns Vlad Taltos, an assassin whose backstory is more complicated than it first appears.

Taltos is an Easterner in a world full of dragons, who aren’t really ...Read More

Dead Country, Max Gladstone (Tordotcom 978-0-7653-9591-7, $17.99, 256 pp, tp) March 2023. Cover by Goni Montes.

Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence created a world in which slivers of soul are used as currency and lawyers are as close to clerics as you can get. All six books in the sequence can be read independently of each other, mostly, but reading them all in any order tells a more complete story ...Read More

Illuminations, T. Kingfisher (Red Wombat Studio, $4.99, 248pp, eb) November 2022.

Illuminations, the latest middle-grade book by T. Kingfisher (AKA Ursula Vernon), opens on a very, very bored Rosa Mandolini. Fortu­nately, the Studio Mandolini, her family’s art/magic business, is full of storage rooms, stuffed to the brim with boxes of interesting, ancient wonders. One such box resists being found and opened. And thus begins Rosa’s adventure.

As you’d ...Read More

The Origin of Storms, Elizabeth Bear (Tor 978-0-76538-017-3, $28.99, 384pp, hc) June 2022.

If I were a TV producer who wanted to take on an epic fantasy story à la Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time, I would look no further than Elizabeth Bear’s Lotus Kingdom books. To be honest, I’d much rather see an interpretation of Bear’s work over yet another Euro-based, medieval-esque retread of dudes ...Read More

The Golden Enclaves, Naomi Novik (Del Rey 978-0-59315-835-7, $28.00, 416 pp, hc) Sep­tember 2022.

Naomi Novik’s The Golden Enclaves wraps up her Scholomance trilogy. If you’ve not read A Deadly Education or The Last Graduate, I’d suggest skipping this review in order to read the first book fresh. This is definitely a series better enjoyed if you begin at the beginning, where you’ll meet El and what become ...Read More

The Art of Prophecy, Wesley Chu (Del Rey 978-0-593237-63-2, $28.99, 544 pp, hc) August 2022.

New York Times bestselling author Wesley Chu’s The Art of Prophecy, which kicks off his War Arts Saga trilogy, is the anti-Dune. Rather than chart the development of a random kid who fulfills a prophecy despite all of the obstacles in his way, Chu focuses on a kid who knows he’s ...Read More

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space, Alex White (Orbit 978-0-7564-1483-2, $17.99, 464 pp, tp) July 2022.

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space is the first book in Alex White’s Starmetal Symphony series. It does pretty much what it says on the tin: jazz musician August Kitko finds himself thrown into a battle against mechas from space. The fate of humankind hangs in the balance. It’s excellent fodder ...Read More

Amongst Our Weapons, Ben Aaronovitch (DAW 978-0-7564-1483-2, $27.00, 302 pp, hc) April 2022. Cover by Stephen Walter & Patrick Knowles.

Amongst Our Weapons is not the book to start with if you want to read some Ben Aaronovitch. Instead, pick up series opener Midnight Riot (Rivers of London in the UK) to be fully in­troduced to the world of Detective Constable Peter Grant and the magical demimonde that ...Read More

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager 978-0-06302-142-6, $27.99, 560pp, hc) August 2022.

With Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Transla­tors’ Revolution, the multi-award nominated R.F. Kuang travels to 1830s Oxford University to build a tale about a tower built on languages whose fate is all but guaranteed. Her story about ...Read More

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers (Tordotcom 978-1-25023-623-4, $21.99, 160pp, hc) July 2022. Cover art by Feifei Ryan.

Becky Chambers’s A Prayer for the Crown-Shy picks up where A Psalm for the Wild-Built ends: Sibling Dex (a monk) and Mosscap (a robot) have begun their journey from the wilds back out into the built world. The robot has questions about happiness (which lead to conversations about more than ...Read More

The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor 978-1-25082-915-3, $30.99, 368pp, hc) October 2022.

My reading habits have shifted after the last two-plus years. Anything gritty or tense has got to be followed by at least one lighter title or maybe two, otherwise I cannot regulate my re¬sponse to anything happening to the characters. It seems like the last two-plus years have done the same to many SFF writers. The ...Read More

Rosebud, Paul Cornell (Tordotcom 978-1-25076-539-0, $14.99, 110pp, tp). April 2022.

Just to get it out of the way, the Rosebud in Paul Cornell’s Rosebud is a survey ship, not a sled. Said Rosebud has happened upon a mysterious black sphere out in space, and its digital inhabitants “a balloon, a goth, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects” decide to investigate ...Read More

Last Exit, Max Gladstone (Tor 978-0-76533-573-9, $18.99, 400pp, tp). March 2022.

Max Gladstone’s voice is one that defies easy description. It’s both succinct and verbose, dour and silly, dark but also light. Last Exit, his homage to the great American road story, is peak Gladstone, the voice he has de­veloped through his Hugo-nominated Craft series and his award-winning This is How You Lose the Time War. Yes, ...Read More

Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher (Tor 978-1-25024-404-8, 256pp, $25.99, hc) April 2022.

I am already a fan of T. Kingfisher (AKA Ursula Vernon). The three books (so far) in the Paladin series are full of light romance (with occasional corpses) and have kept me going through the last 18 months. Her young-adult stories like the Lodestar Award-winning The Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking are fun for adults as well ...Read More

The Paradox Hotel, Rob Hart (Ballantine 978-1-98482-064-8, 324pp, $28, hc) February 2022.

Rob Hart’s The Paradox Hotel sums its own energy up with one line of dialog: ‘‘We’re at DEFCON Level Holy Shit.’’ Hart not only starts in media res, he puts us on the rollercoaster that is the Paradox Hotel just as it is tipping down the first big hill. The pace never really lets up until the ...Read More

Battle of the Linguist Mages, Scotto Moore (Tordotcom 978-1-250-76772-1, 448pp, $28.99, hc) January 2022.

Scotto Moore’s debut story Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You was a weird trip into the wild world of streaming music and touring bands. It was a strange delight – and at about 128 pages, it was just enough too muchness to be fun. Battle of the Linguist Mages is very much a Moore creation ...Read More

Ogres, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris 978-1-78618-528-0 $30.00, 144pp, hc) March 2022.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Ogres is hard to warm up to at first, mostly because it is written in the second person. It’s so hard to do well, the second person. Stick with it. Tchaikovsky knocks it out of the park, once you find your way in.

Ogres is the story of Torquell, a young man who is six feet tall, ...Read More

Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, Lina Rather (Tordotcom 978-1-250-78214-4, $16.99, 192pp, tp) February 2022.

The events in Sisters of the Vast Black, Lina Rather’s first novella in her ‘‘space nuns’’ series, have caught up with said space nuns in Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, at least those who remain in the Order of Saint Rita. The Central Governance, which sprung from Old Earth and intends to rule ...Read More

The Annual Migration of Clouds, Premee Mohamed (ECW Press 978-1770415935, $15.95, 168pp, tp) September 2021. Cover by Veronica Park.

Premee Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds isn’t interested in telling a story like Ogres’s, one where the main character goes on a journey to become a hero. At first, though, it feels like that’s the arc that is being set up: Reid, a young woman, receives a one-in-a-million ...Read More

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr (Scribner 978-1-9821-6843-8, $30, 640pp, hc) Sept. 2021

Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land is hard to sum up for all of the best reasons. His voice is clear, strong, and gorgeous. The story tells the truth about books and being a human by looking at both slantwise – and it sticks with you long after you’ve finished it. Yet, despite the author’s Pulitzer-winning pedigree, Cloud ...Read More

Termination Shock, Neal Stephenson (William Morrow 978-006-302805-0, $35.00, 720pp, hc), November 2021.

My response to Neal Stephenson’s work tends to be binary – either I want to shove the title into the hands of everyone I know (like The Baroque Cycle) or I want to hurl it far away from everyone I love (like Fall; or Dodge in Hell). No matter which pole a title circles, I will ...Read More

Paladin’s Hope, T. Kingfisher (Red Wombat Studio 978-1-61450-551-8, $34.95, 270pp, hc), October 2021.

Paladin’s Hope is the third book in T. Kingfisher’s (AKA Ursula Vernon’s) Saint of Steel series. Like Paladin’s Grace and Paladin’s Strength before it, Paladin’s Hope is a fantasy romance at its core. There are gods and clerics and gnoles set against a medieval-esque city and countryside. The two main characters are destined for each other but ...Read More

A Practical Guide to Conquering the World, K.J. Parker (Orbit 978-0316498616, $17.99, 384pp, tp), January 2022.

A Practical Guide to Conquering the World winds up the Siege trilogy K.J. Parker started with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. While that first book and the second, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It, were amusing and engaging on their own terms, the third installment ...Read More

The Last Graduate, Naomi Novik (Del Rey 978-0-593-12886-2, $28.00, 400pp, hc) Sep­tember 2021.

Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education introduced us to the Scholomance, a magical high school for wizards that kills the better part of each incoming class by the time they are seniors. The school is not driven by pure malice (although it does seem to take a certain glee in making its students miser­able) but by hope. ...Read More

Paladin’s Hope, T. Kingfisher (Red Wombat Studio 978-1-61450-551-8, $34.95, 270pp, hc) October 2021.

Paladin’s Hope is the third book in T. Kingfisher’s (AKA Ursula Vernon’s) Saint of Steel series. Like Paladin’s Grace and Paladin’s Strength before it, Paladin’s Hope is a fantasy romance at its core. There are gods and clerics and gnoles set against a medieval-esque city and countryside. The two main characters are destined for each ...Read More

Widowland, C.J. Carey (Quercus 978-1-529-41199-7, £14.99, 436pp, hc) June 2021.

Widowland by C.J. Carey would be a very intense, engaging, and horrifying book if we didn’t live in a world that has 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Brave New World already in it.

Carey – the pseudonym of historical fiction writer Jane Thynne – has created an alternate history of 1950s Britain, one where the Prime Minister ...Read More

Artifact Space, Miles Cameron (Gollancz 978-1-473-23260-0, £18.99), 568pp, tp) June 2021.

If you are a fan of space operas with buckets of world building and solid characters, Miles Cameron’s Artifact Space is the book you need. I know this because I am always on the look-out for exactly this, and this book sparked joy.

Humanity has gone through an Age of Chaos – the details of this aren’t super ...Read More

Artifact Space, Miles Cameron (Gollancz 978-1-473-23260-0, £18.99), 568pp, tp) June 2021.

If you are a fan of space operas with buckets of world building and solid characters, Miles Cameron’s Artifact Space is the book you need. I know this because I am always on the look-out for exactly this, and this book sparked joy.

Humanity has gone through an Age of Chaos – the details of this aren’t super clear ...Read More