Caren Gussoff Sumption

A Power Unbound, Freya Marske (Tordotcom 978-1-25078-895-5, $28.00, 432 pp, hc), Novem­ber 2023.

‘‘Elsie Alston’s running feet hit the grass like pale secrets.’’ So begins the lyrical third and final installment in Freya Marske’s Last Bind­ing trilogy, A Power Unbound. And like the previous entries, A Marvellous Light and A Restless Truth, Marske’s deft and elegant use of language holds as much power and sway as her ...Read More

The Pomegranate Gate, Ariel Kaplan (Rebellion 978-1786188243, £18.99, 512pp, hc) July 2023. (Erewhon 978-1645660576, $27.00, 576pp, hc) September 2023.

Young-adult author Ariel Kaplan’s first adult novel, The Pomegranate Gate, is a sprawling fantasy epic that brings Jew­ish Kabbalistic mysticism into an immersive, alternative-Earth version of the Inquisición española. Toba Peres and Naftaly Cresques, two twenty-somethings, are the unlikely seeming heroes of the novel and, at first meeting, seem ...Read More

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

The Salt Grows Heavy, Cassandra Khaw (Tor Nightfire 978-1-25083-091-3, $21.99, 112pp, hc) May 2023. Cover by Morgan Sorensen.

Cassandra Khaw has cemented their status as horror royalty, once and for all, with their lat­est novella, The Salt Grows Heavy. All hail and long live!

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not even sure how or where to start telling you about The Salt Grows Heavy. Nothing I say can ...Read More

The Night Flowers, Sara Herchenroether (Tin House 978-1-953534-86-6, $26.95, 320pp, hc), May 2023.

Sara Herchenroether’s debut novel, The Night Flowers, is a bit of an oddity. Part mystery novel, part police procedural, and part supernatural tragedy, it’s also a meditation on the role of fate and destiny, how someone moves beyond cancer treatment while rejecting the ‘‘warrior’’ or ‘‘survivor’’ narrative, and the various ways (still) ever-present Western societal ...Read More

Apollo Weeps, Xian Mao (Aqueduct 978-1-61976-230-5, $12, 164pp, tp) January 2023.

One of the greatest strengths of Aqueduct Press’s Conversation Pieces series is that it makes a home for work that simply wouldn’t neatly fit elsewhere. It’s described as a ‘‘grand conversation’’ on feminist issues, made of ‘‘an ever-shifting, fluid mosaic’’ of science fiction voices, across time and topic, and Xian Mao’s novella, Apollo Weeps, makes for tile ...Read More

The Wick, Julianna Baggott (Underland 978-1-63023-068-5, $13.99, 100pp, tp), January 2023.

Julianna Baggott’s latest novella, The Wick, is a paradox: it’s short, abbreviated even, but also expansive. It’s utterly unlike anything I’ve ever read, but also, somehow, the lovechild of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount. It’s experimental and literary, making full use of the usually avoided second person point of view ...Read More

The Curator, Owen King (Scribner 978-1-98219-680-6, $28.99, 480pp, tp) March 2023.

The last thing I was expecting as I cracked open Owen King’s latest novel, The Cura­tor, was an homage to Sir Terry Pratchett. But there it was, inside this sprawling 480-page epic: a world, both familiar and strange, as deeply imagined in history and lore, and as pointed in satire as the Discworld itself, all centered on ...Read More

Loki’s Ring, Stina Leicht (Saga 978-1-982170-63-9, $18.99, 512pp, tp), January 2023.

Surprising no one who reads my reviews, I’m a sucker for space opera, for feminism, and for family dramas. So, though it’s improbable (at best), it sure feels like Stina Leicht should have just “@ me” (as the kids say) about her newest novel, Loki’s Ring. It’s – literally – what I live for.

It’s not a ...Read More

Karma of the Sun, Brandon Ying Kit Boey (CamCat 978-0-7443-0760-3, $25.99, 352pp, hc) January 2023.

Brandon Ying Kit Boey’s debut novel, Karma of the Sun, is a much-needed and welcome shot in the arm to apocalypse fiction – a rich subgenre, to be sure, but one crowded with Western views and Western voic­es on the end of the world. Instead, Boey takes us to the future nestled in ...Read More

Juniper Wiles and the Ghost Girls, Charles de Lint (Triskell Press 978-1-98974-106-1, $15.99, 264pp, tp), November 2022.

I’m well aware that calling something a ‘‘beach read’’ holds negative connota­tions – but in the case of Charles de Lint’s second installment in his Juniper Wiles series, Juniper Wiles and the Ghost Girls, I mean to call it a beach read in a more literal, delicious way. This book, which ...Read More

Dreams for a Broken World, Julie C. Day & Ellen Meeropol, eds. (Essential Dreams 978-1-95536-005-0, $20.00, 304pp, tp) No­vember 2022.

Wherever you stand, by nature, on the spec­trum between optimism and pessimism, it’s hard to argue that right now, the world is deeply troubled. Systems we’ve come to rely on are fractured. More and more often, politics and economics divide us. Things are, well, broken.

Now, none of these ...Read More

Karma of the Sun, Brandon Ying Kit Boey (CamCat 978-0-7443-0760-3, $25.99, 352pp, hc) January 2023.

Brandon Ying Kit Boey’s debut novel, Karma of the Sun, is a much-needed and welcome shot in the arm to apocalypse fiction – a rich subgenre, to be sure, but one crowded with Western views and Western voic­es on the end of the world. Instead, Boey takes us to the future nestled in ...Read More

Lonely Castle in the Mirror, Mizuki Tsujimura (Erewhon 978-1-64566-040-8, $27.95, 400pp, hc) October 2022.

Newly translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, Mizuki Tsujimura’s 2018 bestselling and award-winning novel, Lonely Castle in the Mirror, is a gorgeous, wrenching fantasy that lays bare the anxieties and desperation – as well as small triumphs – of adolescence. Told using a deft amalgamation of Western fairy tales – invoked by the ...Read More

Tales from a Robotic World: How Intelligent Machines Will Shape Our Future, Dario Floreano & Nicola Nosengo (MIT Press 978-0-26204-744-9, $24.99, 280pp, hc) September 2022.

I love robots. From Roombas to Twiki, the Boston Dynamic dance crew to Awesom-O 4000, the Mars Rover to Marvin: I am a fan of both true technological wonders and kitschy speculation, a true believer in the infinite possibili­ties autonomous machines can bring to ...Read More

Unbreakable, Mira Grant (Subterranean, 978-1-64524-103-4, $45.00, 152pp, hc), De­cember 2022.

Have you ever had a book sneak up on you? I mean, had something about the title, maybe the cover art, the back description make you think, ‘‘Meh, this will be okay,’’ but then – then you read it – and it smacks you upside your head because it was so unexpectedly, so unbelievably good?

Yeah, Seanan McGuire’s (writing ...Read More

Glorious Fiends, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Un­derland Press 978-1-63023-066-1, $14.99, 142pp, tp), September 2022. Cover by Chris Panatier.

I’m a child of the ’80s, raised on camp, kitsch, and all that is lowbrow, and nothing can ever rinse clean what late-night broadcast televi­sion horror films (not to mention all the Anne Rice and VC Andrews I read in primary school) did to my soul (even if I wanted to). So, ...Read More

A Restless Truth, Freya Marske (Tordotcom 978-1-250-78891-7, $27.99, 400pp, hc) Novem­ber 2022.

Anne Perry is better known for setting her mys­teries in the Victorian era, while Agatha Christie understood the power of an isolated location (say, a train). For the second novel in her Last Binding series, A Restless Truth, Freya Marske pulls from the best of both these masters of the whodunit: we are still in the ...Read More

Leech, Hiron Ennes (Tordotcom 978-1-25081-118-9, $27.99, 336pp, hc), September 2022. Cover by Sam Weber.

In Hiron Ennes’s debut novel, Leech, the far future has gotten really weird. Sure, there’s been extreme climate change – debilitating summers, isolating winters, and literal acid precipitation – no surprises there, given our current state of affairs. The wealthy few have grown wealthier, especially the Baron of the Château de Verdira, a northern ...Read More

Every Version of You, Grace Chan (Affirm Press 978-1-92280-601-7, $32.99, 288pp, hc), July 2022.

Tao-Yi and Navin are in love. Really in love. In the 2080s of Grace Chan’s Every Version of You, a supportive, genuine relationship like the one they have is just as pre­cious and rare as right now.

Things are not easy for the couple, however. Tao-Yi’s mother, Xin-Yi, lives with chronic clini­cal depression. Navin ...Read More

The Extractionist, Kimberly Unger (Tachyon 978-1-61696-376-7, $17.95, 290pp, tp) July 2022.

When Eliza McKay is contracted by a shadowy government agency, all of her instincts scream this job will be like no other, and, in Kimberly Unger’s latest novel, The Extractionist, we quickly learn McKay is spot on. McKay is the titular extractionist, a freelance super-hacker who specializes in rescuing people stuck in the “Swim,” a fully immersive ...Read More

Where You Linger and Other Stories, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Vernacular 978-1-95228-322-2, $19.00, 284pp, tp) July 2022.

I have to admit, as I read Bonnie Jo Stuffle­beam’s new collection, Where You Linger and Other Stories, I had two reactions: one as a reader, the other as a writer. As a reader, I couldn’t put the collection down – a definite deviation from how I usually parse a short story ...Read More

Queering SF: Readings, Ritch Calvin (Aqueduct 978-1-61976-220-6, $18, 218pp, tp) May 2022.

Science fiction, no matter where you sit on the political spectrum, has always been the literature of possibility. Not everyone has had a voice or a seat at the proverbial table, and the genre has weathered growing pains. But at its heart, science fiction is society’s mirror, where we couch (sometimes) painful truths of where we are ...Read More

Darling Girl, Liz Michalski (Dutton 978-0-593-18563-6, $26, 352pp, hc) May 2022

I have a confession: I’ve always been a bit creeped out by Peter Pan. Some of this is contextual. I read the original Peter Pan as a child, and it is rife with a type of whimsey I, by nature and culture, found darkly suspicious (to wit, I also found Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland full of subtle ...Read More

The Girl Who Outgrew the World, Zoje Stage (Lethe 978-1-59021-523-4, $15.00, 180pp, tp) May 2022.

Eleven-year-old Lilly is having a growth spurt. Only this is no ordinary, normal march towards adolescence. In Zoje Stage’s new novella, The Girl Who Outgrew the World, the title itself reveals the scale and pace of Lilly’s development, a mysterious, monstrous, and inexplicable surge that baffles and frightens her father, her friends, her ...Read More

Face, Joma West (Tordotcom 978-1-25081-029-8, $26.99, 272pp, hc) August 2022.

We already live in a world where, for many, looks are currency, identity is performative, and status is a game. There’s no shortage of opinion on the effects of social media on culture, research on how phones have – literally – changed our posture and vision, and speculation on how replacing online communication either enhances or erodes human connection. ...Read More

January Fifteenth, Rachel Swirsky (Tordotcom 978-1-25019-894-5, $15.99, 240pp, tp) June 2022.

If you’ve ever read any of Rachel Swirsky’s short fiction, then you’re familiar with her signature elegant prose and her very literary deconstruction of traditional plot. Swirsky’s style is instantly recognizable and widely appreciated, earning her multiple Nebulas, and, at the very least, enthusiastic nods from nearly all the award committees in genre.

Swirsky’s latest novella, January Fifteenth ...Read More

Tell Me an Ending, Jo Harkin (Scribner 978-1-98216-432-4, $27.99, 448pp, hc) March 2022

Somewhere, I imagine Jo Harkin has a book­shelf groaning under the weight of Norton anthologies – at least 2 volumes. I believe this not just because her bio says she studied literature at uni, but because her debut novel, Tell Me an Ending, delicately honors classic narrative structures that are rare in contemporary science fiction.

In ...Read More