fantasy

Books Reviews 

Sargassa by Sophie Burnham: Review by Liz Bourke

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Sargassa, Sophie Burnham (DAW 978-0-7564-1936-3, $28.00, 416pp, hc) October 2024.

Sophie Burnham’s Sargassa is another first novel, and another novel that flits with playful seriousness between the trappings of fantasy, science fiction, and alternate history, using all three to question and upend the reader’s assumptions about the world of the novel (and perhaps the world at large) and how it works. Sargassa takes the aura of Rome – perennial ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy: Review by Alex Brown

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The Sapling Cage, Margaret Killjoy (The Femi­nist Press 978-1-55861-331-7, $17.95, 336pp, tp) September 2024.

The trope of gender-based magic is an old one in fantasy fiction. It never fails to annoy me, and not just because I’m gen­derqueer. Besides the whole gender essentialism thing, I just find it to be lazy and uninspired. At this point, the only time I’ll read a ‘‘girls do this magic and boys do ...Read More

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At the Fount of Creation by Tobi Ogundiran: Review by Archita Mittra

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At the Fount of Creation, Tobi Ogundiran (Tor­dotcom 978-1-25090-803-2, $21.99, 224pp, hc) January 2025.

At the Fount of Creation is a thrilling con­clusion to Tobi Ogundiran’s Guardians of the Gods duology, packed with cinematic action and with more deities from the Yoruba pantheon making an appearance. It continues the story of Ashâke, a failed acolyte who is later revealed to be the vessel for the surviving orisha, and is ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune: Review by Colleen Mondor

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Somewhere Beyond the Sea, TJ Klune (Tor Books 879-1-250-88120-5, $28.99, 416pp, hc) September 2024.

Fans of TJ Klune’s enormously popular The House in the Cerulean Sea were no doubt thrilled to hear about the unexpected sequel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea. The continuing story of Arthur, Linus, and the group of orphaned magic children they care for is as heartfelt and political as readers could want. Make no mistake, ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim: Review by Sean Dowie

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Blood of the Old Kings, Sung-il Kim (Tor 978-1-25089-533-2, $27.95, 368pp, hc) October 2024.

Sung-il Kim’s 2016 fantasy novel Blood of the Old Kings features heroic characters and an innovative, engaging magic system. It makes for a breezy fantasy story where exposition is skillfully allotted in brief bursts that don’t mar its pacing. And the action scenes are breathlessly propulsive. Those ingredients launch a tale of a band of ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Demon Daughter by Lois McMaster Bujold: Review by Liz Bourke

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Demon Daughter, Lois McMaster Bujold (Subter­ranean Press 978-1-64524-219-2, $45.00, 224pp, hc) January 2025. Cover by Lauren Saint-Onge.

I first read Lois McMaster Bujold’s Demon Daughter when it was initially released in e-book. Now that it is coming out from Subterranean Press in hardcover – the latest of the Penric and Desdemona novellas set in the World of the Five Gods to do so – I have read it again ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Nightward by R.S.A. Garcia: Review by Liz Bourke

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The Nightward, R.S.A. Garcia (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-334575-1, $19.99, 448pp, tp) Oc­tober 2024.

The Nightward is R.S.A. Garcia’s first traditionally published novel. From the outside, it looks like a work of epic fantasy in the classic mode, in which a small team of he­roes must outwit and stand against a nebulously defined threat to all they know and love. A closer examination, however, finds it taking this classic form ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Lost Souls of Benzaiten by Kelly Murashige: Review by Colleen Mondor

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The Lost Souls of Benzaiten, Kelly Murashige (Soho Teen 978-1-641-29574-1, $19.99, 304pp, hc) July 2024.

Debut author Kelly Murashige mixes a tender coming-of-age story with the unexpected antics of a bored Japanese goddess to give readers the highly original fantasy The Lost Souls of Ben­zaiten. The author’s clever plot and thoroughly en­gaging characters manage to make all too relatable the protagonist’s wish early on to “become one of ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 by Hugh Howey & John Joseph Adams, eds.: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024, Hugh Howey & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Mariner 978-0063315785, $18.99, 384pp, tp) October 2024.

There are a lot of different ways of assembling an anthology, but none seem quite so programmatic as John Joseph Adams’s The Best American Sci­ence Fiction and Fantasy series, now in its tenth year. Adams describes his methodology with admirable clarity: As series editor, he compiles a list ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois by Ryan Graudin: Review by Alexandra Pierce

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The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois, Ryan Grau­din (Redhook 978-0-31641-869-0, 544pp, $30, hc). Cover by Lisa Marie Pompilio. August 2024.

Paris, 1913, saw the first public performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and it caused a sensation – indeed, some have said it caused a riot, but there seems to be disagreement over that interpretation. Whatever the historical truth, it probably didn’t happen because of magic, which is ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Sleep Like Death by Kalynn Bayron: Review by Colleen Mondor

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Sleep Like Death, Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury 978-1-547-60976-5, $19.99, 368pp, hc) June 2024.

As she previously did with Cinderella, author Kalynn Bayron turned another classic on its head this year with Sleep Like Death, her smart and scary reimagining of Snow White. There’s a temptation when an author revisits a famous tale to assume they will simply modernize or dress it up a little, all of which can be ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

City of Dancing Gargoyles by Tara Campbell: Review by Ian Mond

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City of Dancing Gargoyles, Tara Campbell (Santa Fe Writers Project 978-1-95163-139-0, $16.95, 280pp, tp) September 2024.

What struck me about Tara Campbell’s 2019 collection, Midnight at the Or­ganporium, was the breadth of her imagination and the way she switched between surrealism, revisionist fairytales, and horror. Her story ‘‘Speculum Crede’’ about a very odd work picnic (an understatement) still makes me smile. Campbell’s second novel, City of Danc­ing Gargoyles ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister: Review by Jake Casella Brookins

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The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint 978-1-64009-662-2, $28.00, 336pp, hc) October 2024. Cover by Nicole Caputo.

Isolated on their West Virginia estate, the five Haddesley siblings have a troubled and trou­bling relationship with their magical heritage. Charlie, the next in line to be patriarch, has been severely injured by a falling tree, and doubts his ability to fulfill his part of the bargain with the bog that supports and ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo: Review by Liz Bourke

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The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 978-1-25037-682-4, 224pp, $24.99, hc) October 2024.

Nghi Vo has a Hugo Award and a Crawford Award to her credit for The Empress of Salt and Fortune, the opening novella in the Singing Hills Cycle, as well as an Ignyte for Into the Riverlands. The City in Glass, her latest work – a short novel – is unrelated to her ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Bringer of Dust by J.M. Miro: Review by Alex Brown

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Bringer of Dust, J.M. Miro (Flatiron Books 978-1-25083-383-9, $29.99. 608pp, hc) September 2024. Cover by Keith Hayes.

Bringer of Dust, the second doorstopper of a novel in J.M. Miro’s The Talents Trilogy, picks up not long after the events of the first book, Ordinary Monsters. Several adults, beloved and despised, and children, in­nocent and manipulated, lost their lives in the course of the first book, sometimes due ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton: Review by Colleen Mondor

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The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, India Holton (Berkley 978-0-593-54728-1, $19.00, tp, 384pp) July 2024.

Romantasy is a subgenre getting considerable attention and India Holton enters the field with a new series, that is a lot of fun. The first book, The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, introduces two academics, Beth Pickering and Devon Lock­ley, who specialize in the study and, if necessary, capture of thaumaturgic birds. These ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 978-1250348272, $24.99, 224pp), October 2024.

Nghi Vo is full of surprises. I suppose one could argue that her first novel, the Gatsbyesque The Chosen and the Beautiful, and her second, the very different Hollywood fantasy historical The Siren Queen, had a few things in common – like early 20th-century American settings and the classic themes of the need for acceptance ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Great When by Alan Moore: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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The Great When, Alan Moore (Bloomsbury 978-1-63557-884-3, $29.99, 336pp, hc) October 2024.

By now there are so many mystical-magical ‘‘hidden London’’ novels that it’s getting hard to keep up – though admittedly there’s something delicious about the notion that in any great city, you’re only being shown what they want you to see, with the real city available only at certain access points for certain chosen adventurers. In his ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo: Review by Jake Casella Brookins

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The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 978-1250348272, $24.99, 224pp), October 2024.

If you’ve read any of Nghi Vo’s earlier work, you already know that she’s a writer to watch – a masterful stylist with a flair for bringing together magical premises, subtle anthropological worldbuilding, and deep wells of mythic imagery and themes. If you haven’t, Vo’s newest, The City in Glass, is not at all a bad ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Asunder by Kerstin Hall: Review by Liz Bourke

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Asunder, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom 978-1-250-62543-4, $29.99, 432pp, hc) August 2024. Cover art by Greg Ruth.

Kerstin Hall writes sharp, fierce stories with precise and visceral prose, and with worldbuilding that possesses a keen sense for the weird, the haunting, the marvel­lous, and the twistedly strange. Asunder is only her fourth long-form work, her second novel (after 2021’s Star Eater and the novella duo The Border Keeper and Second Spear ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima: Review by Jake Casella Brookins

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Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, Ananda Lima (Tor 978-1-25029-297-1, 192pp, $24.99, hc) Cover by Jamie Stafford-Hill. June 2024.

Ananda Lima’s Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is pleasingly hard to classify. One could take the easy route and call it a debut collection – and an exciting one, to be sure, an excellent mix of stories magical, speculative, and wholly grounded. But there’s reason to think ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Reactor, The Sunday Morning Transport, and Nightmare: Short Fiction Reviews by Paula Guran

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Reactor 6/5/24 to 7/10/24 The Sunday Morning Transport 5/26/24 to 7/14/24 Nightmare 7/24

Reactor continues to present top-quality fic­tion. Rich Larson’s “Breathing Constella­tions” (June 5) is small-scale but excellent SF story revolving around a struggling human commune in Argentinian Patagonia seeking the permission of a pod of orcas to begin harvesting plankton in their waters.

In the heartwarming “Reduce! Reuse! Re­cycle!” (June 12) by TJ ...Read More

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Merciless Saviors by H.E. Edgmon: Review by Colleen Mondor

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Merciless Saviors, H.E. Edgmon (Wednesday 978-1-250-85363-9, $20.00, 336pp, hc) April 2024.

In Godly Heathens, the first book in H.E. Edgmon’s duology about American teens who are actually gods from a parallel world, readers met Gem Echols from small-town Georgia, who suffers from truly horrific dreams. Gem’s best friend is Enzo, a Brooklyn teen with whom they share a long-distance (never met in person but plenty of texting, talking ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

khōréō: Short Fiction Reviews by A.C. Wise

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khōréō 4.1

Anna Bendiy’s ‘‘The Goddess of Loneliness and Misfortune’’ in khōréō 4.1 effectively explores healing, going back to the place you were born, and the cost of war. Bohdana re­turns to her war-ravaged home and calls on a goddess for help, only to discover the goddess has a bit of an attitude and intends to put Bohdana to work before she’ll get involved. ‘‘Child’s Tongue ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Escape Pod, Lightspeed, and Baffling,: Short Fiction Reviews by Charles Payseur

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Escape Pod 7/11/24 Lightspeed 7/24 Baffling 7/24

Brian Hugenbruch features in the July Escape Pod with the rather charming “A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls”. The story unfolds with a backdrop of the ruined Earth, humans surviving in orbit of their home and living very different lives. But social awkwardness is still definitely a thing, which the narrator can at­test to, as he finds himself unable to ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang: Review by Archita Mittra

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A Song to Drown Rivers, Ann Liang (St. Martin’s Press 978-1-25028-946-9, $32.00, 336pp, hc) October 2024.

Inspired by ancient Chinese legends, A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang is an intrigu­ing historical fantasy novel that tempers the logic of trope-driven storytelling with a mature understanding of the futility of war. As a folkloric retelling of the tragic story of Xi Shi, one of the ‘‘Four Great Beauties’’ of ...Read More

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A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher: Review by Liz Bourke

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A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor 978-1-250-24407-9, $27.99, 336pp, hc ) August 2024. Cover by Christina Mrozik.

A Sorceress Comes to Call is the latest novel from the pen of award-winning fantasy and horror writer T. Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon. The humour and compassion of Kingfisher’s early work has borne comparison to Terry Pratchett, and in recent years she’s gone from strength to strength, with ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi: Review by Eugen M. Bacon

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Children of Anguish and Anarchy, Tomi Ad­eyemi (Henry Holt 978-1250171016, $22.99, 356pp, tp) June 2024.

As a reader new to Tomi Adeyemi, I hadn’t read the first two books in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy, before approaching Chil­dren of Anguish and Anarchy. I don’t believe it affected my reading experience, because the novel, while part of a trilogy, clearly allows for new readers.

An eye-catching cover paves the ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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She Who Knows, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW 978-0-75641-895-3, $23.00, 176pp, hc) August 2024.

As with any good fantasy setting, Nnedi Okorafor’s 2010 World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death introduced us to a world that seemed far more expansive than what was contained in the text. Set in a far-future Sudan in which the Okeke people face brutal oppression by the Nuru, it combined hints of a bygone technological age with ...Read More

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Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope: Review by Alex Brown

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Daughter of the Merciful Deep, Leslye Penelope (Redhook 978-0-31637-822-2, $25.99, 416pp, hc) June 2024.

When she was 11, Jane Edwards was pulled into a murder investigation. Soon after, her older sister Grace’s sweetheart, Rob, was lynched and the rest of the Black residents of Earnestville were driven out of town by a white mob. As they fled, Jane nearly drowned, and although she was saved, her voice was lost. ...Read More

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Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston: Review by Sean Dowie

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Archangels of Funk, Andrea Hairston (Tor­dotcom 978-1-25080-728-1, $29.99, 384pp, hc) July 2024.

Andrea Hairston’s Archangels of Funk forced me to rewire my brain chemistry. The book contains a stew of dense but rewarding elements as people, dogs, spirits, and bots dot a literary canvas unlike anything I’ve read. It’s a cozy dystopia that demands attention, demands that you think on its wavelength. The book largely contains good but flawed ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

The Price of Redemption by Shawn Carpenter: Review by Liz Bourke

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The Price of Redemption, Shawn Carpenter (Saga 978-1-6680-3373-9, $18.99, 358pp, tp) July 2024.

The Price of Redemption is Shawn Carpen­ter’s debut novel. Inspired by the exploits of the British Royal Navy during during the French revolutionary wars, it sets its story in a different world to ours and adds magic to the mixture. As a fan of both fantasy and of the naval adventure story (though frequently through gritted ...Read More

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