fantasy

Books Reviews 

Ian Mond Reviews Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

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Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom 978-1-25084-768-3, $27.99, 304pp, hc) June 2024.

To quote Tom Clancy (or was it Jeff Bezos?), it takes ten years to become an overnight success. I suspect Vajra Chandrasekera can relate. He spent a decade working on his craft, with short fiction published in various genre magazines and anthologies. Then, last year, Chandrasekera published his first novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, which immediately caught ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

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The City of Stardust, Georgia Summers (Redhook 978-0-316-56148-8, $29.00, hc, 352 pp) January 2024.

The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers blends our recognizable world, mostly through the home of the Everly family in the English countryside, with the fictional city of Fidelis, a place of academics and magic that hides a horrific truth. (And that horror really is bad; we’re talking ritual-sacrifice-of-kidnapped-children kind of bad.) Violet Everly lives ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Paul Di Filippo Reviews Two Vancian Novels by Wm. Michael Mott

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Pulsifer: a Fable, Wm. Michael Mott (Spatterlight Press 978-1619474918, trade paperback, 306pp, $16.95) Jan 2024

Land of Ice, a Velvet Knife, Wm. Michael Mott (Spatterlight Press 978-1619474932, trade paperback, 306pp, $16.95) Feb 2024

It is very seldom—perhaps almost never—that one opens up one’s copy of the Sunday New York Times and discovers that the lead article in the Magazine section is devoted to a still-living author whose roots ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Liz Bourke Reviews Foul Days by Genoveva Dimova

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Foul Days, Genoveva Dimova (Tor 978-1-250-87731-4, $17.99, 368pp, tp) June 2024. Cover by Rovina Cai.

Foul Days is Scotland-based Genoveva Dimova’s debut novel. It mixes folklore and modernity, setting itself between the walled ghetto-city of Chernograd – where monsters roam the streets, magic is as commonplace as poverty, and in order to leave you have to pay people-smugglers to get you across the wall – and the prosperous city ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Escape Pod, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and Strange Horizons

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Escape Pod 3/21/24, 3/28/24 Three-Lobed Burning Eye 3/24 Strange Horizons 3/18/24, 3/25/24, 4/1/24, 4/8/24

March’s Escape Pod features a unique post-catastrophe world in Pragathi Bala’s “Summitting the Moon”, which unfolds on an Earth that has experienced the Landing of the Moon, where an asteroid impact has pushed the Moon’s orbit so close to the planet that it has created a Rut and altered not only the world’s ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Paula Guran Reviews Wild Cards: Sleeper Straddle edited by George R.R. Martin & Melinda M. Snodgrass

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Wild Cards: Sleeper Straddle, George R.R. Mar­tin & Melinda M. Snodgrass, eds. (Bantam 978-0-59335-783-5, 402pp, $28.00, hc) February 2024.

The Wild Cards universe is a fertile play­ground for writers, as its premise encour­ages a wide creative range. Created by George R.R. Martin, the universe departs from ours in 1946, when an alien virus arrives on Earth. Ninety percent of those who contract it die; the DNA of the ten percent ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Niall Harrison Reviews Elephants in Bloom by Cécile Cristofari

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Elephants in Bloom, Cécile Cristofari (NewCon Press 978-1-91495-367-5, 240pp, £26.99, hc) Janu­ary 2024. Cover by Enrique Meseguer.

Cécile Cristofari’s debut collection El­ephants in Bloom is, as debut collections so often are, exciting but uneven. Perhaps my favourite story, “Soaring, the World on Their Shoulders” (2020), demonstrates the combination of imagination and precision that she can bring to bear. What begins as a relatively standard dystopian setting, with France voting ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee by Ellen Oh

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The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, Ellen Oh (Crown 978-0-593-12594-6, $19.99, hc, 295pp) January 2024. Cover by Audrey Mok.

In Ellen Oh’s The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, the title character has a big problem: She does not want to pursue the life her father has mapped out for her. High school senior Mina is an artist and desperate to follow in her deceased mother’s footsteps and attend ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond

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The Frame-Up, Gwenda Bond (Del Rey 978-0-593-59773-6, $10.00, tp, 325pp) February 2024.

Author Gwenda Bond hit the NY Times best­seller list for the Stranger Things tie-in Suspicious Minds and prior to that authored several YA titles (including a trio about young Lois Lane). In recent years she has quietly been carving out a niche in magical romance and her latest, the art heist adventure The Frame-Up, fits nicely ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Adrienne Martini Reviews The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

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The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Waste­lands, Sarah Brooks (Flatiron Books 978-1-250-87861-8, $28.99, 336pp, hc) July 2024.

Trains make great narrative devices. You can get all of your characters in the same place and keep them there while they move through space and time. Pick up the well-known Agatha Christie train mystery, if you like a good murder on the rails. Or, if you bend more toward science fiction, ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Subterranean, Worlds of Possibility, Flash Fiction Online, and Zooscape

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Subterranean 8/27/23, 4/21/24 Worlds of Possibility 4/24 Flash Fiction Online 4/24 Zooscape 4/15/24

Subterranean has been releasing individual short stories for a while now, and I recently had the chance to catch up, including with Josiah Bancroft’s rather charming 2023 story “The Small Hands of Chokedamp”, which focuses on Captain Isolde Wilby, the inaugural head of the Office of Ensorcelled Investiga­tions. Though Wilby had hoped the platform ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Ian Mond Reviews Takaoka’s Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa

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Takaoka’s Travels, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (Stone Bridge/Monkey 979-8-98868-870-9, $18.95, 178pp, tp) May 2024.

In 865, at the age of 65, Imperial Japanese Prince Takaoka, the third son of Emperor Heizeil, a Bud­dhist monk who also went by the monastic name Shinyo, set forth from Canton with three aides to Hindustan (India). Sadly, Takaoka never com­pleted the journey, reportedly mauled and eaten by a tiger somewhere near the Malay peninsula. In ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Paula Guran Reviews The Proper Thing and Other Stories by Seanan McGuire

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The Proper Thing and Other Stories, Seanan McGuire (Subterranean ISBN 978-1-64524-192-8, 508pp. $50.00, hc) April 2024. Cover by Carla McNeil.

Probably best-known for her Wayward Children series, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winner Seanan McGuire is also a prolific writer of short fiction. McGuire’s second collection (she has two others writing as Mira Grant) is both massive and enchanting. The two dozen stories tend toward darkness but, more often than not, ...Read More

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Cover of Road to Ruin. In a pinkish but sinister desert landscape, a motorcyclist in an animal-skull helmet looks out at brilliant lightning and a flying glider craft.
Books Reviews 

Liz Bourke Reviews Road to Ruin by Hana Lee

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Road to Ruin, Hana Lee (Saga 978-1-66803-561-0, $18.99, 368pp, tp.) May 2024.

For a debut novel, Hana Lee’s Road to Ruin is a tour de force. Inventive and entertaining, it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through.

Jin-Lu makes her living crossing the wasteland. She’s a courier, one of the few who travel outside the safety of the walled cities known as kerinas, delivering ...Read More

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cover of lyorn by brust
Books Reviews 

Adrienne Martini Reviews Lyorn by Steven Brust

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Lyorn: A Vlad Taltos Novel, Steven Brust (Tor 978-0-76538-286-3, $27.99, 288pp, hc) April 2024.

Before you read further know this: Lyorn, the 17th novel in Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series, is not the place to begin. So much has happened to Vlad since Jhereg was published in 1983 that there is really no way to jump directly into this part of the ocean. Even for those who’ve kept ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Alex Brown Reviews The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa

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The Book Censor’s Library, Bothayna Al-Essa (Restless Books 978-1-63206-334-2, $18.00, 272pp, tp) April 2024. Cover by Joy Richu.

In a not-too-distant future in an unknown nation, we meet our unnamed protagonist in Bothayna Al-Essa’s new satire The Book Censor’s Library. All freedom of expression, individualization, and interpretation is banned. Everything revolves around God, government, and sex. Blasphemy is banned, but all holy texts have been heavily edited. No ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

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The Brides of High Hill, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 9781250851444, $19.95, 128pp, tp) May 2024.

Over the past few years, Nghi Vo has parlayed the East and Southeast Asia-inspired world of her Singing Hills cycle into not only a delightful playground for the adventures of her itinerant Cleric Chih, whose ostensible mission is to collect stories for his monastery, but also into a kind of laboratory for storytelling itself. Earlier novellas ...Read More

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cover for in the shadow of the fall
Books Reviews 

Wole Talabi Reviews In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran

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In the Shadow of the Fall, Tobi Ogundiran (Tordotcom 978-1-25090-796-7, $20.99, 160pp, hc). July 2024.

Less than a year ago, Tobi Ogundiran pre­sented us with Jackal, Jackal, a delightful selection of dark tales accessibly infused with legends and folklore. One of those stories was ‘‘Guardian of the Gods’’ (first published in FIYAH), which tells the story of Ashâke, an acolyte who can’t hear the gods speak. I reviewed it ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: GigaNotoSaurus, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Diabolical Plots

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GigaNotoSaurus 3/24 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/7/24, 3/21/24 Diabolical Plots 2/24

The March GigaNotoSaurus is Amy Johnson’s nested narrative “The Fake Birdhouses of Springville”, which unfolds in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and features an aid delivery worker listening to a story about birdhouses that are not birdhouses over the course of many visits to an older woman on the route. The story is ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Liz Bourke Reviews Necrobane by Daniel M. Ford

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Necrobane, Daniel M. Ford (Tor 978-1-25081-568-2, $28.99, 304pp, hc.) April 2024.

Speaking of romps, Daniel M. Ford’s Necrobane, sequel to 2023’s The Warden (which concealed much entertainment behind its bland title), is a classic adventure in the sword-and-sorcery mode. It follows The Warden in style, tone, and content, and opens directly after The Warden’s striking cliffhanger.

A Warden is part magistrate, part law enforce­ment, part general magical ...Read More

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Cover for I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons. A detailed painting of mischievous-looking dragons, some of them flying around castle turrets. The closest one is red and breathes fire out of its nostril.
Books Reviews 

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle

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I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons, Peter S. Beagle (Saga 978-1-6680-2527-7, $26.00, 280pp, hc) May 2024.

For an author who once seemed an icon of the 1960s, Peter S. Beagle is quite a survi­vor. While on the one hand he’s revisited the beloved worlds of The Innkeeper’s Song and The Last Unicorn (most recently with last year’s The Way Home), he also has produced a series of extraordinarily graceful ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Paula Guran Reviews Nightmare, The Deadlands, and The Dark

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Nightmare 2/24, 3/24, 4/24 The Deadlands Winter ’24 The Dark 1/24, 2/24, 3/24

Of the three originals in Nightmare #137, a flash piece satisfied me the most. Jessica Luke García notes in her introduction to “First Girl” that we “live in a Final Girl world” then proceeds to give the girl who dies first in any slasher movie her telling and sometimes risible due.

Two of the new ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Archita Mittra Reviews Sun of Blood and Ruin by Mariely Lares

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Sun of Blood and Ruin, Mariely Lares (Harper Voyager 978-0-06325-431-2, $30.00, 384pp, hc) February 2024.

Pitched as a reimagining of Zorro against the backdrop of Mexican anticolonial resis­tance, Sun of Blood and Ruin – the debut novel by Mariely Lares – manages to be a fun com­fort read with a distinctively folkloric bent. Like its gender-flipped Zorro protagonist who constantly switches between two identities (Lady Leonora, a member of ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta

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River Mumma, Zalika Reid-Benta (Penguin Canada 978-0-73524-476-4, C$24.95, 256pp, tp) August 2023. (Erewhon 978-1-645-66135-1, $27.00, 284pp, hc) March 2024. Cover by Rebecca Farrin.

So there you are, grad school completed, back home with degree in hand, and all your hopes and dreams must be shelved because the only job you can get entails a lot of folding clothes, cleaning up fitting rooms, and greeting bored customers. This is the ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

A.C. Wise Reviews Short Fiction: The Deadlands

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The Deadlands Winter ’24

The Winter 2024 issue of The Deadlands is full of lovely prose and quiet stories meditating on life and death. In the beautifully written “Threnody in Dark Wood” by Avra Margariti, a profes­sional mourner who sings the dead through the Doorway receives a mysterious assignment to attend an empty funeral with a sealed coffin and soon realizes this is a job unlike any other. ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Paula Guran Reviews The Sunday Morning Transport, Weird Horror, Uncanny, and Apex

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The Sunday Morning Transport 1/1/24 – 3/17/24 Weird Horror Spring ’24 Uncanny 1-2/24, 3-4/24 Apex #142, #143

Lots to cover this month, so let’s concentrate on the cream of the crop.

The Sunday Morning Transport publishes new fiction almost every Sunday throughout the year. Each of the stories merits a read, but of the first eleven stories of 2024, six stood out for me.

The title of Mary Robinette Kowal ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Alex Brown Reviews Sheine Lende by Darcie Little Badger

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Sheine Lende, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido 978-1-64614-379-5, $19.99. 400pp, hc) April 2024. Cover by Rovina Cai.

In 2020, Darcie Little Badger had her YA debut with the utterly delightful mystery novel Elatsoe. Ellie, a 17-year-old asexual Lipan Apache teen, lives in a slightly alternate contemporary version of America where legendary creatures and magic are a normal part of life. In particular, she has the ability to call ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews Malicia by Steven Dos Santos

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Malicia, Steven Dos Santos (Page Street Pub­lishing 978-1-645-67787-1, $18.99, 352pp, hc) June 2024. Cover by Aleksey Pollack.

If you are in the mood for a deeply dark YA fan­tasy, with plenty of terror, gore, and moments of blood splattered dismemberment, then Steven Dos Santos has you covered with his latest, Malicia. Set on a small island off the coast of the Dominican Republic, Malicia is a theme park ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Liz Bourke Reviews The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond

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The Fireborne Blade, Charlotte Bond (Tordotcom 978-1-25029-031-1, $20.99, 176pp, hc) May 2024.

It’s always interesting to review a novella, and this month I have three. Or three very short novels, at least: the line blurs. Charlotte Bond’s The Fireborne Blade harks back to the adventure style of sword-and-sorcery fantasy that had its most recent great flowering (to the best of my knowledge) in the 1980s. Everything old is new ...Read More

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cover of song of the huntress by holland
Books Reviews 

Alexandra Pierce Reviews Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland

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Song of the Huntress, Lucy Holland (Redhook 978-0316321655, $19.99, 448pp, tp) March 2024.

I’ve read a lot of Greek and Roman mythology retell­ings recently, so it’s nice to see Celtic/ British mythol­ogy getting some love too. In Song of the Huntress, Lucy Holland (Sistersong, 2021) brings the Wild Hunt to Cornwall and Wessex in the mid-700s. This is some centuries after the Roman conquest and departure; Saxons ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills

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The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon 978-1-61696-414-6, $18.95, 336pp, tp) April 2024.

It’s been interesting to watch the rehabilitation of “science fantasy” as a respectable mode of storytelling over the past few decades. Once applied loosely to everything from sword and sorcery to Vancean far futures, it was derided as a “misshapen subgenre” by Darko Suvin and a “bas­tard genre” by The Encyclopedia of Science Fic­tion. ...Read More

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Cover of Power to Yield and Other Stories. On a green background, a blue-skinned man in a purple robe seems to float, with a peaceful expression on his face. He is surrounded by orange arrows.
Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Ian Mond Reviews Power to Yield by Bogi Takács

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Power to Yield, Bogi Takács (Broken Eye Books 978-1-40372-266-2, $17.99, 203pp, tp) February 2024.

Hungarian American poet, writer, trans­lator, critic, and editor Bogi Takács has spent eir career promoting, encouraging, and showcasing the work of marginalised authors. The anthology Rosalind’s Siblings, edited by Takács and publishing poetry and fiction focus­ing on scientists erased or diminished because of their gender or sexuality, fittingly featured on the 2023 Locus Recommended ...Read More

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