fantasy

Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat by Camille Gomera-Tavarez

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The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat, Camille Gomera-Tavarez (Levine Querido 978-1-646-14265-1, $19.99, 391pp, hc) February 2024. Cover by Dotun Abeshinbioke.

The Girl, the Ring, & the Baseball Bat by Ca­mille Gomera-Tavarez is about navigating high school, finding true friends (and romance), and a magic jacket, magic ring, and magic baseball bat. (I’m not going to lie, while all of them are cool, the baseball bat really rocks.) ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

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

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Lightspeed 2/24 GigaNotoSaurus 2/24 Diabolical Plots 2/24 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/8/24, 2/22/24

Phoebe Barton returns to the pages of Lightspeed in their February issue with “But from Thine Eyes My Knowledge I Derive”, which should scratch anyone’s science-fiction procedural mystery itch. In it, Va is the head science officer on a ship sent to examine what could be a miniature black hole. When the discovery turns out to ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Liz Bourke Reviews A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon

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A Magical Girl Retires, Park Seolyeon (HarperVia 978-0-06337-326-6, $21.99, 176pp, hc) April 2024. Cover art by Kim Sanho.

A Magical Girl Retires is award-winning Korean writer Park Seolyeon’s first novel to be translated into English. It’s a weird, delightful little book, simultaneously grim and breezy, and the trans­lation (by Anton Hur) communicates a fluid, straightforward and self-deprecatingly humorous first-person narration. This breezy grit is further illuminated by Kim Sanho’s ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

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The Book of Doors, Gareth Brown (William Morrow 979-0-063-35957-4, $30.00, 416pp, hc) February 2024.

Gareth Brown’s debut, The Book of Doors, manages to incorporate some time-travel surprises, (and not the ones readers might expect), into an exciting novel of suspense. Told from multiple points of view, readers initially meet Cassie, a clerk in a New York City bookstore, when she discovers a regu­lar customer has quietly died while ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Alexandra Pierce Reviews Kindling by Kathleen Jennings and Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott

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Kindling, Kathleen Jennings (Small Beer Press 9-781-61873-217-0, $28.00, 288pp, hc) January 2024. Cover by Kathleen Jennings.

In Kindling, the first collection of her short stories, Kathleen Jennings populates wild and fantastical places with folk looking for purpose, getting lost, and finding trouble. Jennings’s stories range from variations on fairy tales (Bluebeard and Sleeping Beauty), to high-seas adventure (but in the air); from an epic quest to an intimate ...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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Reviews Short Fiction 

A.C. Wise Reviews Short Fiction: khōréō

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khōréō 3.3

khōréō 3.3 includes two short stories and a nov­elette in two parts. The one I found to be most effective of the three is “The Blue Glow” by Lisa Hosokawa, which follows a failed suicide pilot as he returns home in search of his family, and finds only destruction. His journey is plagued by ghosts, but he holds onto hope that his mother and baby ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

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The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom 978-1-25076-704-2, $20.99, 224pp, hc) April 2024.

Like Chekhov’s famous gun, it seems to be an un­stated principle among writers as diverse as Rob­ert Ludlum and Octavia E. Butler that a character suffering from total amnesia in the first act is in for some world-shaking revelations by the third. The same is true of P. Djèlí Clark’s The Dead Cat Tail ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Jake Casella Brookins Reviews Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi

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The Truth of the Aleke, Moses Ose Utomi (Tor­dotcom 978-1-2508-4905-2, $24.99, 112pp, hc) March 2023. Cover by Alyssa Winans.

Among the more fascinating things that Moses Ose Utomi seems to be doing with his Forever Desert series is looking at how worldviews change with experience. The protagonist of The Lies of the Ajungo, a young teenage boy, cut through the titular deception with a heroic self-sacrifice. Generations later, ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Jake Casella Brookins Reviews The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

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The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey 978-1-9848-2070-9, $28.99, 432pp, hc) Feb­ruary 2023.

Robert Jackson Bennett’s previous fantasy works – The Divine Cities and Founders trilogies – were immensely and somewhat unexpectedly delightful for me. I don’t often seek out fantasy series anymore. So, when I encounter an author who writes the kind of fun, propulsive work that kept my teenage self scouring the shelves for the next ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Fiyah, Flash Fiction Online, GigaNotoSaurus, and Diabolical Plots

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Fiyah 1/24 Flash Fiction Online 1/24 GigaNotoSaurus 1/24 Diabolical Plots 1/24

The first Fiyah of 2024 is unthemed, but as guest editor Nelson Rolon describes, that doesn’t mean certain motifs and elements didn’t end up run­ning through most or all of the pieces – most engaged with death and what comes after. In N. Romaine White’s “D.E.I. (Death, Eternity, and Inclusion)”, a group of vampires meet to ...Read More

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cover of someone you can build a nest in by wiswell
Books Reviews 

Liz Bourke Reviews Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

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Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW 978-0-75641-885-4, $28.00, 320pp, hc.) April 2024.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In is award-winning short fiction writer John Wiswell’s debut novel. I went in expecting good things, and I wasn’t disappointed. The most straightforward shorthand I have to describe it is: ‘‘It’s as if T. Kingfisher wrote one of her fantasy romance novels from the point of view ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews The Fair Folk by Su Bristow and The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert

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The Fair Folk, Su Bristow (Europa Editions 979-8-889-66012-5, $18.00, tpb, 464pp) January 2024.

In her gorgeous new historical fantasy, The Fair Folk, author Su Bristow crafts the story of a particularly complex interaction between mortals and faeries. Opening in 1959, the novel follows the shifting relationship between then-eight-year-old Felicity and Elfrida, the apparent queen of a long-established fairy group ensconced in the woods near her home. At first, the ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Worlds of Possibility, Zooscape, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Kaleidotrope

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Worlds of Possibility 12/23 Zooscape 12/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 12/28/23, 1/11/24, 1/25/24 Kaleidotrope 1/24

Worlds of Possibility ended 2023 with an issue including Keyan Bowes’s “A Refugee from Fairyland”, which imagines a sudden eviction of a number of children from the “care” of the fairies. The narrator, Latasha, works with an organization seeking to either reunite these lost children with their families or provide long-term housing for ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Paula Guran Reviews The Sunday Morning Transport, Uncanny, and The Dark

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The Sunday Morning Transport 12/17/23, 12/3/23, 11/19/23, 11/12/23, 11/5/23 Uncanny 11-12/23 The Dark 11/23

By the time you read this, the new year of 2024 will no longer be so new, but there’s still some short fiction from the end of 2023 to catch up on.

A laundry that washes stars? Nikki Brazie takes the unique premise of cleaning luminous celestial bodies and weaves it into a touching tale about ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Niall Harrison Reviews The Inhumans and Other Stories: A Selection of Bengali Science Fiction edited by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

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The Inhumans and Other Stories: A Selection of Bengali Science Fiction, Bodhisattva Chatto­padhyay, ed. (The MIT Press 978-0-26254-761-1, 162pp, $19.95, tp). March 2024. Cover by Seth.

For about 15 years now, Joshua Glenn has been banging the drum for the historical and literary value of “proto-SF” published between roughly 1900 and 1935. He dubs this period, with a touch of dark whimsy, the “Radium Age,” on the grounds that ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Jake Casella Brookins Reviews The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed

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The Siege of Burning Grass, Premee Mohamed (Solaris 978-1-8378-6046-3, $27.99, 432pp, hc) March 2023.

“Weird” is a word that’s been worn thin with use, even in regular conversation. I hesitate to apply it in a genre sense – whether old or New – for fear of misusing it, wading too deep into niche catego­rization, or merely adding more wear to the term. But there’s a sense in which its ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Ian Mond Reviews Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

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Parasol Against the Axe, Helen Oyeyemi (Faber & Faber 978-0571366620, £16.99, 272pp, hc) February 2024. (Riverhead 978-0-59319-236-8, $28.00, 272pp, hc) March 2024.

Helen Oyeyemi’s new novel, Parasol Against the Axe, takes place in Prague, Oyeyemi’s home since 2013. Interviewed by The Guardian in 2019, Oyeyemi described Prague as a “very layered city; it could be a film set; it could be a fairytale; it could be a gritty, ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Alexandra Pierce Reviews The Briar Book of the Dead by A.G. Slatter

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The Briar Book of the Dead, A.G. Slatter (Titan 978-1-80336-454-4, $16.99, 368pp, tp) Cover by Julia Lloyd. February 2024.

With The Briar Book of the Dead following up The Path of Thorns, A.G. Slatter shows that her genius for the magical gothic tale is not waning, with witches and ghosts and terrible deeds coming together to create a riveting story.

The Briar witches live in, and govern, the ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction by Ann Leckie

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Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction, Ann Leckie (Orbit 978-0-3165-5357-5, $29.00, 416pp, hc) April 2024.

In a Locus interview last year, Ann Leckie noted that, prior to Ancillary Justice, “Nobody paid much attention to my stories,” and she was nei­ther complaining nor being falsely modest. While a few of the stories in Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction made the Locus recommended read­ing list or best-of-the-year ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

A.C. Wise Reviews Short Fiction: Augur

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Augur 6.2

Several stories in Augur issue 6.2 draw on vari­ous traditions and fairy tales for inspiration. In “Moon-Eaters & Monsoons” by Rachel Evange­line Chiong, twin brothers Amihan and Hagbat set out to determine what is ailing one of their realm’s gods. They haven’t spoken in years, and the journey is fraught, their failure to listen to and understand each other putting both of them in danger. “ ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Cast of Wonders, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons and Baffling

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Baffling 1/24 Cast of Wonders 12/17/23, 12/29/23, 12/30/23 Escape Pod 12/14/23, 12/23/23, 1/4/23 Strange Horizons 12/18/23, 1/1/24, 1/8/24

I’ll kick things off with the January Baffling, which (as always) features flash fiction with queer themes and characters. The issue starts strong with D.K. Lawhorn’s bittersweet ‘‘Steinway & His Sons’’, which centers a dead man watching his husband mourn for him. It’s a premise that’s already heavy with ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Gabino Iglesias Reviews The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings by Angela Slatter

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The Wrong Girl & Other Warnings, An­gela Slatter (Brain Jar Press 978-1-92247-961-7, $14.99, 186pp, tp) October 2023

Sometimes awards don’t mean much, but Angela Slatter’s accomplishments – a Shirley Jackson Award, a World Fantasy Award, a Brit­ish Fantasy Award, three Australian Shadows Awards, and eight Aurealis Awards – point to one thing very clearly: She’s a superb writer. She’s also a writer who is constantly pushing the envelope of ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Paula Guran Reviews Nightmare, Heartlines Spec, and The Deadlands

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Nightmare 10/23, 11/23, 12/23 Heartlines Spec #3 The Deadlands 10/23, 11/23

In Nightmare #133, I found “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones to be notable. One of the most terrifying of modern horrors is the slaughter of school children by lone gunmen. Jones conjures a magical escape route for the innocents, but it is far from a safe haven. It’s a difficult theme to attempt, ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Strange Horizons, Cast of Wonders, Hexagon and Flash Fiction Online

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Strange Horizons 11/13/23, 11/20/23, 11/27/23, 12/4/23, 12/11/23 Cast of Wonders 12/3/23 Hexagon 12/23 Flash Fiction Online 12/23

At Strange Horizons, November brought a rather chilling look at future technology with Sam Kyung Yoo’s “Nextype” (to all practical scien­tists reading, please do not invent Nextype). In it, Mirae has been implanted with the titular technology, a brain implant meant to give her an advantage in life – one ...Read More

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Niall Harrison Reviews The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Eugen Bacon & Milton Davis

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The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Eugen Bacon & Milton Davis, eds. (Caezik/OD Ekpeki Presents, 978-1-64710-077-3, $11.49, 450pp, eb) December 2023.

The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 opens with WC Dunlap’s “March Magic”, a brief story about a critical day in twentieth-century American history. It is 28 August 1963, the day of the March on Washington, and Mama Willow, a swamp witch – ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Alexandra Pierce Reviews Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde

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Red Side Story, Jasper Fforde (Hodder & Stough­ton 978-1444763669, £17.99, 384pp, hc) February 2024. (Soho Press 978-1-64129-628-1, $29.95, 456pp, hc) May 2024.

When Jasper Fforde did clever things in The Eyre Affair (2001), I was one of many people who fell in love with this funny, bizarre, slightly-askew-to-reality world. Fforde was writing humorous fantasy that com­mented on and skewered the real one. It sounded superficially like the Discworld novels ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Ian Mond Reviews The Briar Book of the Dead by A. G. Slatter

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The Briar Book of the Dead, A.G. Slatter (Titan Books, 978-1-80336-454-4, $16.99, 368pp, tp) February 2024.

When I reviewed A.G. (Angela) Slatter’s 2022 novel The Path of Thorns, I said she was one of the best contemporary fantasists in the field. But I was wrong; my vision was too narrow. Angela is simply one of the best contemporary writers of fiction, regardless of genre. Deep down, I already ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Paul Di Filippo Reviews The Morningside by Téa Obreht

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The Morningside, Téa Obreht (Random House 978-1984855503, hardcover, 304pp, $20.00) March 2024

Is the New Weird still a going concern? Dating roughly from the turn of the century (China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station is the Monolith that enlightened the hominid readers), with the term itself harking to the year 2002 (courtesy of M. John Harrison), the subgenre with famously leaky borders and hazy definitions is approaching its 25th birthday. ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Ian Mond Reviews Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea by C.D. Rose

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Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea, C. D. Rose (Melville House 978-1-68589-084-1, $19.99, 224pp, tp) January 2024.

I love a lot of books. But I also love a lot of authors. This means that I rarely read more than one book by a writer in any given year. What I certainly don’t do is buy a new (to me) author’s back cata­logue, even if I adored their work. I ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Colleen Mondor Reviews The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

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The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden (Del Rey 978-0-593-12825-1, $28.99, 318pp, hc) February 2024.

As The Warm Hands of Ghosts opens, former field nurse Laura Iven is still reeling from the deaths of her parents following the catastrophic explosion of a cargo ship laden with explosives in the harbor of her hometown, Halifax, Nova Sco­tia. (This is based on a real event in 1917.) Laura was home after ...Read More

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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

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The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom 978-1250881786, $18.99, 160pp, tp) February 2024.

I’m pretty sure that tales of forests that are haunted (or enchanted or forbidden or cursed or simply hallucinogenic) predate haunted-house tales by several centuries – in fact, they prob­ably predate houses – and they’ve long provided powerful templates for fantasy (William Morris, George MacDonald, Tolkien, Robert Holdstock), horror (Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood) and even ...Read More

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