Ian Mond

Crows and Silences, Lucius Shepard (Subterranean 978-1-64524-217-8, $60.00, 520pp, hc) December 2024.

When discussing Lucius Shepard, it’s inevitable to bemoan that despite his abundant talent, his work received little mainstream recognition. I observed this when I reviewed The Best of Lucius Shepard: Volume 2, quoting an obituary of Shepard penned by Christopher Priest for The Guardian. Priest felt that Shepard’s preference for the novella and his association with ...Read More

The Way, Cary Groner (Spiegel & Grau 978-1-95411-842-3, $29.00, 304pp, hc) December 2024.

In Cary Groner’s second novel, The Way, a heavily mutated and infectious avian flu wipes out 80 per­cent of humanity. The event, dubbed ‘‘Mayhem’’ by the survivors, leads to the expected break­down of civilisation – ‘‘starvation; migration; a brief, limited nuclear exchange; then finally the return of endemic diseases like TB, diphtheria, typhoid, cholera, malaria, ...Read More

Interstellar MegaChef, Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris 978-1-83786-233-7, $16.99, 400pp, tp) November 2024.

I’ve always loved a good cooking show. Back in the day, it was Top Chef (where a contestant always undercooked the chicken) and Great British Menu (where every pudding had to include rhubarb). Now, I’m obsessed with Uncle Roger’s YouTube channel. His takedown of Jamie Oliver’s Egg Fried Rice, with 28 million views and over one million likes, ...Read More

Remember You Will Die, Eden Robins (Source­books Landmark 978-1-72825-603-0, $16.99, 336pp, tp) October 2024.

It has been another excellent year for uncon­ventional narratives. There’s Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, which I called “a full-frontal deconstruction of narrative and genre”; there’s Rita Bullwinkel’s magnificent Headshot, a story structured around the intense, chaotic and bal­letic bouts of a junior girl’s boxing tournament; and there are the 1,281 F-bombs that punctuate the ...Read More

The Repeat Room, Jesse Ball (Catapult 978-1-64622-140-0, 256pp, $27.00, hc) Cover by Sara Wood. September 2024.

I first came across Jesse Ball back in 2007 when his debut, Samedi the Deafness, was shortlisted for the Believer Book Award (a terrific prize that introduced me to authors as varied as Bennett Sims, Keith Ridgway, Valeria Luiselli, and Danielle Dutton. I miss it… and the magazine). I bought the novel ...Read More

State of Paradise, Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-37461-220-7, $27.00, 224pp, hc) July 2024.

I move from one instance of weird Florida (Area X is a distorted version of North Florida) to another: Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise. I’d say that reading VanderMeer and van den Berg back-to-back (alliterative surnames aside) is a remarkable coincidence, except that Florida, to outsiders such as myself, has ...Read More

Ultra 85, Logic (Simon & Schuster 978-1-98215-827-9, $18.99, 304pp, tp) September 2024.

I’d never heard of the rapper Logic (AKA Sir Robert Bryson Hall II) or his work (both musi­cal and literary) until I was sent a copy of Ultra 85. That’s not an indictment of Logic but instead speaks to my narrow, stunted musical tastes. Ultra 85 is Logic’s sophomore effort, the follow-up to his debut Supermarket ...Read More

Napalm in the Heart, Pol Guasch (Faber & Fa­ber UK 978-0571375257, £6.99, 256pp, hc) July 2024. (FSG Originals 978-0-37461-295-5, $18.00, 256pp, tp) August 2024.

Reading Pol Guasch’s debut, Napalm in the Heart, right after Helen Phillips’ Hum is a disorientat­ing experience. Both authors present us with dystopias, but while Phillips cleaves to our reality, Guasch gives us something more symbolic and experimental, a dystopia unmoored from time and ...Read More

Hum, Helen Phillips (Marysue Rucci Books 978-1-66800-883-6, $27.99, 272pp, hc) August 2024.

The novels I review for this column are not chosen with a theme in mind. If one does pop up, it’s purely coincidental. That goes for this month. I had no idea Hum, Napalm in the Heart, and Ultra 85 would all be dystopian novels. The good news is that they’re very different in tone, ...Read More

The Ragpicker, Joel Dane (Meerkat 978-1-94615-459-0, $17.95, 290pp, p) July 2024.

If you believe the advertising campaigns from Meta and Apple (especially Apple’s slick ads for its Vision Pro), virtual and physical realities will harmoniously exist together. It’s a utopian attitude that conflicts with the often dystopian vision pre­sented by the genre, where VR, with its immersive pods and body suits, is a means of escaping the harsh realities ...Read More

Mood Swings, Frankie Barnet (Astra House, 978-1-66260-259-7, $26.00, 304pp, hc) May 2024.

The Ministry of Time wears its time travel on its literary sleeve. Frankie Barnet’s debut novel, Mood Swings, isn’t nearly as overt. In fact, it begins with the world in lockdown – not because of the pandemic (though I did get flashbacks) but because animals have turned on humanity. “Wasps targeted small children and the elderly; ...Read More

The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader Press, 978-1-66804-514-5, $28.99, 352pp, hc) May 2024.

As Gary Wolfe has long remarked – both in the pages of this magazine and on The Coode Street Podcast – time travel, one of the foundational pillars of science fiction, has been absorbed by the literary mainstream. Starting, arguably, with Audrey Niffenegger, both literary superstars (Kate Atkinson and Emily St. John Mandel) and ...Read More