Ian Mond

A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, Maureen Kincaid Speller (Luna Press 978-1-91555-620-2, £16.99, 308pp, tp) September 2023.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Maureen Kincaid Speller in person, but we correspond­ed on email and social media. Talking virtu­ally with Maureen was always a delight, moreso when she approached me to review Rod Duncan’s Unseemly Science for Strange Horizons. The deep sadness I felt ...Read More

Death Valley, Melissa Broder (Scribner 978-1-66802-484-3, $27.00, 240pp, hc) October 2023.

Melissa Broder has been on my need-to-get-around-to-reading radar since I picked up her 2018 debut, The Pisces, about a woman who falls in love with a merman. To this day, the book remains unopened on my Kindle. So does Broder’s second novel, Milk Fed, about a lapsed Jewish woman on a strict, calorie-controlled diet who engages ...Read More

Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward (Scribner 978-1-98210-449-8, $28.00, 320pp, hc) October 2023.

2017 was a terrific year for ghost stories that spoke to America’s two-hundred-and-forty-year history of racism against people of colour. There’s the astonishing soliloquy from Litzie Wright, one of the numerous ghosts from George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, detailing her experiences as an enslaved per­son. There’s the spirit of a Black musician from Hari Kunzru’s ...Read More

South, Babak Lakghomi (Rare Machines 978-1-45975-081-4, $21.99, 200pp, tp) September 2023.

In a brief introduction to South, Babak Lakghomi tells us that he began writing his debut in 2018 during the Trump Presidency and the anti-Government riots in his birth country of Iran. The book, he says, ‘‘was born out of such vital concerns of our time—the meaning of truth, environmental perils, surveillance, and censorship.’’ What’s im­pressive about ...Read More

The Circumference of the World, Lavie Tid­har (Tachyon Publications 978-1-61696-362-0, $17.95, 256pp, tp) September 2023. Cover by Elizabeth Story.

If you’re a fan of Lavie Tidhar’s work (and you really should be), you’ll know he has a deep and abiding fascination with the history of science fiction. Tidhar’s short stories and novels are peppered with nods, winks, and hat tips to luminaries who have shaped the field, whether it ...Read More

Fever House, Keith Rosson (Random House 978-0-59359-575-6, $28.00, 448pp, hc) August 2023.

I am a sucker for a great front cover. Emily Temple’s monthly showcase on Literary Hub of the best covers from the preceding four weeks has led me to purchase a book based purely on a striking image or an eye-catching arrangement, regardless of subject matter. Keith Rosson’s fifth novel, Fever House, has a cover deserving ...Read More

Oh God, The Sun Goes, David Connor (Melville House 978-1-68589-062-9, $18.99, 240pp, tp) August 2023.

With its intriguing title, striking all-black cover marred by an iridescent circle (where the title sits) and absurdist conceit, David Connor’s de­but feels like it has been marketed just for me. I love nothing more than an unabashedly weird and experimental story, and Oh God, The Sun Goes fits that bill, an adventure in ...Read More

The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman, Molly Lynch (Catapult 978-1-64622-142-4, $27.00, 288pp, hc) June 2023.

Like Hilary Leichter’s Terrace Story, Molly Lynch’s debut, The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman, draws on the existential angst of raising a family amid climate change. Lynch’s approach is not nearly as surreal as Leichter’s, but it does centre on a strange phenomenon: mothers across the globe vanishing without a ...Read More

Bang Bang Bodhisattva, Aubrey Wood (Solaris 978-1-78618-701-7, $26.99, 390pp, hc) May 2023.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that cyberpunk, starting with William Gibson’s Neuromancer, borrowed heavily from noir fiction: the disaffected outsider, the grimy, downbeat urban setting, the pessimistic view of human nature. An article by Danny Bowes published on Tor.com more than a decade ago even draws a textual line between Chandler and Gibson, framing ...Read More

All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays, Niall Harri­son (Briardene Books 978-1-87082-467-5, £20.00, 480pp, tp) April 2023.

It’s a lovely coincidence that I’m reviewing works by Matthew Cheney and Niall Harrison in the same column. They have significantly influenced me as a reader and now as a reviewer. Harrison, along with Cheney, Abigail Nussbaum, Martin ‘‘Lewis’’ Petto, and Jonathan Mccalmont, were the writers I initially gravitated towards when I started ...Read More

Chlorine, Jade Song (William Morrow 978-0-06325-760-3, $27.99, 256pp, hc) March 2023.

From the moment we meet Ren Yu, the narrator and protagonist of Jade Song’s debut novel Chlorine, she leaves us in no doubt about her identity. Ren is a mermaid, though, as she’s quick to point out, nothing like those generic mermaids from movies and ‘‘G-rated fairytales, the blood and dirt in their original drafts scrubbed clean ...Read More

Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon 978-0-59331-733-4, $27.00, 384pp, hc) May 2023.

Dystopian fiction is having a moment. It’s al­ways been a staple of the genre, but since 2016 there has been a surge in near-future dystopias, primarily set in America, imagining our world through a post-Trump lens. While these books have near-universally been compared to The Handmaid’s Tale, work by a diverse range of authors like Jessamine ...Read More

Titanium Noir, Nick Harkaway (Knopf 978-0-59353-536-3, $28.00, 256pp, hc) May 2023.

In researching for this review I discovered that one of my favourite novels of 2018 was written by Nick Harkaway, and it wasn’t Gnomon. As much as I adored Gnomon (it’s the first book I reviewed for Locus), later that year, I read a thriller by a writer I’d never heard of that blew me away. The ...Read More

Hospital, Han Song (Amazon Crossing 978-1-54203-947-5, $28.99, 414pp, hc) March 2023.

Summarising the plot of Hospital by Chinese author Han Song (translated by Michael Berry) is a near-impossible task, yet I’m willing to give it a crack. The novel begins in the far future with the SS Mahamayuri heading to Mars to find one of the many Buddhas scattered across the Universe. But after landing on the Red Planet, ...Read More

Flux, Jinwoo Chong (Melville House 978-1-68598-034-6, $28.99, 352pp, hc) March 2023.

Central to Jinwoo Chong’s whip-smart, time-bending, and emotionally scarring debut novel Flux is Raider, a fictional mid ’80s cop drama named after its gravel-voiced, leather-wearing hero known for his Dirty Harry-like catchphrase, ‘‘give me a reason.’’ For eight-year-old Bo, Raider is his favourite show. He watches and rewatches his father’s old VHS tapes, drawn to the titular ...Read More

Dazzling, Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ (Wildfire 978-1-47288-964-3, £18.99, 352pp, hc) February 2023. (The Overlook Press 978-1-41976-979-5 , $27.00, 352pp, hc) December 2022

I’m embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t aware of Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ’s work until after I finished her debut novel, Dazzling. I say em­barrassed because Emelụmadụ has been writ­ing speculative short fiction for a decade, with several of her pieces nominated for awards, including the Shirley Jackson Award, the ...Read More

Sing, Nightingale, Marie Hélène Poitras (Coach House Books 978-1-55245-448-0, $22.95, 176pp, tp) February 2023.

I’m not sure I’ve read a book quite so fecund, so bursting with life (and sex) as Sing, Nightingale by Quebec writer Marie Helene Poitras (superbly translated from Québécois by Rhonda Mullins). Set during the height of Spring in the French countryside, the action centres in and around the Malmaison estate. The manor has seen ...Read More

Hopeland, Ian McDonald (Tor 978-0-76537-555-1, $28.99, 512pp, hc) February 2023.

Ian McDonald’s Hopeland has been 23 years in the making. In a 2014 interview conducted by Locus, McDonald mentioned coming across the idea for Hopeland – a family structure that would last for ten thousand years – in a magazine article he read in 2000. During that same interview, McDonald spoke about his forthcoming novel Luna, which at ...Read More

The Thing in the Snow, Sean Adams (Morrow 978-0-06325-775-7, $23.99, 288pp, hc) January 2023.

Sean Adam’s debut, The Heap, which I reviewed back in 2020, was one of those unforeseen delights that Gary Wolfe talks about on the Coode Street Podcast – a book you weren’t expecting but that turns out to be one of the best things you read that year. It’s the story of the collapse ...Read More

The Destroyer of Worlds: A Return to Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff (Harper 978-0-06-325689-7, $30.00, 320pp, hc) Feb­ruary 2023.

As many readers of Locus will know, Maureen Kincaid Speller passed away on September 18, 2022. She was an outstanding critic (a collection of her reviews and essays, edited by Nina Allan, will be out from Luna Press in 2023) and a generous and insightful editor for Strange Horizons. Maureen was ...Read More

Empathy, Hoa Pham (Goldsmiths Press 978-1-91338-061-8, $24.95, 256pp, tp) November 2022.

The 2018 documentary Three Identical Strangers tells the astonishing and distressing true story of triplet brothers split at birth who become aware of each other only by chance when they turn 19. The documentary reveals that the triplets were part of a “nature versus nurture” study that was never disclosed to the boys or their adoptive parents. It’s ...Read More

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, Marisa Crane (Catapult 978-1-64622-129-5, $27.00, 352pp, hc) January 2023.

Recently, author and editor Nick Mamatas nailed the “X meets Y” elevator pitch when he accurately described Titan by Japanese author Mado Nozaki as “The Lifecycle of Software Objects meets Pacific Rim.” But if I were handing out gold medals for the best use of this formulation, it would be to the ...Read More

How to Sell a Haunted House, Grady Hendrix (Berkley 978-0-59320-126-8, $28.00, 400p, hc) January 2023.

Over the last several years, I’ve drifted away from core (mainstream) horror fiction to the extent that I haven’t read the last few Stephen King novels (something that I could not have imagined less than a decade ago). Grady Hen­drix is the exception. Since picking up My Best Friend’s Exorcism back in 2016, I’ve ...Read More

Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep: Ghost Stories, Adam Soto (Astra House 978-1-66260-135-4, $17.00, 272pp, p) September 2022

My initial reaction to “Polyptych for the Begin­ning of the End of the World, or Three Begin­nings for the End of the World and a Play”, was that it was a poor choice of story to open Adam Soto’s debut collection, Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep: Ghost Stories. As ...Read More

Weasels in the Attic, Hiroko Oyamada (New Directions 978-0-81123-118-3, $13/95, 96p, hc) October 2022.

In my humble opinion, the best surrealist fic­tion being published today is coming out of Japan, spearheaded by female authors like Yoko Tawada, Sayaka Murata, Yōko Ogawa, and Hiromi Kawakami. Included in that list is the elusive and discombobulating work of Hiroko Oyamada, whose third book, Weasels in the Attic, has been translated into ...Read More