Jake Casella Brookins

Extended Stay, Juan Martinez (University of Ari­zona Press 978-0-81654-797-5, $19.95, 320pp, tp) January 2023. Cover by Leigh McDonald.

I don’t know if “refreshing” is quite the right word to use for a book this horrifying, but it’s fascinating to see well-worn horror tropes re­mixed and reinvigorated this well. Juan Martinez’s Extended Stay is an excellent and unsettling riff on the haunted house – a genre that seems to be ...Read More

The Two Doctors Górski, Isaac Fellman (Tor­dotcom 978-1-25084-093-6, $16.99, 176pp, tp) November 2022.

It’s trite but true to say that reading is a kind of magic. Likewise, that it’s a kind of mind read­ing, and that writing characters is a fraught kind of creation. Isaac Fellman’s debut novella is a sharply-focused picture of the dangers these kinds of magic: an acerbic and atmospheric tale of power abused and survived. ...Read More

Titan, Mado Nozaki (Airship 978-1-68579-318-0, $14.99, 496pp, tp) October 2022.

In Mado Nozaki’s Titan (translated by Evan Ward), humans of the 23rd century have it pretty easy – a life of fully automated luxury, all facili­tated by omnipresent, omnibenevolent AI. All of that is threatened when one node of the Titan network – Coeus – begins to suffer mysterious problems, and Seika Naisho, an average citizen who studies psychology ...Read More