Jake Casella Brookins

Feed Them Silence, Lee Mandelo (Tordotcom 978-1-2508-2450-9, $19.99, 112pp, hc) March 2023.

I am a sucker for contact stories – aliens, ani­mals, strange fantasy creatures; that feeling of an encounter with otherness is one of the recurring delights of speculative literature. Tolkien noted it as “one of the primal desires that lie near the heart of Faërie.” But there’s more than enchantment pos­sible with these stories – once we ...Read More

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