Liz Bourke

The Book of Gold, Ruth Frances Long (Hod­derscape 978-1-399-73157-7, £15.99, 340pp, tp) November 2024.

Irish writer Ruth Frances Long has been publishing quite prolifically in recent years, though primarily YA and romantic fantasy under her BOURKE

pen-name Jessica Thorne. The Book of Gold is a historically inspired fantasy caper set in a version of Renaissance Europe that is strikingly different from our own. Magic and hidden gods lurk in ...Read More

Wooing the Witch Queen, Stephanie Burgis (Bramble 978-1250359599, $19.99, 304pp, tp) February 2025.

Given my hit-and-miss track record with fantasy romances – a record far more miss than hit – I didn’t expect to enjoy Stephanie Burgis’s Wooing the Witch Queen nearly as much as it turns out I did. But this playful, tongue-in-cheek, not-exactly enemies-to-lovers romp won me over with aston­ishing rapidity.

Felix von Estarion is an Archduke ...Read More

Sargassa, Sophie Burnham (DAW 978-0-7564-1936-3, $28.00, 416pp, hc) October 2024.

Sophie Burnham’s Sargassa is another first novel, and another novel that flits with playful seriousness between the trappings of fantasy, science fiction, and alternate history, using all three to question and upend the reader’s assumptions about the world of the novel (and perhaps the world at large) and how it works. Sargassa takes the aura of Rome – perennial ...Read More

Demon Daughter, Lois McMaster Bujold (Subter­ranean Press 978-1-64524-219-2, $45.00, 224pp, hc) January 2025. Cover by Lauren Saint-Onge.

I first read Lois McMaster Bujold’s Demon Daughter when it was initially released in e-book. Now that it is coming out from Subterranean Press in hardcover – the latest of the Penric and Desdemona novellas set in the World of the Five Gods to do so – I have read it again ...Read More

The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 978-1-25037-682-4, 224pp, $24.99, hc) October 2024.

Nghi Vo has a Hugo Award and a Crawford Award to her credit for The Empress of Salt and Fortune, the opening novella in the Singing Hills Cycle, as well as an Ignyte for Into the Riverlands. The City in Glass, her latest work – a short novel – is unrelated to her ...Read More

Asunder, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom 978-1-250-62543-4, $29.99, 432pp, hc) August 2024. Cover art by Greg Ruth.

Kerstin Hall writes sharp, fierce stories with precise and visceral prose, and with worldbuilding that possesses a keen sense for the weird, the haunting, the marvel­lous, and the twistedly strange. Asunder is only her fourth long-form work, her second novel (after 2021’s Star Eater and the novella duo The Border Keeper and Second Spear ...Read More

A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor 978-1-250-24407-9, $27.99, 336pp, hc ) August 2024. Cover by Christina Mrozik.

A Sorceress Comes to Call is the latest novel from the pen of award-winning fantasy and horror writer T. Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon. The humour and compassion of Kingfisher’s early work has borne comparison to Terry Pratchett, and in recent years she’s gone from strength to strength, with ...Read More

The Price of Redemption, Shawn Carpenter (Saga 978-1-6680-3373-9, $18.99, 358pp, tp) July 2024.

The Price of Redemption is Shawn Carpen­ter’s debut novel. Inspired by the exploits of the British Royal Navy during during the French revolutionary wars, it sets its story in a different world to ours and adds magic to the mixture. As a fan of both fantasy and of the naval adventure story (though frequently through gritted ...Read More

The Last Hour Between Worlds, Melissa Caruso (Orbit 978-0-31630-347-7, $19.99, 432pp, tp) November 2024.

If I tell you that I love The Last Hour Between Worlds to pieces, that I read it when I was miserably sick and it took me entirely out of myself from the first page to the last, that’s probably not quite enough information to constitute a proper review. Melissa Caruso’s latest novel, her first ...Read More

These Deathless Shores, P.H. Low (Orbit 978-0-31656-920-0, $19.99, 464pp, tp) July 2024.

I’m not quite sure what I make of These Deathless Shores, the debut novel from Malaysian American author P.H. Low. Low, whose short fiction and poetry have garnered them recognition, has written a novel that takes as its central concern the problem of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and the island (‘‘Neverland’’) outside the reach of the ...Read More

The Sky on Fire, Jenn Lyons (Tor 978-1-250-34200-3, $29.99, 448pp, hc) July 2024. Cover by Michael Rogers.

Jenn Lyons made her debut with The Ruin of Kings, first of a five-book series (“the Chorus of Dragons”) that took epic fantasy, shook it, subverted it, and played entertaining games with the pieces that fell out. The Sky on Fire is not at all related to that series, except that ...Read More

Foul Days, Genoveva Dimova (Tor 978-1-250-87731-4, $17.99, 368pp, tp) June 2024. Cover by Rovina Cai.

Foul Days is Scotland-based Genoveva Dimova’s debut novel. It mixes folklore and modernity, setting itself between the walled ghetto-city of Chernograd – where monsters roam the streets, magic is as commonplace as poverty, and in order to leave you have to pay people-smugglers to get you across the wall – and the prosperous city ...Read More

Road to Ruin, Hana Lee (Saga 978-1-66803-561-0, $18.99, 368pp, tp.) May 2024.

For a debut novel, Hana Lee’s Road to Ruin is a tour de force. Inventive and entertaining, it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through.

Jin-Lu makes her living crossing the wasteland. She’s a courier, one of the few who travel outside the safety of the walled cities known as kerinas, delivering ...Read More

Necrobane, Daniel M. Ford (Tor 978-1-25081-568-2, $28.99, 304pp, hc.) April 2024.

Speaking of romps, Daniel M. Ford’s Necrobane, sequel to 2023’s The Warden (which concealed much entertainment behind its bland title), is a classic adventure in the sword-and-sorcery mode. It follows The Warden in style, tone, and content, and opens directly after The Warden’s striking cliffhanger.

A Warden is part magistrate, part law enforce­ment, part general magical ...Read More

The Fireborne Blade, Charlotte Bond (Tordotcom 978-1-25029-031-1, $20.99, 176pp, hc) May 2024.

It’s always interesting to review a novella, and this month I have three. Or three very short novels, at least: the line blurs. Charlotte Bond’s The Fireborne Blade harks back to the adventure style of sword-and-sorcery fantasy that had its most recent great flowering (to the best of my knowledge) in the 1980s. Everything old is new ...Read More

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

Fathomfolk, Eliza Chan (Orbit US 978-0-316-56492-2, $19.99, 448pp, tp) February 2024. Cover by Kelly Chang.

Eliza Chan has racked up several short fiction pub­lications in recent years, but Fathomfolk represents her debut novel. And it is an interesting debut, albeit one that, on the whole, didn’t come together as I might have hoped.

Fathomfolk takes place in a world dominated by water, apparently in the aftermath of a process ...Read More

The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom 978-1-250-88178-6, $18.99, 160pp, tp) February 2024. Cover by Andrew Davis.

It seems to me that I’ve read more books that have to do with weird forests over the last couple of years (some kind of Otherness, other land, or strange and inimical powers deep within the woods) than I have in a long while: Hannah Whitten’s fantasy-romance For the Wolf comes ...Read More