Liz Bourke

The Hurricane Wars, Thea Guanzon. (Harper­Voyager US 978-0-06-327727-4, $30.00, 480pp, hc) October 2023.

Hate is another kind of passion. This is a truism repeated by the characters of The Hurricane Wars, Thea Guanzon’s debut novel, and it might go some way towards explaining why the central relationship of the novel leaves me cold: I’ve al­ways found hatred to be a rather chilly emotion, not passionate at all.

The ...Read More

Shield Maiden, Sharon Emmerichs (Head of Zeus 978-1804545553, £20.00, 416pp, hc) Febru­ary 2023. (Redhook 978-0-316-56691-1, $18.99, 416pp, tp) October 2023.

Sharon Emmerichs is a lecturer in early mod­ern and medieval literature at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. Shield Maiden is the first novel she’s published under her own name, though she has an interesting array of academic publications to her credit, and her academic bi­ography states that other ...Read More

The Fractured Dark, Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit US 978-0-316-29113-2, $18.99, 544pp, tp.) Sep­tember 2023.

The Fractured Dark is the second novel in Megan E. O’Keefe’s Devoured Worlds trilogy. The first book, The Blighted Stars, is a fast-paced and viciously readable planetary opera adventure with intelligent fungus, AI descending into dysfunc­tion, ecological critique, explosions, banter, and a touch of inadvisable romance to make the whole cocktail go down more ...Read More

A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, Anna Smith Spark (Flame Tree Press 978-1-78758-839-4, $16.95, 336pp, tp) September 2023.

I haven’t read Anna Smith Spark’s work before, though I understand her debut, The Court of Broken Knives (2018), received some critical attention. Her latest, A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, is a peculiar, ambitious novel. It delib­erately sets out, with its use of language, its use of repetition and ...Read More

A Multitude of Dreams, Mara Rutherford (Inkyard Press 978-1335457967, $19.99, 394pp, hc.) August 2023.

If you don’t think too deeply about Mara Ruther­ford’s A Multitude of Dreams, it’s a smooth and readable young-adult novel borrowing strongly from the gothic and romantic traditions: a sealed castle, a masquerading princess-who-is-not-a-princess, a mad king, a plucky young gentleman, a terrible disease, a monster wearing the face of a benevolent master, secret ...Read More

Where Peace Is Lost, Valerie Valdes (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-3085930, $19.99, 392pp, tp) August 2023. Cover art by Serena Malyon. Cover by Owen Corrigan.

Valerie Valdes’s Where Peace is Lost is her fourth novel, after a well-received debut space opera trilogy. Where Peace is Lost sets itself in a different science fiction continuity, with differ­ent characters, and spends most of its time on a single planet: It feels like ...Read More

Daughter of Winter and Twilight, Helen Corcoran (O’Brien Press 978-1-788493703, €14.99/£13.99, 566pp, tp) September 2023. Cover by Emma Byrne.

Helen Corcoran’s Daughter of Winter and Twilight is both like and un­like her debut novel, Queen of Coin and Whispers. Like, in that it is a compelling coming-of-age narrative with strongly drawn characters and a vivid world. Unlike, in that where Queen of Coin and Whispers focused heavily on ...Read More

System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom 978-125082-697-8, $21.99, 256pp, hc) November 2023. Cover by Jaime Jones.

The seventh of Martha Wells’s Murderbot long-form stories, System Collapse is a novel-length sequel to Network Effect, picking up within days of that novel’s conclusion. Murderbot fans are unlikely to be disappointed here: Wells is on form with the series’ trademark black humour, razor-sharp tension, Murderbot’s all-too-relatable interpersonal interactions, action, and high stakes. ...Read More

A Fire Born of Exile, Aliette de Bodard (JAB Books 978-1-6256-7652-8, $9.99, 406pp, tp) October 2023. Cover by Ravven. (Gollancz 978-1-47322-343-1, £18.99, 432pp, hc) October 2023. Cover by Alyssa Winans.

A Fire Born of Exile is Aliette de Bodard’s second novel-length Xuya universe space opera. It’s a compelling, atmospheric tale of consequences, romance, and revenge. (I should note that I’m mentioned in the acknowledgements, which may cause you to ...Read More

Cassiel’s Servant, Jacqueline Carey (Tor 978-1-25020-833-0, $30.99, 548pp, hc) August 2023. Cover by Mélanie Delon.

Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey’s debut novel, was first published in 2001. I read it perhaps two or three years after that, when I was 17 or so: I remember being terribly annoyed at myself when I cracked the spine on the UK trade paperback almost as strongly as I remember the impact ...Read More

Devil’s Gun, Cat Rambo (Tor 978-1250269355, $27.99, 288pp, hc) August 2023.

Cat Rambo’s Devil’s Gun is the kind of lightly entertaining space opera that left little strong impression in its wake. Little on me, at least: this sequel to You Sexy Thing rolls along at as fast a pace as its predecessor, but it feels more like a collection of disparate incidents than a complete narrative, and its oddball ...Read More

He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan (Tor 978-1529043433, £20.00, 496pp, hc) August 2023.

Shelley Parker-Chan’s highly accomplished debut novel, She Who Became the Sun, first volume in the Radiant Emperor duol­ogy, came out to great acclaim in 2021. Set in a lightly fantasised version of historic China at the period of upheaval and civil war around the transition between the Yuan and Ming dynas­ties, it focused on ...Read More

The Master of Samar, Melissa Scott (Candle­mark & Gleam 978-1-952456-16-9, $22.95, 340pp, tp) June 2023. Cover by H. Won.

Melissa Scott’s long career is one filled with interesting and ambitious novels. Her second-world fantasies have always struck me, with one or two exceptions, as strongly influenced by ideas of the Renaissance city. This is true for The Master of Samar, Scott’s latest standalone fantasy novel: a novel with ...Read More

Gods of the Wyrdwood, R.J. Barker (Orbit 978-0356517230, £20.00, 640pp, hc) June 2023.

R.J. Barker’s Gods of the Wyrdwood is your classic epic fantasy. Barker has written two pre­vious trilogies, each set in different worlds and engaging with different fantasy tropes. Gods of the Wyrdwood opens yet another trilogy, one in which Barker turns his attention (it seems) to fantasy’s long-held fascination with the idea of a chosen one. ...Read More

The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom 978-1-25018-042-1 , $28.99, 496pp, hc) August 2023.

I freely admit I don’t know anything about The Water Margin, the classic of Chinese literature from which S.L. Huang explicitly draws inspira­tion for The Water Outlaws, except what I’ve just gone to look up. But The Water Outlaws is the kind of novel that made me want to go take a deep dive ...Read More

Labyrinth’s Heart, M.A. Carrick (Orbit 978-0-35651-521-2, £9.99, 688pp, tp) August 2023.

Labyrinth’s Heart is the third and final book in the Rook and Rose trilogy, after The Liar’s Knot and The Mask of Mir­rors. The writing duo Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms, under their joint M.A. Carrick pseudonym, have given the trilogy a revolution­ary, explosive climax – in both political and emotional terms. It’s a fantastic conclusion, ...Read More

The Ghosts of Trappist, K.B. Wagers (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06311-516-3, $32.99, 560pp, hc) June 2023.

The Ghosts of Trappist, the third book in K.B. Wagers’s highly enjoyable NeoG series, is also a lot of fun. Perhaps due to the circumstances in which I read it, or perhaps due to the narrative choice to weave fragments of past events into the present in brief interstitial chapters, its first half ...Read More

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Black­goose (Del Rey 978-0-59349-828-6, $18.00, 528pp, tp) May 2023.

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is Moniquill Black­goose’s debut novel. Like The Iron Princess, it sets itself in a context defined by colonialism, and the relationship between coloniser and those that they have colonised. Unlike The Iron Princess, the world of Blackgoose’s novel is a recognisable analogue of our own, albeit containing ...Read More

The Iron Princess, Barbara Hambly (Open Road Media 978-1-50408-132-0, $34.99, 360pp, hc; 978-1-50407-902-0, $18.99, 360pp, tp) February 2023. Cover by Amanda Shaffer.

Barbara Hambly’s early career was defined by her fantasy novels, and for many read­ers in the 1980s – and indeed, a number of writers – books like The Ladies of Mandrigyn and Dragonsbane proved influential, even for­mative. But for the last decade and a half, she’s been ...Read More

Rubicon, J.S. Dewes (Tor 978-1-25085-123-9, $19.99, tp) March 2023.

Rubicon, J.S. Dewes’s third published novel after The Last Watch and The Exiled Fleet, offers a fresh setting and different approach to military-flavoured space opera than Dewes’ previous work.

Specialist Adrienne Valero has died 96 times since her enlistment. Every time, she’s resur­rected into a fresh ‘‘husk’’ and redeployed to the front lines of her people’s struggle against ...Read More

The Magician’s Daughter, H.G. Parry (Redhook 978-0-31638-370-7, $18.99, tp) February 2023.

H.G. Parry’s The Magician’s Daughter is a very different novel to Rubicon. As with Rubicon, this is the first novel by the author that I’ve read. As with Rubicon, I’m favourably impressed. That’s about where the similarities end, because The Magician’s Daughter is a fantasy set in 1912, one I almost dismissed out of hand. ...Read More

The Keeper’s Six, Kate Elliott (Tordotcom 978-1-25088-913-3, $19.99, 208pp, hc) January 2023. Cover by Emmanuel Shiu.

Kate Elliott is a writer whose work I have long enjoyed and admired for its human­ity and its scope, even when that work tackled subjects I couldn’t quite enjoy. From epic fantasy with the high politics and romantic entanglements of the Spiritwalker trilogy, the convulsions of societies in transition of the Crossroads trilogy, ...Read More

The Grief of Stones, Katherine Addison (Tor 978-1-25081-389-3, $25.99, 256pp, HC) June 2022.

Katherine Addison’s The Grief of Stones is a novel I scarcely feel capable of reviewing as it deserves. Addison’s The Goblin Emperor is rightly considered a modern classic, a storytell­ing tour-de-force, and other books set in the same world were long-awaited. This anticipa­tion culminated last year, with The Witness for the Dead, a mystery novel ...Read More

Prison of Sleep, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-0-85766-942-1, $14.99, 400pp, tp) April 2022. Cover by Kieryn Tyler.

Prison of Sleep is the concluding volume of Tim Pratt’s multiverse duology. At this remove, I can’t remember much about the first volume, Doors of Sleep (2021), except for four things: the first-person narrator, Zax, whirled unwillingly from world to world when he slept, pursued by a nemesis; the fact that he’s ...Read More

The Bone Orchard, Sara A. Mueller (Tor 987-1-250-77694-5, $26.99, 432pp, hc) March 2022.

The Bone Orchard is Sara A. Mueller’s debut novel. Aesthetically, it has more than a touch of the gothic; thematically, its arguments about autonomy and identity, personhood and empire, remind me strikingly of Arkady Martine’s science fiction, Max Gladstone’s Craft books, and A.K. Larkwood’s debut The Unspoken Name. Bones and traps and secrets, oh ...Read More

Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher (Tor 978-1-25024-404-8, $25.99, 256pp, hc) April 2022.

Kingfisher, as many of us know, is the open pen name of Ursula Vernon. Vernon is an award-winning author under both names, and her novels and stories as Kingfisher are united by their combination of pragmatism among characters and peculiarity in worldbuilding, with a strong sense of humour and a definite impression that, given a choice between ...Read More

Servant Mage, Kate Elliott (Tordotcom 978-1-250-76905-3, $19.99, 176pp, hc) January 2022. Cover by Tommy Arnold.

Kate Elliott is perhaps best known for her epic fantasy, though her most recent novel, Unconquered Sun, opens a whole new space opera universe. (It tells a story that’s just as epic.) Her work is characterised by a deep and substantial interest in the details of world and culture, in power and the ...Read More

Assassin’s Orbit, John Appel (Solaris 978-1-781089156, £8.99, 430pp, pb) July 2021. Cover by Amazing15.

John Appel’s Assassin’s Orbit is another debut. This one suited me much better than For the Wolf, but then women in their sixties kicking arses and taking names while having complicated interpersonal interactions is pretty much my jam. Appel handles a diverse cast with future versions of religious faiths (Islam, and I think – ...Read More

Star Eater, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom 978-1-250-62531-1, $26.99, 440pp, hc) June 2021. Cover by Sam Weber.

Kerstin Hall’s novella, The Border Keeper, came out in 2019 to no small acclaim and at least one award nomination. Star Eater demonstrates that the prom­ise of The Border Keeper wasn’t a flash in the pan. This is an exquisitely gripping novel with a bloody, unflinching heart. And yet, for all the intricate ...Read More