Liz Bourke

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

For the Wolf, Hannah Whitten (Orbit 978-0-356516363, £8.99, 480pp, tp) June 2021.

Hannah Whitten’s debut novel, For the Wolf, is one of those books I could wish I had enjoyed more. It almost certainly does not need my approbation, for it has all of the traits of a novel that should find broad-based success: a young, headstrong protagonist; a hand­some, self-sacrificing, broody male love interest; an easy-to-read, relatively ...Read More

The Fallen, Ada Hoffmann (Angry Robot 978-0-857-66868-4, $14.99, 400pp, tp) July 2021.

I should probably confess that I don’t remember very much of the detail of Ada Hoffmann’s debut The Outside, except that I enjoyed it and wanted to read the sequel. I read it before this endless year of our pandemic, after all, and so many other things have crowded my skull since. Now that The Fallen ...Read More

The Assassins of Thasalon, Lois McMaster Bujold (Spectrum Literary Agency, $6.99, 244pp, eb) May 2021.

Lois McMaster Bujold is a household name in science fiction and fantasy at this point. She is perhaps best known for her Miles Vorkosigan space opera novels, but personally I’ve always enjoyed her fantasy more: the four-book Sharing Knife series, and the stories in the world of the Five Gods – The Curse of ...Read More

Soulstar, C.L. Polk (Tordotcom 978-1-250-20357-1, $17.99, 302pp, tp) February 2021. Cover by Will Staehle.

Soulstar is the conclusion to Polk’s Kingston trilogy, a cycle of books that each take politics and romantic and familial relationships as their focus. In Witchmark, it was Miles Hensley and his mysterious lover Tristan, and a series of deaths connected with an unjust war; in Stormsong, Miles’s sister Grace (and her romantic ...Read More

Hard Reboot, Django Wexler (Tordotcom 978-1-250-79026-2, $14.99, 150pp, tp) May 2021.

Django Wexler’s Hard Reboot is a standalone sci­ence fiction novella from the author of Ashes of the Sun (2020) and the Wells of Sorcery trilogy (Ship of Smoke and Steel, City of Stone and Silence, Siege of Rage and Ruin). It sets itself in a far-future where Earth is a relatively lawless backwater in ...Read More

Hold Fast Through the Fire, K.B. Wagers (Harper Voyager 978-0062887818, $26.99, 416pp, hc) July 2021.

Hold Fast Through the Fire is the second NeoG novel by K.B. Wagers (acclaimed author of the Indranan War and the Farian War space opera trilogies). While it can be satisfying as a stand­alone, I believe it benefits from having read A Pale Light in the Black, Wagers’s first novel in this setting. ...Read More

The Maleficent Seven, Cameron Johnston (An­gry Robot 978-0857669087, $14.99, 498pp, pb) August 2021.

I’d never heard of Cameron Johnston before I received a review copy of his The Maleficent Seven, due out from Angry Robot. Its pitch is “fantasy Magnificent Seven, but everyone’s a villain,” and while I don’t normally enjoy a book that’s all about bad people doing bad things, this one works surprisingly well.

For ...Read More

The Witness for the Dead, Katherine Addison (Tor 978-0-765-38742-4, $25.99, 240pp, hc) June 2021.

The Witness for the Dead isn’t a sequel, focusing as it does on an almost entirely different cast of characters and set as it is far away from the imperial court. But despite its altered milieu, it has a similar flavour, with an intimate, personal emotional register and a thematic concern with duty and ethics, ...Read More

Paladin’s Strength, T. Kingfisher (Argyll Productions 978-1-614-50530-3, $34.95, 438pp, hc) February 2021. Cover by Ursula Vernon.

Paladin’s Strength is another novel with a vivid and engaging voice. A sequel of sorts to Paladin’s Grace, T. Kingfisher’s latest quirky romantic fantasy sees Istvhan, one of Paladin’s Grace‘s minor characters, and Clara, a lay sister from a fairly unique religious order, develop a mutual attraction while having some fairly ...Read More

Out Past the Stars, K.B. Wagers (Orbit Books 978-0356512402, $16.99, 400pp, tp) February 2021.

It is often difficult to begin a review of the third volume in a trilogy, particularly when, as with K.B. Wagers’s Out Past the Stars, it is the third volume of the second trilogy to star its protagonist and her world. Behind The Throne, After the Crown, and Beyond the Empire are ...Read More

Fireheart Tiger, Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom 978-1-250-79326-3, $13.99, 110pp, tp). Febru­ary 2021.

I’m a confirmed fan of Aliette de Bodard’s work. Quite aside from her novels, In the Vanishers’ Palace is perhaps my favourite fantasy novella in a field bursting with excellent novellas, and her Xuya science fiction includes the award-winning The Tea Master and the Detective – so I’m not alone in valuing her work highly.

Fireheart Tiger ...Read More

Winter’s Orbit, Everina Maxwell (Tor 978-1-250-75883-5, $24.99, 432pp, hc) February 2021.

Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit is a debut novel with an interesting history. A version of this novel was first published online, where I encountered (and enjoyed) it as “The Course of Honour” on Archive Of Our Own (in the Original Works category). Winter’s Orbit as published by Tor Books is different in some respects from “The Course of ...Read More

Doors of Sleep, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-0-857-66874-5, $14.99, 272pp, tp) January 2021.

Tim Pratt’s last trilogy from Angry Ro­bot, the Axiom (The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, and The Forbidden Stars), was precisely the kind of space opera romp guaranteed to delight me. Fast paced, and with a rag-tag crew of heroes and a selection of batshit weird dangers, it drove an appealing course ...Read More

Architects of Memory, Karen Osborne (Tor 978-1-250-21547-5, $17.99, 352pp, tp) September 2020. Cover by Mike Heath.

Of late, my desire and ability to read fic­tion has been at a low ebb. In every pro­fessional reviewer’s career, there comes a point – or perhaps more than one – where much that is purported to be fresh and new seems to be tired, quotidian, even overdone; or worse, can’t hold a ...Read More

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, Tamsyn Muir (Subterranean Press 978-159606-992-3, $40.00, 200pp, hc) November 2020. Cover by Tristan Elwell.

Tamsyn Muir’s Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower did not leave me a happy reader. The author of Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth has, in this long novella from Subterranean Press, turned her attention from science fantasy and space necromancy to the fairy-tale-esque, in a story that ...Read More

Machine, Elizabeth Bear (Saga 978-1-5344-0301-7, $25.99, 460pp, hc) October 2020.

One thing about Elizabeth Bear’s Machine, the second novel set in her White Space universe after 2019’s Ancestral Night: it’s sure as hell not either shallow or amoral. It is, in fact, fundamentally engaged in wrestling with questions of ethics, culture, worldview, and how much restitution needs to be made when one does harm in order to ...Read More

The Emperor’s Wolves, Michelle Sagara (Mira 978-0-778-30991-8, $16.99, 516pp, tp) October 2020.

Let me confess: I hadn’t intended to read Michelle Sagara’s The Emperor’s Wolves for this month’s Locus. I could read it closer to its publication date, I thought – but I’d already read the first page, and oh, it turned out that I could really use an Elantra novel right then.

The Emperor’s Wolves is a prequel ...Read More

Girl, Serpent, Thorn, Melissa Bashardoust (Flat­iron Books 978-1-250-19614-9, $18.99, 328pp, hc) July 2020. Cover by Sasha Vinogradova.

Girl, Serpent, Thorn is Melissa Bashar­doust’s second novel, after 2017’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass. It’s a delight­ful and energetic book, one that effortlessly avoids any hint of a sophomore slump to present us with a vivid world, a compelling cast, and a narrative that managed to deftly surprise me ...Read More

Seven Devils, Elizabeth May & Laura Lam (DAW 978-0756415808, $26.00, 464pp, hc) August 2020.

I wanted to like Seven Devils a lot more than, it turns out, I actually did. The epic space-opera team-up from Laura Lam (author of Goldilocks and Shattered Minds ) and Elizabeth May (The Falconer, The Vanishing Throne, The Fallen Kingdom), Seven Devils is the opening novel in a longer series ...Read More

The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey 978-0593135051, $28.00, 336pp, hc) August 2020.

Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds is another book I have mixed feelings about. Not about its success: The Space Between Worlds is ambitious and largely accomplishes what it sets out to do. My mixed feelings are entirely down to whether or not I like it, and how to analyse what it’s doing, regardless of ...Read More

The Adventure of the Naked Guide, Cynthia Ward (Aqueduct Press 978-1619761797, $9.99, 116pp, tp) February 2020.

Five years ago, I would never have believed that I’d coincidentally read for review, back-to-back, four books, in every one of which there’s a romance between two women. But the increased frequency with which I read such books means that I no longer so desperately look for them to be good: I no ...Read More

The Memory of Souls, Jenn Lyons (Tor 978-1-250-17557-1, $27.99, 640pp, hc) August 2020.

Like The Obsidian Tower, Jenn Lyons’s The Memory of Souls (the third volume in her Chorus of Dragons quartet) focuses as much on individual characters and relationships as it does on the great events in which they are caught up. At the heart of this series is a strong suspicion towards power (either embodied in ...Read More

The Vanished Seas, Catherine Asaro (Baen 978-1-982-12471-7, $16.00, 320pp, tp). July 2020.

Catherine Asaro has been writing novels and shorter works set in her Skolian Empire since the publication of Primary Inversion in 1995. The latest is The Vanished Seas, third in a set of politically oriented mystery novels focussed on private investigator Bhaajan, a former major in the imperial military, whose history and connections with a local, ...Read More

The Obsidian Tower, Melissa Caruso (Orbit 978-0-316-42509-4 $16.99, 510pp, tp) June 2020. Cover by Peter Bollinger.

It’s interesting to have read Melissa Caruso’s The Obsidian Tower and Jenn Lyons’s The Memory of Souls very close together. Although these are structurally and stylistically very different novels – The Obsidian Tower opens a new trilogy from Caruso, narrated, like her earlier Tethered Mage trilogy, in a first-person voice, while The Memory ...Read More

Phoenix Extravagant, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris 978-1-78108-794-7, $24.99, 416pp, hc) October 2020.

Yoon Ha Lee is well known for his science fiction and his short fiction. His debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, won the 2017 Locus Award for Best First Novel, and was also nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke Awards. His second and third novels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, picked up Hugo nominations ...Read More