Locus Online

The Witch Roads, Kate Elliott (Tor 978-1-250-33861-7, $29.99, 448pp, hc) June 2025. Cover by Raja Nandepu.

For the last several years, one thing has become apparent: Kate Elliott has levelled up her writing game from its pre-existing heights, and dedicated herself to writing absolute bangers. Unconquerable Sun is ambitious and appealing epic space opera; Furious Heaven, its sequel, ups the level of ambition and political so­phistication with astonishing ...Read More

Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction, Paul Kincaid (Briardene, £22.00, tp) April 2025. Cover by Tom Joyes.

Clear-eyed. That’s how I would describe the work of Paul Kincaid. There are other words I could use: engaging, intelligent, rigorous. All are accurate. But clear-eyed sits at the top of the list. Since first encountering Kincaid’s criticism online over two decades ago (whether on Strange Horizons or, his now-defunct LiveJournal ...Read More

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, Malka Older (Tor 978-0-76538-459-1, $28.99, 256pp, hc) June 2025. Cover by Christine Foltzer.

In The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, the third Mossa and Pleiti adventure from Malka Older, the pair confront more academic bad behaviour, struggle with their relationship, and deal with consequences of their previous adventures. It’s worth reading the first two books in this series to fully grasp those consequences and ...Read More

Written on the Dark, Guy Gavriel Kay (Ace 978-0593953983, $29.00, 400pp, hc) May 2025.

For the first-time reader, there comes a point in almost every Guy Gavriel Kay novel where you need to decide on your own personal reading strategy: Am I going to approach this as historical fiction with a twist of fantasy, or as fantasy overlaid on an historical template? For readers of the first sort, especially ...Read More

Casual, Koji A. Dae (Tenebrous 978-1-95979-029-7, $19.99. 254pp, tp) February 2025.

I love a story that leaves you with more questions than answers. I’ve sat with Koji A. Dae’s new novel Casual for a few days now and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it. And I mean that in a good way.

The eponymous “Casual” is an immersive game. For most people, it’s simply a ...Read More

Welcome back for another New Books video for May 20th, 2025! We’re going over our picks for the best new releases in the Horror, Scifi, Fantasy, and YA fields! We upload regularly, so come back the YouTube channel and subscribe to keep up-to-date on future releases!

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/6/25 Diabolical Plots 2/25

Beneath Ceaseless Skies celebrated February with two issues that featured decidedly grim stories themed around family, duty, and death. In Nne Ukwu & Somto Ihezue’s “Into Duty, Into Long­ing, Into Sparrows” a young woman whose mother died birthing her is brought by her com­munity to prepare for her adult life as a wife and mother. The ritual is supposed to ...Read More

The Martian Contingency, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor 978-1-2502-3705-7, $18.99, 400 pp, tp) March 2025.

My response to a new Mary Robinette Kowal book is similar to my response to a new John Scalzi title: I resist the first few chapters (even though I know they will be well-crafted) and then find myself completely sucked in.

The reasons for my resistance differs, however. With Scalzi, I have to suspend my ...Read More

Vanishing World, Sayaka Murata (Grove Press 978-0-8021-6366-7, $28.00, 233pp, hc) April 2025.

So I turned to Vanishing World in the hopes of finding something that would refuse my subcon­scious’s attempts to read through the lens of cur­rent events, and more or less succeeded. Sayaka Murata’s third novel in English is a cunning inversion of her first. Both novels have a kind of thought-experiment clarity to them; both are streamlined ...Read More

All Better Now, Neal Shusterman (Simon & Schuster 978-1-534-43275-8, $21.99 528pp, hc) February 2025.

Powerhouse author Neal Shusterman has a new whopper (528 pages!) of a book for teens that takes his readers on a journey both geographical and philosophical. Shusterman’s fans, of which he has many, will certainly be eager to embrace All Better Now, but as a YA answer to Stephen King’s The Stand, it ...Read More

Welcome back for another weekly video on our picks for the top new SF, Fantasy, Horror, and YA releases! We post regularly and don’t want you to miss out, so come by our channel and subscribe to keep up-to-date on future releases and support what we do!