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cover of alien clay by tchaikovsky
Books Reviews 

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky: Review by Russell Letson

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Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK 978-1035013746, £16.99, 400pp, hc) March 2024. (Orbit US 978-0316578974 , $19.99, 432pp, tp) September 2024. Cover by Lauren Panepinto.

In Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky continues to build fantastical worlds on sturdy non-fantastic-fictional foundations. Where the secondary-world fantasies of The City of Last Chances and House of Open Wounds make use of occupied-city (say, Alan Furst’s The World at Night) or comic-ironic ...Read More

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Hampton Heights by Dan Kois: Review by Gabino Iglesias

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Hampton Height, Dan Kois (Harper Perennial 978-0-06335-875-1, $16.99, 208pp, tp) September 2024. Cover by Jackie Alvarado

Dan Kois’s Hampton Heights: One Har­rowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is very much like its title in that it shouldn’t work, but it somehow does. Entertaining, touching, and funnier than I expected, this short novel about a group of kids spending a night trying to sell newspaper subscriptions in ...Read More

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The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball: Review by Ian Mond

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The Repeat Room, Jesse Ball (Catapult 978-1-64622-140-0, 256pp, $27.00, hc) Cover by Sara Wood. September 2024.

I first came across Jesse Ball back in 2007 when his debut, Samedi the Deafness, was shortlisted for the Believer Book Award (a terrific prize that introduced me to authors as varied as Bennett Sims, Keith Ridgway, Valeria Luiselli, and Danielle Dutton. I miss it… and the magazine). I bought the novel ...Read More

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The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister: Review by Jake Casella Brookins

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The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint 978-1-64009-662-2, $28.00, 336pp, hc) October 2024. Cover by Nicole Caputo.

Isolated on their West Virginia estate, the five Haddesley siblings have a troubled and trou­bling relationship with their magical heritage. Charlie, the next in line to be patriarch, has been severely injured by a falling tree, and doubts his ability to fulfill his part of the bargain with the bog that supports and ...Read More

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Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud: Review by Gabino Iglesias

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Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud (Nightfire 978-1-25029-173-8, $17.99, 85pp, tp) August 2024. Cover by Sam Araya.

Nathan Ballingrud is one of the finest purveyors of speculative fiction working today, and Crypt of the Moon Spider, the first book in what will be The Lunar Gothic Trilogy, further cements him as one of the strongest voices in the field. Wonderfully atmospheric and very strange, Crypt of the ...Read More

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The City in Glass by Nghi Vo: Review by Liz Bourke

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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

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Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Fu­ture of Art edited by Indrapramit Das: Review by Niall Harrison

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Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Fu­ture of Art, Indrapramit Das, ed. (The MIT Press 978-0-26254-908-0, 229pp, $24.95, tp). October 2024. Cover art by Diana Scherer.

Of the ten stories collected in Deep Dream that aim to, as editor Indrapramit Das has it, “both embody and visualize the future of art,” only one offers an explicit definition of what art might be. Many millennia in the future, the twinned ...Read More

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Bringer of Dust by J.M. Miro: Review by Alex Brown

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Bringer of Dust, J.M. Miro (Flatiron Books 978-1-25083-383-9, $29.99. 608pp, hc) September 2024. Cover by Keith Hayes.

Bringer of Dust, the second doorstopper of a novel in J.M. Miro’s The Talents Trilogy, picks up not long after the events of the first book, Ordinary Monsters. Several adults, beloved and despised, and children, in­nocent and manipulated, lost their lives in the course of the first book, sometimes due ...Read More

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The Wilding by Ian McDonald: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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The Wilding, Ian McDonald (Gollancz 978-1-39961-147-3, £25.00, 314pp, hc) September 2024.

Ian McDonald may be one of the most accom­plished SF writers of his generation, but he isn’t particularly known for horror – though that may change with the very creepy ecologi­cal fable The Wilding. I’m using “creepy” in a quite literal sense here: There’s a lot of creeping going on. A project to restore and “rewild” a ...Read More

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The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton: Review by Colleen Mondor

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The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, India Holton (Berkley 978-0-593-54728-1, $19.00, tp, 384pp) July 2024.

Romantasy is a subgenre getting considerable attention and India Holton enters the field with a new series, that is a lot of fun. The first book, The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, introduces two academics, Beth Pickering and Devon Lock­ley, who specialize in the study and, if necessary, capture of thaumaturgic birds. These ...Read More

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Kree by Manuela Draeger: Review by Jake Casella Brookins

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Kree, Manuela Draeger (University of Min­nesota Press 978-1-51791-512-4, $21.95, 280pp, tp) October 2024.

Manuela Draeger’s Kree is so immedi­ately violent that I wasn’t sure it was going to be for me. Somehow, though, within just a few chapters, the novel’s mix of haunting imagery and almost humorous un­predictability grew so compelling that I found myself wanting to track down everything else the author has written. A midapocalyptic story set ...Read More

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Drill by Scott R. Jones: Review by Gabino Iglesias

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Drill, Scott R. Jones (Word Horde 978-1-95625-209-5, $19.99, 256pp, tp) August 2024. Cover by Matthew Revert.

Sometimes you’re reading a book and suddenly ask yourself, “What the hell am I reading?” This can be a bad thing or an excellent thing. In the case of Scott R. Jones’s Drill, it’s the latter. Slightly surreal, angry, smart, Lovecraftian, chaotic, and written with the kind of prose that dances between ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg: Review by Ian Mond

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State of Paradise, Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-37461-220-7, $27.00, 224pp, hc) July 2024.

I move from one instance of weird Florida (Area X is a distorted version of North Florida) to another: Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise. I’d say that reading VanderMeer and van den Berg back-to-back (alliterative surnames aside) is a remarkable coincidence, except that Florida, to outsiders such as myself, has ...Read More

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Smothermoss by Alisa Alering: Review by Colleen Mondor

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Smothermoss, Alisa Alering (Tin House 978-1-959-03058-4, $17.95, tp, 256pp) July 2024.

Alisa Alering’s debut novel Smothermoss is a master class in conveying both a physically and psychologically oppressive atmosphere. Set in a small rural Appalachian town in the early 1980s, the novel follows the tough adventures of sisters Sheila and Angie. At seventeen years old, Sheila is acutely aware of her ‘‘otherness,’’ a kid all too often bullied and ...Read More

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The Ancients by John Larison : Review by Paul Di Filippo

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The Ancients, John Larison (Viking 978-0593831168, hardcover, 400pp, $30.00) October 2024

Writers from outside our genre seem to have fixed upon four major themes or topics that they find congenial to their arguably more “literary” way of writing.

Time travel. Robots and Androids. Dystopias. And Apocalypse or After the Collapse scenarios.

You don’t see many “mainstream” folks writing about, say, “talking squids in outer space,” or starship troopers or ...Read More

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Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison: Review by Niall Harrison

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Wish I Was Here, M. John Harrison (Serpent’s Tail 978-1-80081-297-0, £16.99, 224pp, hc) May 2023. (Saga Press 978-1-66806-304-0, 224pp, $26.99, hc). September 2024.

It’s hard to know where to start writing about a book that knows exactly what it is and knows that knowledge doesn’t help much. “When [a piece of writing] has been assembled like this one,” writes M. John Harrison, “from so many layers of your life… ...Read More

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The City in Glass by Nghi Vo: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 978-1250348272, $24.99, 224pp), October 2024.

Nghi Vo is full of surprises. I suppose one could argue that her first novel, the Gatsbyesque The Chosen and the Beautiful, and her second, the very different Hollywood fantasy historical The Siren Queen, had a few things in common – like early 20th-century American settings and the classic themes of the need for acceptance ...Read More

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A Jura for Julia by Ken MacLeod: Review by Niall Harrison

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A Jura for Julia, Ken MacLeod (NewCon Press 978-1-91495-383-5, 220pp, £26.99, hc) August 2024. Cover by Fangorn.

I don’t think it’s entirely unrecognised that one of the most notable qualities of Ken MacLeod’s fic­tion is its dry humour, but I’m not sure it’s much discussed. So here’s a moment from “The Shadow Ministers”, one of a baker’s dozen of enjoyable stories collected in A Jura for Julia, that ...Read More

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The Tongue Trade by Michael J. Martineck: Review by Paul Di Filippo

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The Tongue Trade, Michael J. Martineck (Edge 978-1770532410, hardcover, 224pp, $34.95) October 2024

Michael Martineck has had the kind of respectable bubbling-under career that many writers enjoy—but which they also might ambitiously seek to surpass. (Has any writer ever been truly satisfied with his or her current status?) He sold his first story in 1999, then several novels, with the most recent being The Link Boy in 2017. Good ...Read More

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Ultra 85 by Logic: Review by Ian Mond

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Ultra 85, Logic (Simon & Schuster 978-1-98215-827-9, $18.99, 304pp, tp) September 2024.

I’d never heard of the rapper Logic (AKA Sir Robert Bryson Hall II) or his work (both musi­cal and literary) until I was sent a copy of Ultra 85. That’s not an indictment of Logic but instead speaks to my narrow, stunted musical tastes. Ultra 85 is Logic’s sophomore effort, the follow-up to his debut Supermarket ...Read More

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Nether Station by Kevin J. Anderson: Review by Paul Di Filippo

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Nether Station, Kevin J. Anderson (Blackstone 979-8200688449, hardcover, 316pp, $27.99) October 2024

The crew of a small survey spaceship voyages out to investigate a spacetime anomaly, and encounters deadly supernatural (?) entities. Am I about to take a second pass at reviewing Adam Roberts’s recent Lake of Darkness? Not at all! But by phrasing the plot of that novel generically, I can point out that although certain adjacent ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky: Review by Niall Harrison

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Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK 978-1035013746, 400pp, £16.99, hc) March 2024. (Orbit US 978-0316578974 , $19.999, 432pp, tp) September 2024. Cover by Lauren Panepinto.

Sometimes the way into a story is through another story. Probably the most familiar route is through a genealogical relationship, in which a new story attempts to extend or argue with an old one: All those works unpicking the cold equations or at­tempting to ...Read More

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The Great When by Alan Moore: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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The Great When, Alan Moore (Bloomsbury 978-1-63557-884-3, $29.99, 336pp, hc) October 2024.

By now there are so many mystical-magical ‘‘hidden London’’ novels that it’s getting hard to keep up – though admittedly there’s something delicious about the notion that in any great city, you’re only being shown what they want you to see, with the real city available only at certain access points for certain chosen adventurers. In his ...Read More

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Dakini Atoll by Nikhil Singh: Review by Nedine Moonsamy

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Dakini Atoll, Nikhil Singh (Luna Press Publishing 978-1-91555-634-9, £22.99, 252pp, hc) June 2024. Cover by Elena Romenkova.

Nikhil Singh has carved out a niche within African SF by bringing the full range of his artistic talents into play in his worldbuild­ing. The dystopian underworlds explored in his earlier works create the unique effect of falling into a sensorial swamp, an enticing feature that is only enhanced in Singh’s third ...Read More

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The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball: Review by Jake Casella Brookins

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The Repeat Room, Jesse Ball (Catapult 978-1-64622-140-0, 256pp, $27.00, hc) Cover by Sara Wood. September 2024.

We have such a cornucopia of dystopias right now, fictional and otherwise, that they’ve really got to do something different to catch my attention. The Repeat Room, the latest novel from the prolific Jesse Ball, captured it thoroughly: haunting, spare, and inventive, it’s a bleak tale that’s nonetheless rich with sparkling turns ...Read More

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The Mercy of God by James S.A. Corey: Review by Russell Letson

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The Mercy of Gods, James S.A. Corey (Orbit 978-0-31652-557-2, $30.00, 423 pp, hc) August 2024.

The longer I review science fiction, the more I notice how it much it depends on recycling tropes – not just repeating but extending and varying and inverting them – and, I suspect, refitting them to reflect current anxieties or hopes, conscious or not. This time the recognition lights have been set flashing by ...Read More

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The City in Glass by Nghi Vo: Review by Jake Casella Brookins

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The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom 978-1250348272, $24.99, 224pp), October 2024.

If you’ve read any of Nghi Vo’s earlier work, you already know that she’s a writer to watch – a masterful stylist with a flair for bringing together magical premises, subtle anthropological worldbuilding, and deep wells of mythic imagery and themes. If you haven’t, Vo’s newest, The City in Glass, is not at all a bad ...Read More

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Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet by Molly Morris: Review by Colleen Mondor

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Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet, Molly Morris (Wednesday 978-1-250-29006-9, $20.00, 336pp, hc) June 2024.

The town of Lennon, California has a secret that only the residents (and a few chosen former residents) can know. The Welcome Back contest allows the townspeople to nominate someone to come back from the dead for 30 days. This year, Wilson Moss has won, and that means her friend Annie is returning, but ...Read More

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Model Home by Rivers Solomon: Review by Gary K. Wolfe

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Model Home, Rivers Solomon (MCD 978-0-374-60713-5, $28.00, 304pp, hc) October 2024.

“Everyone believes in haunted houses,” says Ezri, the narrator of Rivers Solomon’s Model Home, and who’s to argue? Based on the resurgence of the theme in the past couple of years alone, it’s proved to be not only a durable framework for supernatural shenanigans, but a kind of magical mirror for all sorts of issues ranging from ...Read More

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Asunder by Kerstin Hall: Review by Liz Bourke

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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

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The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca: Review by Niall Harrison

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The Jaguar Mask, Michael J. DeLuca (Stelliform 978-1-77809-260-2, 348pp, $19.00, tp) August 2024. Cover by Julia Louise Pereira.

The story of The Jaguar Mask does not start on the first page, in which the artist Cristina Ramos relives the murder of her mother in a garish vision – four tattooed mareros with machine pistols, haloed by angels of death, gunning down two government employees, a foreign lobbyist, and Eufemia ...Read More

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Napalm in the Heart by Pol Guasch: Review by Ian Mond

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Napalm in the Heart, Pol Guasch (Faber & Fa­ber UK 978-0571375257, £6.99, 256pp, hc) July 2024. (FSG Originals 978-0-37461-295-5, $18.00, 256pp, tp) August 2024.

Reading Pol Guasch’s debut, Napalm in the Heart, right after Helen Phillips’ Hum is a disorientat­ing experience. Both authors present us with dystopias, but while Phillips cleaves to our reality, Guasch gives us something more symbolic and experimental, a dystopia unmoored from time and ...Read More

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