Look Back, Look Forward, Look Around
I have a list, every year, of books I wanted to read but for which I ran out of time. This year’s is even longer than usual (and it includes Nalo Hopkinson’s Blackheart Man, Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song, Sascha Stronach’s The Sunforge, August Clarke’s Metal From Heaven, and Justinian Huang’s The Emperor and the Endless Palace, to name ...Read More
Read moreThe 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
Read moreAnd the Mighty Will Fall, K.B. Wagers (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-311524-8, $19.99, 464pp, tp) November 2024.
And the Mighty Will Fall is K.B. Wagers’s tenth and latest space opera novel, the fourth book in the NeoG continuity after 2023’s The Ghosts of Trappist. And the Mighty Will Fall brings the action back to our solar system and the long-running conflict between advocates for an independent Mars and the central ...Read More
Read moreCountess, Suzan Palumbo (ECW Press 978-1770417571, $16.95, 168pp, tp) September 2024
Trinidadian-Canadian author Suzan Palumbo draws on Caribbean history, culture, and experience in her space opera novella Countess. Palumbo has been previously best known for short fiction: Her collection Skin Thief was published by Neon Hemlock Press in 2023.
As a novella, Countess is a mixed bag. Its first half is genuinely compelling, while its second feelts to me ...Read More
Read moreWooing 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
Read moreSargassa, 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
Read moreDemon 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
Read moreThe Nightward, R.S.A. Garcia (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-334575-1, $19.99, 448pp, tp) October 2024.
The Nightward is R.S.A. Garcia’s first traditionally published novel. From the outside, it looks like a work of epic fantasy in the classic mode, in which a small team of heroes must outwit and stand against a nebulously defined threat to all they know and love. A closer examination, however, finds it taking this classic form ...Read More
Read moreThe 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
Read moreAsunder, 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
Read moreA 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
Read moreThe 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
Read moreThe 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
Read moreLong Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan (Orbit 978-0-35652-249-4, £20.00, 440pp, hc) August 2024. Cover by Syd Mills.
Sarah Rees Brennan has had a varied and interesting career to date writing YA novels, including tie-ins for The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Fate: the Winx Saga in addition to her original work. Long Live Evil is her first novel aimed primarily at an adult audience. It is simultaneously a wholehearted ...Read More
Read moreThese 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
Read moreThe 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
Read moreThe Knife and the Serpent, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-1915202802, $18.99, 400pp, tp) June 2024.
Between Tim Pratt novels, I always forget just how unabashedly pulp he is as a writer. I say pulp as a compliment, not a criticism. Pratt has a gift for embracing the ridiculous and turning it into entertainment: playing the emotional field with seriousness while rolling around in weird and wacky SFFnal propositions. In ...Read More
Read moreFoul 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
Read moreLady Eve’s Last Con, Rebecca Fraimow (Solaris 978-1-83786-159-0, $16.99, 368pp, tp.) June 2024.
Lady Eve’s Last Con is Rebecca Fraimow’s debut novel, and what an interesting debut it is. Set in a far-future solar system in the glittering, elite high society of New Monte, it stars a small-time grifter who’s decided to run a long con for revenge, only to find herself falling for her mark’s half-sister.
Ruthi Johnson ...Read More
Read moreIn the Shadow of the Ship, Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-147-8, $40.00, 96pp, hc) September 2024. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri.
In the Shadow of the Ship is the latest Xuya universe story from Aliette de Bodard. A short novella or a long novelette, it clocks in at around 90 pages of text, and it has many of the elements I’ve come to expect from de Bodard: elders who ...Read More
Read moreRoad 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
Read moreNecrobane, 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
Read moreNavigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom 978-1-25032-488-7, $20.99, 176pp, hc) July 2024.
With Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard flexes her space opera muscles in a slightly different direction, in a universe that draws as much on the ‘‘cultivation fantasy’’ of xiānxiá as on the atmosphere and aesthetics that underpin her Xuya universe novels. Navigational Entanglements opens new vistas in a world where space travel is accomplished through the ...Read More
Read moreThe 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
Read moreA 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
Read moreCascade Failure, L.M. Sagas (Tor 978-1-25087-125-1, $17.99, 416pp, tp) March 2024.
Clearly this is the month for me to discuss debut novels. Cascade Failure is the first novel from L.M. Sagas: a science fiction adventure in the high-octane tradition. Stories set in futures ruled by soulless corporations have multiplied in recent years, perhaps as the naked greed of unfettered capitalism has grown more blatant since the decade-defining financial crash ...Read More
Read moreSomeone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW 978-0-75641-885-4, $28.00, 320pp, hc.) April 2024.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In is award-winning short fiction writer John Wiswell’s debut novel. I went in expecting good things, and I wasn’t disappointed. The most straightforward shorthand I have to describe it is: ‘‘It’s as if T. Kingfisher wrote one of her fantasy romance novels from the point of view ...Read More
Read moreThe Principle of Moments, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson (Gollancz 978-1-47323-419-2, £18.99, 520pp, hc.) January 2024.
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson’s The Principle of Moments, the debut original novel from the first winner of the UK’s Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy & Science Fiction Writers of Colour (in 2020), feels like an answer to the question of: What happens if you cross Star Wars with Doctor Who? And then make it queer (queerer ...Read More
Read moreFathomfolk, 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
Read moreThe 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
Read moreLooking Back on 2023 by Liz Bourke
If there’s a theme that unites the books I enjoyed reading most this year, it’s power, violence, and survival. The damage that violence inflicts on those who suffer it, and those who wield it, and the ambiguities and challenges inherent in the ethical uses of power.
Of course, some of them were also just plain fun.
Three books stand out most. One is ...Read More
Read moreAll the Hidden Paths, Foz Meadows (Tor 978-1-250-82930-6, $29.99, 520pp, hc) December 2023. Cover by Micaela Alcaino.
Foz Meadows’s All the Hidden Paths is a direct sequel to their A Strange and Stubborn Endurance. Velasin and Caethari have survived the plot against their diplomatic marriage, though it cost the lives of Caethari’s father and his sister Laecia. Their newlywed status and tentative happiness, however, is about to run ...Read More
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