Anji Kills a King wastes absolutely no time. With a title like that there’s no reason to beat around the bush, but Evan Leikam doesn’t even bother with setting the scene before we’re watching Anji coping with cleanup and escape. It’s bold, it’s striking, and it makes for a pulse-pounding introduction to the land of …
Every time a new Robert Jackson Bennett book comes out, I read it way too fast and then feel something I mostly otherwise feel after eating an entire bag of Cadbury mini-eggs: not regret—never!—but longing to return to the start, to experience the whole thing over again. I want to have both the anticipation and …
It’s not really the done thing, but in talking about The River Has Roots, the first offering from Amal El-Mohtar since she co-authored This Is How You Lose the Time War with Max Gladstone, I have to first at least mention Margaret Atwood. Or really, I have to mention Atwood’s famous “Spelling” poem, which so …
Adam S. Leslie, you’ve written quite a book. Lost in the Garden is like a dream I had and forgot, and then Leslie went and excavated it. I don’t know how he did it, but this is whimsy without twee. It explodes the manic pixie dream girl trope without doing harm to the eponymous girl: …
You know the drill. You drew your weird cousin in the family Secret Santa, but all you know is she likes books, and now it’s too late and/or awkward to ask her for specific titles, because shouldn’t you know more about your own cousin? (No. She is full of secrets on purpose.) As a high-ranking …
Ever wanted to ride a hurricane without leaving your home? That’s kind of the experience of reading The Sky on Fire, both figuratively and, in a couple of instances, also literally. This is a pulse-pounding novel that never stops chasing bigger and bigger storms, beginning with a fugitive hunt but somehow escalating from there to …
We love to see a good old fashioned space spook-em-up. It’s the foundation of many, many franchises across all types of media, and Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes draws from these predecessors while still managing to tread new ground in a skin-crawlingly fun way. As Geekly Inc.’s resident mystery lover (really I just love to …
Anything Robert Jackson Bennett writes is an auto-buy from me, and even though I know to expect his typically stellar mix of action, characterization, and canny plotting, I’m always delightfully surprised by his ability to innovate within the fantasy genre. Previously in his Founders Trilogy, he managed to make computer and software engineering work in …
A perennial favorite meme in my household—now used as a shorthand in many gift-giving situations—is “I never understood the owls.” Reading The Parliament by Aimee Pokwatka is another perfect application of the meme, since who could ever really understand the sudden appearance of thousands of murderous owls? Yep, owls. The ancient symbols of wisdom that …
Oh, Murderbot. Truly you are the avatar of our age, unwilling though you may be to serve as a representative of anything human. Less an antihero than an anti-everything-up-to-and-including-heroes, Murderbot is once again in fine form for this seventh installation of its* anti-corporate adventures. Only this time, in Martha Wells’ System Collapse, the corporate system …