Please excuse my love of puns as I use this opportunity to shout: THIS BOOK IS AMAZING. PLEASE BUY THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY. IN FACT, BUY TWO. Thank you. It’s not just a pun that makes me want to yell about this book, though. Ring Shout is a magnificent, no-holds-barred triumph of a novel. P. Djèlí …
In 2020 perhaps more than all the other years combined I’ve wondered if being human was really such a good thing. Not that I have a choice in the matter. Does anyone? Well…maybe Natsuki, the protagonist of Earthlings, has an inkling. Natsuki, who we see as both a young girl and a grown woman at …
When you deal with bad people, sometimes there are no good choices. And if you keep dealing with them, well, you might just find it’s no longer about bad choices, but the choice to be bad. To be monstrous. Monstrousness has always been the heart of this trilogy, and the question of what makes a …
Kushiel’s Dart was published almost twenty years ago. In the decades since its release it has become a classic, spawning two sequels and half a dozen other books set in the world of Terre d’Ange. Full of the sinister, the sensual, the political, and the personal, Kushiel’s Dart centers on the remarkable story of Phèdre …
The Merciful Crow was one of my favorite debuts—favorite books, period—of 2019, and I’m overjoyed to find that the conclusion of Fie’s saga, The Faithless Hawk, is as original, emotional, dramatic, and insightful as her introduction. Fie has, against all odds, gotten Prince Jasimir and his bodyguard Tavin to safety. They are protected by an …
“So Shanna got a new job at the movie theater, we thought we’d play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead, and I’m really starting to feel kind of guilty about it all.” As first lines go, Stephen Graham Jones’s opener for Night of the Mannequins is pretty close to …
Rejoice! For the necromancers are back, and they are gayer than ever. Pansexual, polyamorous lusts and even a few chaste passions simmer beneath more layers of mystery and necromantic magic than ever before, and dear grim little Harrow is our guide. Which is both fortunate and challenging, because she’s going places you wouldn’t believe. No …
Emily Tesh has done it again. She’s taken old and frankly overused staples of the Western/English canon and imbued them with new vigor and fresh surprises. Fairies? Vampires? Why not both together, each in a new and mutually illuminating way? It’s madness, and it works. It works magnificently. Drowned Country is even more of a …
Flyaway is exquisite, exquisite, exquisite. Saying it once is not enough. And not just for emphasis: I’m hoping I can invoke even a fraction of the magic contained within Kathleen Jenning’s masterful little book. Bettina lives with her mother in sleepy serenity, venturing out from her just-so home and her fragrant garden only when necessary. …
I don’t really go in for short story collections and I don’t really like the original Alice or her twee wonderland. But ah, Christina Henry is such a master that I forget all about that when I read her work. These stories are interconnected novelettes, complex and complete unto themselves, but even better when taken …