Anthony Ryan’s Blood Song was one of those fantasy books I instantly fell in love with when I first got my hands on it, devouring it faster than a pizza in college, without that gross feeling afterward. So it’s difficult not to compare his subsequent books to it.  But, of course, when you love work …

In the Watchful City is an amazing novella, a stories-within-a-story narrative that unfolds and expands in bright fractals. We were lucky enough to be able to grab some of S. Qiouyi Lu’s time in advance of the book’s release on August 31 and ask her some questions about her work and philosophy What inspired this …

This September we say goodbye to Joe Abercrombie’s Circle of the World with the final book in The Age of Madness series, The Wisdom of Crowds. Before it releases though, let’s take a look back at where our main characters are after The Trouble with Peace.

I am not a Hemmingway fan but I have to appreciate his comment on sleep: “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” This feels extremely true sometimes, but in fiction, sleep isn’t always safe from disaster either. Here are 15 stories that feature strange relationships with …

How Kinch, our narrator, tells the story makes this novel so exceptional. It’s as if you’ve run into the thief at a tavern in this world, after the events of a series, and become drinking buddies with Kinch. Now, he’s telling you the whole story of how he ended up here in the first place as you pick up the next rounds of ale.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, the new novella from Becky Chambers, though obviously brief, is a complete meal: it has the rich depth of philosophical reflection, the acid brightness of humor, and the unfamiliar spices of a whole new planet. (Well, moon.) Most of all it is satisfying. This is the kind of book that …

I was on page 27 when I realized I didn’t want this book to end. That’s early even for a particularly great book, and this is truly a particularly great book. From the very first pages to its last, its greatness shines. Elfreda is a low-ranking sister in the ruling theocracy of Aytrium, a small …

Parenting is tough even in the best of times. When the cyberpunk distopia you’ve been escaping for the last thirteen years suddenly shows up on your door, you might start to wonder how far you’ll go to protect your kids. It’s a tale as old as time as we review Dryad on this episode of …

Is it weird to call a horror novel charming? Because Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is definitely charming. Disturbing, upsetting, and frightening yes, but it just starts out so endearingly, with a quirky little exchange about an antique apple peeler via emails. Agnes, a young woman trying to sell her family’s kitchen …

How important is a story to you? Important enough to hear? What about important enough to learn, so that you can tell it again? Is it important enough to preserve—important enough to write down, if you know how to write, important enough to recite if you can’t? Important enough to die for, to kill for? …