Artificial intelligence holds only so much power in the year 2024. Sure, it could help improve your cover letter or maybe suggest a better pumpkin pie recipe. But it doesn’t nurture human life. The future may be quite different, with a million harmonious systems calibrating and updating and sustaining whatever remains of our species. But what happens when the systems that serve us begin to erode? Erika Swyler ponders such a future in her thoughtful speculative novel We Lived on the Horizon.
The walled city of Bulwark protects one of the final pockets of humanity from an unlivable Earth. Controlled by a citywide AI system, the city is a near-conscious network of interconnected systems and data. Bulwark’s citizens survive in comfort or squalor based on how much their ancestors gave to the greater good, with the city’s elite, known as the Sainted, living lavishly. But when one of the Sainted is murdered in his home and all the data records are erased, Enita Malovis and her house AI system, Nix, sense something terrible is happening to Bulwark. Systems are quietly shutting down or failing to respond. Can they find out who, or what, is suppressing the truth?
AI systems take center stage in We Lived on the Horizon, and Swyler gives spectacular voice to these nonliving entities. Lines of code hint at emotion with small color changes; long database query times with no responses suggest recalcitrance or confusion. These passages are some of the most interesting and innovative in the novel, and Swyler deliberately paces her story to stretch them to their fullest potential. Moral reflections on the relationship between humanity and machines drive Enita and Nix’s ever-evolving relationship as she tries—literally—to make him human.
Lovers of Octavia Butler or Mary Shelley will easily see We Lived on the Horizon’s direct descent from such literary giants. The novel’s core, however, feels timely and urgent, wondrous and inventive. It’s a marvel and a triumph. At its conclusion, I felt a twinge of dread as I contemplated what our own creations may do to try to sustain us.
Timely and urgent, wondrous and inventive, We Lived on the Horizon is a fascinating mystery set in a city run by AI.
Just before K.B. Wagers’ latest military sci-fi novel, And the Mighty Will Fall, takes off at warp speed, we’re met with a short but important epigraph. “It is the mission of the Near-Earth Orbital Guard to ensure the safety and security of the Sol system and the space around any additional planets that human beings call home.” And with that, we’re launched into a tense struggle that’s about to play out at an electric pace above a colonized Mars. Hang on tight—we’re in for some chop.
Commander Maxine Carmichael, a highly decorated NeoG officer, lands aboard the Mars Orbital Station (MOS). Today, her commanding officer, Admiral Ford, will transfer the MOS from NeoG control to Mars Civilian Command. The people of Mars deserve to maintain the highly strategic station, which controls all traffic to and from the cities of the planet. But just as Max makes her way to the observation deck, everything goes to hell. Klaxons blare, lights flash and there’s gunfire coming from the docking bay. Someone is seizing control of the station in its most vulnerable moment. But who? And why?
In the fourth entry to their NeoG series, Wagers absolutely hits the gas. The pace is fast and sharp, perspectives whipping from Max and her attempt to evade capture on the MOS to various NeoG commanders and other groups coordinating a response in real time. It’s a hostage situation in space, with various muddled motivations slowly uncovered as the crisis continues. Like Bruce Willis sneaking through the air ducts in Nakatomi Plaza, Max serves as a stalwart heroine, focused and capable. But fear not: Jenks, Sapphi, D’Arcy, Nika and more names familiar to series regulars all play a part in the rescue operation.
For those like me who have not read a NeoG novel before, the book includes a helpful list of characters, which was a necessary reference early on. But even while I was still getting up to speed with the world and its players, the sheer force of the story drove me to ignore any momentary confusion. This is a razor’s-edge action caper, satisfying throughout. Get ready for a heck of a ride.
K.B. Wager’s fourth NeoG novel is a razor’s-edge action caper set on a station orbiting Mars—Die Hard, but in space.
Comforting, kindhearted and soulful, Julie Leong’s The Teller of Small Fortunes offers a welcome reprieve from the dreary and violent stab-a-thons that often dominate the fantasy genre. Pull up a chair, grab your favorite mug and sink into this lovely debut’s warm embrace.
Tao, a fortune teller from the Empire of Shinara, loves her life of solitude. Crisscrossing the neighboring kingdom of Eshtera with her covered wagon and faithful mule, she makes a living telling small fortunes wherever she goes. You may be wondering, “What is a small fortune?” Well, Tao can tell when the spring rains will come, how many calves will be born this year or when the inn’s common room will be full again. However, when one of her fortunes reveals a missing girl is still alive, Tao finds herself enlisted to help Mash, the girl’s ex-mercenary father, and his similarly reformed companion, former thief Silt, track her down. But what about Tao’s coveted peace and quiet? Being alone is the only way she can keep her secret safe, because Tao can tell big fortunes: ones that can hurt people. As their journey continues, Tao must decide how much to tell her companions about her true powers, even as time runs short to help an innocent in need.
In The Teller of Small Fortunes, Leong paints with primary colors, leaving very few shadows in her portrait of friendship and family. Each member of Tao’s party has distinct regrets and murky pasts, but these backgrounds simply reveal how the characters will heal one another. Leong homes in on small moments, carefully calibrating each step toward trust and companionship. But that is not to say that The Teller of Small Fortunes does not have tension. The party’s mission to find the lost girl is not without real pain. But always there is a sense of peace, that whatever happens, the group will endure and grow.
If you’re looking for an epic told at the end of a bloody sword, this one may not be for you. But in between all the hacking and slashing, sometimes you find yourself in need of a pleasant diversion. Sweet-natured and therapeutic, The Teller of Small Fortunes is the perfect pick for such times. It feels like coming home.
Sweet-natured and therapeutic, Julie Leong’s The Teller of Small Fortunes is cozy fantasy done right.
In his expansive and ambitious new novel, The Great When, Alan Moore pens a love letter to art, literature and London that’s sure to capture readers’ imaginations.
After the end of World War II, little in London remains intact. Lowly bookshop worker Dennis Knuckleyard strives to survive amid the rubble while running errands for his boss, Coffin Ada. Dennis doesn’t have a lot to hope for besides making a few pence here and there, getting a fresh meal at some point, and trying not to get tangled up in anything that could get him killed. If only it were that easy. On a routine job to buy some new inventory, Dennis finds a book that shouldn’t exist. But Dennis doesn’t know that the book is a key of sorts that reveals a truth hidden in plain sight: There’s another London, a parallel city full of mystery and magic and wonder. The book belongs there, in the Great When, as it’s called, and Dennis must return it before it costs him his life.
A veteran writer who penned some of the most important comics and graphic novels ever created (Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta), Alan Moore is well-known for his ability to spin a good yarn. He illuminates every little detail of a London reeling from the end of the war, and his joy in doing so is palpable; this book is as much a celebration of our London as it is the creation of a new one. Characters are so vividly rendered that you can practically see them in full-color illustrations: Murderous mob bosses, beguiling dames, dashing lawyers and crackpot magicians all leap off the page with an extra dash of liveliness.
Moore is an excellent wordsmith, but he can sometimes get ahead of himself, and the sheer volume of similes and metaphors can bog his writing down. But stay attuned, and you’ll get sucked in. Readers seeking big ideas and colorful splashes of language will love exploring The Great When—and look forward to future entries in the Long London series.
Readers seeking big ideas and colorful splashes of language will love exploring Alan Moore’s two parallel Londons in The Great When.
You might think you know what to expect from a book titled Voyage of the Damned. Author Frances White, I’m sure, will be pleased to upend your expectations. Murder, mystery and magic await, but there’s also a generous helping of humor, and an unforgettable narrator, too. Title be damned, this utter joy of a read would be Agatha Christie’s favorite fantasy.
To say that Ganymedes Piscero is a bit of an underachiever is putting it very nicely. To be fair, it’s easy to be an underachiever when your province is the butt of every joke in Concordia. At least he’s one of the Blessed, the heirs to the empire’s 12 provinces. Maybe the upcoming boat trip around the realm will bring him closer to the other Blessed aboard. They’re a varied group of characters, each of them possessing a secret magical talent, and Ganymedes has been more than happy to play the class clown for years. But when one of the Blessed turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, Ganymedes finds himself needing to be something he’s never been before: brave. Can he find the murderer and save the rest of the heirs aboard before it’s too late?
At times, fans of the genre can forget how important it is for a fantasy story to be fun. From start to finish, Voyage of the Damned proves just how pivotal a sense of joy can be. Ganymedes is one of the most entertaining narrators in years, full of snarky comebacks and nuanced layers. The mystery elements are sturdily crafted, and surprises abound. There are moments of intense emotion, as befits the subject matter, but White unleashes Ganymedes’ laugh-out-loud humor often, lightening the mood when the going gets rough.
Voyage of the Damned would make a fantastic travel book, sure to keep you reading even as your journeys distract you. Thanks to its mix of murder and mystery, even readers who are new to fantasy will find it impossible to put down. Climb aboard, watch your back and enjoy this juicy caper.
Despite its ominous title, Voyage of the Damned, Frances White’s fantasy-mystery hybrid, is an utter joy.
Alien abduction gets a bad rap. It usually goes like this: One kooky neighbor gets beamed up into a flying saucer and returns to earth different, full of interstellar knowledge. But what if the scale was bigger . . . a lot bigger? What if the aliens came to take us all away? In their massive novel The Mercy of Gods, the author duo known as James S.A. Corey takes the term “survival of the fittest” to a whole new level.
On the far-flung planet of Anjiin, Dafyd Alkhor has it pretty good. He may be a lowly research assistant, but he’s a part of the most prestigious scientific team in the academy. Renown and glory await, but then things take a bit of a turn. Seventeen shining alien starships appear in the sky, rapidly subdue human resistance and abduct the best and brightest to be brought back to the alien homeworld. These aliens, the Carryx, have conquered and assimilated numerous species into their society over the centuries, building a veritable empire across galactic space. But even a species as powerful as the Carryx has an enemy that threatens to destroy them. Dafyd and his team are soon caught in a dangerous game: Find a way to help the Carryx defeat their foe or be discarded as unuseful. After all, for the Carryx, usefulness is survival.
Corey demonstrates a key skill when it comes to expansive sci-fi: balance. No single part of The Mercy of Gods feels unattended to, and details arise on the page just as the reader wonders about them. When the humans are trapped in their holding cells on the alien ship, Corey explains how the aliens account for food, water and other needs. He clearly loves dreaming up all the smart and sometimes grotesque ways one species might attempt to care for another. The interpersonal relationships of Dafyd’s research team are similarly balanced: The shifting, intimate perspectives from various members of the team bring readers close to the pain that would come with such an upheaval.
Corey is the author of The Expanse, an acclaimed sci-fi series that subsequently became an acclaimed TV show. As one would expect from such an accomplished writer, there’s a confidence present throughout The Mercy of Gods: It’s alternately thrilling, intimate, thought-provoking and inventive. In this first installment of a new series, Corey deftly creates a new universe of alien strangeness for humans to test themselves against. I’m excited to see how far we can go in future entries.
Thrilling, intimate, thought-provoking and inventive, The Mercy of Gods is a well-crafted start to a new sci-fi series from the author of The Expanse.
Jared Pechacek’s The West Passage is a medieval(ish) fantasy novel awash in dualities. It’s richly detailed, but often lonely and stark. It’s whimsical, bordering on silly, before turning grotesque and haunting. It speeds up without warning, then slows down to closely examine some new oddity. The West Passage is consistently wondrous; the reader turns each page knowing they will encounter something wholly new.
Five towers rise from a massive palace, each one home to an ancient Lady. These giant beings, full of mysterious power, rule over the people who live there like beekeepers tending a hive. But not in Grey Tower, where the last Lady has long since died. All that remains are the women of Grey Tower, left to tend to a decaying fortress and observe their rituals even as their numbers dwindle. When the guardian of Grey Tower dies, two young apprentices’ journeys begin. Pell, the women’s apprentice, searches to find out why winter covers Grey Tower even in spring. Meanwhile, the guardian’s apprentice, Kew, must relay his mistress’ final, ominous message to Black Tower: The Beast, an eternal evil, stirs in the West Passage. If the Beast returns, the palace’s very existence will be in jeopardy. Can these two youths find the answers and save their world before the cataclysm?
The setting of The West Passage is as much a character as Pell and Kew. Following in the footsteps of Lewis Carroll, Pechacek has built a universe unique in modern fantasy. Solemnity and absurdity abound in equal measure: Bodies are given to the birds rather than being buried, and an eccentric schoolteacher tries to teach apes how to read and write. Strange things, lovely things and horrific things all blend together in a fable-like narrative of deceptive simplicity. It’s exciting to get lost in a world like this and be surprised and unsettled again and again. The West Passage deserves a chance to spellbind you: Dive headfirst into the rabbit hole.
Jared Pechacek’s The West Passage is consistently wondrous; in this experimental fantasy, the reader turns each page knowing they will encounter something wholly new.
I know what you’re thinking. It’s the first thing I thought when I picked up P. Djeli Clark’s heart-pounding and quick-witted new fantasy, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins: “What the heck is a dead cat tail assassin?” Thankfully, the author gives us some explanation in the opening lines. “The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats. Nor do they have tails. But they are most assuredly dead.” Maybe that doesn’t clear up all of your questions. But if you’re like me, it’s more than enough to draw you into this fun, fast thriller that’s well worth your time.
Eveen the Eviscerator is dead. Specifically, undead. Brought back from the grave with no memory of her past life, she’s the city of Tal Abisi’s deadliest contract killer. She’s efficient, professional and full of deserved swagger. Being undead brings some distinct perks, too. She’s faster, stronger and better than any mark of hers could ever be. When Eveen comes face-to-face with her latest target, a girl named Sky, she knows something is wrong: The goddess of assassins forbids killing kids. But that’s the least of Eveen’s worries. Sky’s face sparks a memory, something an undead assassin isn’t supposed to have. Who is this girl and why was Eveen contracted to kill her? It’s a race against time to find the answers because if Eveen doesn’t kill her mark in 24 hours, the rest of the Dead Cat Tail Assassins will come for her, ready to hunt one of their own.
In a genre dominated by long, epic fantasies, the under 300-page Dead Cat Tail Assassins is a breath of fresh air. From the first chapter, Clark gets right to the point, then picks up the pace and never slows down. Eveen’s desperation drives the urgency of the prose, each complementing the other. Snappy, sometimes hilarious dialogue keeps things light, and the simple, clear problems facing the lead characters work with the pacing rather than against it. However, the conspiracy that brings Eveen and Sky together is very cleverly constructed, and Clark doesn’t skimp on atmosphere, world building or any of the other goodies fantasy fans expect. He cuts out anything unnecessary in order to focus on his heroines and their journey. Eveen and Sky might be in a race against time, but you’ll wish their quest would go on forever.
In a genre dominated by long, epic fantasies, P. Djèlí Clark’s The Dead Cat Tail Assassins is a breath of fresh air.
In S.A. Barnes’ slow-simmering creepfest Ghost Station, the stress of deep space travel can do things to a person. If longtime spacers develop the condition called ERS, they’ll start to see things that aren’t there, hear voices that no one else hears. They sometimes turn irritable, even violent.
The story begins with Dr. Ophelia Bray, who is very out of her element. A psychologist by trade, she’s been assigned to a small exploration team investigating an ancient, lifeless planet. The crew is mourning the death of a teammate, and none of the surviving members have any interest in Ophelia’s therapy sessions or letting their guard down. They also don’t seem to care if their work increases their chances of ERS. But as the explorers investigate the planet, stranger and stranger things begin to happen. It seems they aren’t alone on this world after all. Ophelia and the crew are going to have to trust one another to figure out what’s happening to them if they hope to escape alive.
Barnes is no stranger to sci-fi horror; her excellent Dead Silence stood out for its atmosphere and sheer scariness, and fans of that novel will be more than happy with this follow-up. Like any great horror story, Ghost Station takes its time, but is sure to ensnare anyone craving intergalactic horror. Barnes patiently increases the sense of unease, building suspense with small moments that are odd on their own and increasingly strange taken together: an empty spacesuit in an abandoned station, a shape running through a snowstorm seen through a window, a rash on the skin. Things pick up steam in the later acts, especially after a couple of shocking moments right after the halfway mark.
In this golden era of sci-fi horror, Barnes leads the charge with her thoughtfully crafted characters, top-notch pacing and an ever-present sense of dread.
With its thoughtfully crafted characters, top-notch pacing and ever-present sense of dread, Ghost Station is another sci-fi horror hit from S.A. Barnes.
Anna Sinjari is a Kurdish woman dealing with both office drone existential dread and the lingering trauma of the violence she escaped when she immigrated to America. Ssrin is an alien on the run, who immediately bonds with Anna when they encounter each other in Central Park. As a cosmic crisis looms, the pair’s uncanny connection could be what saves Earth from destruction—or dooms it.
When you were first forming the ideas that became Exordia, what concept crystallized first? I was in study hall in high school in 2002 or 2003, and because it was 2002 or 2003 and I was about 14 years old, of course I was thinking about Lego Bionicle: an action figure line with a weirdly compelling (and somewhat uncomfortably appropriative) world based on Maori and Polynesian myth. And I was also thinking about space. And when you put those two together, you might think to yourself, what if Lego Bionicle was invaded by space aliens? So I wrote a story about that.
And it turned out in the course of this story—inspired by Garth Nix’s Sabriel—that, like many fantasy villains, the invading aliens were evil. Not just destructive, or behaviorally incompatible, or obeying an alien set of beliefs or incentives or values, but actually, in a real physical way, inhabited by capital-e Evil. After many years I got to thinking, huh, what would that mean for a galaxy of inhabited life?
You can’t do this story with human beings. I think the idea of a human culture that is intrinsically evil is itself unhuman, it’s an evil thought experiment. It’s too close to so many lies that have been used to justify suffering and genocide. And one of the duties, maybe the only duty of a writer, is “You will not spread lies.” But it is nonetheless an idea humans entertain anyway: What if my moral enemies were not just wrong, but actually, ontologically evil? I think that when we get into disagreements or fights or actual life-or-death conflicts with other humans, there is still a part of us which craves that certainty.
“What if, along the way, we had to work with people we’ve treated quite badly?”
Do you think Exordia depicts how Earth would respond to an alien invasion in real life? To this specific subtype of alien invasion, where the aliens are hostile, where they are advanced but still roughly constrained by the need for a ship and a physical presence and so forth, where they need something from the planet and can’t just kill us all with impunity from on high?
Sure. I’ll say yes! Just cause I’m really interested to see what email I get as a result. Yes, it’s an accurate depiction of how we’d react to that scenario.
We have one advantage in this book that we probably wouldn’t get in real life, which is that the aliens need something specific from our planet, and we have a chance to get to it first. I suspect that if you narrowed this question to “Does this book accurately depict how Earth would respond to a bizarre radio signal from the Qandil Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan?” then my answer is “Yes, to the best of my ability, with a few concessions for dramatic effect.” But I also bet that if you got the national security advisor or the Joint Chiefs of Staff or their counterparts from Iran or China or Russia or Turkey or Pakistan, etc. etc., to do an interview with me, they could give me some pointers on what I got wrong.
I loved the choice to make Anna Kurdish. What drew you to the Kurds when building her character? In 2019, a guy named Jon Schwarz wrote something which seems pretty correct: “Nothing in the world is certain except death, taxes, and America betraying the Kurds.”
What’s really striking about the Kurds to an American is that they are a huge challenge to American exceptionalism. We see ourselves as the birthplace of modern democracy. We like to believe that we bring democracy to places we invade. But of course we fuck it up constantly, we create this hideous cauldrons that spawn monsters. Yet the Kurds, living in exactly that kind of cauldron, have produced some social movements which are dramatically more egalitarian and democratic, in some respects, than anything you could campaign on in America. Try to get a law passed in the U.S. which says you must have as many women as men present at every level of government. Try to declare that women are the primary actors of history and that women’s liberation is the central task of human liberation. You’d never make it past the local selectboard. But not only have Kurds in places like Rojava made these declarations into central principles of their communities, they have done so in the kind of war-torn, chaotic environment that Americans, I think, implicitly believe can only spawn groups like ISIS.
I am not here to beatify the Kurds. Like any group of people they have evils and mistakes and dark history. It is always dangerous to just pick an ethnic or cultural group and treat them like your favorite Pokémon. But I am here to put the Kurds and their relationship with the United States at the center of a science fiction story. Very probably, even with the help of some Kurdish readers, I have fucked it up in some significant ways. But there are so many science fiction stories which treat America’s generous military and aerospace resources as a guarantee that we would be the protagonist of first contact. What if, along the way, we had to work with people we’ve treated quite badly? What if they had their own efforts at first contact, their own communication with the aliens, established before we even arrived?
What if, as has so often been the case, we ended up doing as much to harm as to help?
Exordia’s various female characters contemplate their place in the macho-man pressure cooker of the military. What choices do you have to make as a writer to examine such a topic while also letting the characters breathe and the story flow? When it comes to the culture of the United States military in 2013, when Exordia is set, I’m pretty much just a reporter. It’s not hard to talk to vets or current service members on the internet and get their feedback. You never take it uncritically, but you can get a much stronger idea of how these characters would think and act than you would by just watching “Generation Kill” for the ninth time. And of course everyone has strong opinions about the place of women in the military.
A big theme in talking to vets was the idea that in the military, a lot of people don’t really care who you are as long as you do your job and understand the culture—but you’ve got to withstand a degree of hazing and offensive irreverence to prove that you’re tough. Some women I spoke to took a lot of pride in giving as good as they got, in the idea that the military is an endless generator of both stupid bullshit and transgressive humor. Not every woman in the military has the same beliefs as me, an avowed feminist but definitely a civilian. I tried to respect that.
Ultimately, I just tried to give each character their own opinions and values. A joke one character would make offhand strikes another as grotesque and offensive. Black people in the military say things to each other that another Black character would never say in the Obama White House. There were some lines I didn’t want to cross, but other places where expert readers pushed me to just make the characters sound like real people they’d known (or been). My rule was that I wouldn’t write anything I wouldn’t be comfortable reading out loud to a good faith audience.
“If your characters care deeply about what’s happening, so will the readers.”
Daniel M. Lavery’s review of Exordia calls it “a comprehensive taxonomy of violence at every level.” Do you agree with him? Was that an intentional focus on your part? Sure. I think the problem of violence is an intentional focus in all my work. There’s this override code for any disagreement in the universe, which is, you just go kill the other guy. You’re a little slimeball in the primordial ocean and you can’t get enough carbon? Well, you could evolve a novel strategy of carbon fixing, and chill out reproducing without hurting anybody else. Or you could just eat your neighbor and take its carbon. Which one’s more likely to evolve?
Everything in the universe faces this problem. They say never argue with an idiot, because they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. But how do you make anything good and durable in the universe when you’re constantly being dragged down to the level of “Do what we want or we’ll kill you,” or, alternately, “Nice industrialization, but you fucked up your environment and now you can’t get any calories lol.” The need to defend your own existence from violence, whether intentional or natural, is the idiot. And it keeps on dragging you down.
Exordia in particular is about what we do when violence is used to coerce us. If someone holds a gun to your head and says “Shoot one of your relatives, or we will shoot them all,” is it morally better to do what they’re forcing you to do, because you cannot be held responsible for someone else coercing you into evil—the evil is ultimately theirs? Or better to refuse, because you will not enable evil by complying with it? Or better to make a grab for the gun, because you’re so hopping mad you’d rather die fighting? Or better to never get into this situation in the first place, to treat your lack of answering violence as the real moral wrong?
When you think back on writing Exordia, what sequence or moment was the most memorable to put down on paper? The finale, no question. Just the whole last act. The bit where things move fast, you’ll know it when you read it.
When it came to the humorous bits of your novel, did those moments arise naturally or did you find yourself intentionally deploying it in certain parts? I never once thought “I should go back and script doctor this to add some humor.” Sometimes the situation just lenses through the characters in such a way that the resulting ray of focus points to something funny. It’s absolute death to a story, in my opinion, when the characters get too arch and self-reflexive about it. “So THAT just happened” is the quip that gets bagged on the most, but the real problem, I think, is nonspecificity. Self-reflexive humor is humor about recognizing a trend across stories, and if you’re recognizing a trend across stories, maybe you should instead be making your story different! If there’s gonna be a funny bit, it should be a joke that’s specific to those characters in that situation.
I am glad you thought there were funny bits, though. That’s a good sign.
When writing, how did you know when a scene or idea was working? How did you know when something wasn’t working, either tonally or logically? If something is just going on and on, building up complications—whether it’s dialogue or an explanation of some alien phenomenon—it needs to be tossed. Now you might say, “this whole book goes on and on, building complications!” That is true. To tell you the truth, in a few months I will work up the courage to reread this thing, and then I will have to decide if it’s worked or if I should’ve tried again.
The real trick with this is that if a scene is not working it may be because of a mistake you made 10,000 words earlier. You got to this scene but didn’t find the right ingredients waiting, because 10,000 words ago, you didn’t get those ingredients ready.
And the realest trick of all is just that you’ve got to constantly be finding more important reasons for your characters to care about what happens. People ultimately care about people. If your characters care deeply about what’s happening, so will the readers. If it’s all confusing and opaque and alienating to your characters, then odds are it will be to the reader too. Now you might say, “This whole book is about a confusing, opaque, alienating artifact!” Yes. But it is hopefully an artifact that heightens what the characters care about, rather than concealing it.
What other works inspired you the most when writing this book? Startide Rising by David Brin, just for the giddy maximalism of its alien galaxy—I read it very young. The Andromeda Strain and (more importantly) Sphere by Michael Crichton, for their absolutely terrifying scenarios of alien contact. A whole bunch of technothrillers, particularly by David Mace, an obscure British writer I adore. Eon by the late Greg Bear, the tributes there are pretty obvious.
Diane Duane’s Young Wizard books were a huge influence in their willingness to reckon directly with death and evil on a cosmic scale. C.J. Cherryh is a touchstone whenever I try to write anything tense or military-adjacent; I do not think I have grasped much of her style but it’s an ongoing project. Vonda N. McIntyre’s brutally under-read Starfarers books have one of my favorite aliens ever, Nemo the squidmoth; her “Star Trek” novels were also a huge early influence on me (same for Margaret Wander Bonanno’s and for Diane Duane’s “Star Trek” books). Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest steered me into the multiple protagonist structure.
Do you think that serendure, the connection between two souls, is a real sensation? No, I don’t. Not in the same way as compassion or camaraderie or love or hate. Those passions are the result of shared experiences with other people, and the attitudes that form in our minds. Even when we’re compatible with someone as a friend or a partner, we have to come to realize that inside ourselves.
Serendure isn’t just “you really vibe with someone.” It’s “Like it or not, you are stuck to each other.” Stuck so hard that if a bullet comes at you, then serendure will make sure it kills both of you, or neither. That doesn’t exist in reality, unfortunately. I can’t love someone enough to protect them from bullets, or hate them enough to share wounds. But it’s a pretty common idea in storytelling, whether it’s soulmates in romance or vendetta in tragedy. So serendure is like the cosmic generalization of that human story, like realizing that the sun in the sky is the same as all the stars.
In his action-packed sci-fi debut, the author wades into the murky morality of evil, imperialism and violence.
When you imagine humanity’s first contact with an alien, what do you picture? For me, it’s the optimism of classic sci-fi: ethereal beings slowly stretching out long-fingered hands from a glowing ship, a sign of peace and acceptance. Seth Dickinson doesn’t share my vision. In Exordia, his energetic, suspenseful melange of alien invasion and military action, Earth sits squarely in the middle of an intergalactic power struggle. If the aliens don’t get us, our own nuclear fallout might.
Anna Sinjari, a Kurd living in New York City, sees an alien in Central Park, basking on a rock in broad daylight. And Ssrin—the alien—needs her help, having been shot by another faction of beings. For some reason, Anna feels drawn to Ssrin, which is something the alien calls surendure: two souls existing as one. Anna begins to think of Ssrin as a friend, but their new partnership is barely formed when disaster strikes. Will Anna and Ssrin be able to fend off other alien agents and help save the world?
Exordia’s first act is its most successful. Anna and Ssrin’s initial interactions are personal, hilarious and thought-provoking. Once the broader storyline kicks in, however, it can be a struggle to keep up, so impenetrable are some of Dickinson’s ideas. If you are someone who loves a monumental level of specificity when it comes to military command structures or the complex metaphysical value systems of aliens, this is the book for you. Dickinson’s obsession with detail greatly enriches the atmosphere of Exordia, which rockets across many points of view and locations as various team members look for clues to unravel the mystery. But at times, the numerous technical terms and jargon practically wash over the reader.
However, Dickinson has crafted a number of very human stories in a book ostensibly about aliens. Trauma, morality in the face of disaster, forgiveness, guilt, lost love and the bond between parents and children all find their way to the page. Yes, these people are witnessing and trying to survive the craziest moment in the history of Earth, but their connections to one another ring true.
While some may wish it spent as much time with its characters as it does exploring its many fascinating ideas, Exordia is undoubtedly impressive. But there’s no question that it will be many sci-fi fans’ favorite book of the year, especially those willing to surrender to it, and be consumed.
Seth Dickinson’s Exordia is an energetic, suspenseful melange of alien invasion and military action.
Danger, intrigue and a hell of a lot of blood are splashed across the pages of Carissa Broadbent’s gripping fantasy romance, The Serpent & the Wings of the Night.
The first entry in Broadbent’s Crowns of Nyaxia duology, The Serpent & the Wings of the Night grants more nuance than usual to vampires, casting them as something closer to the elves of high fantasy than the monstrous figures of horror novels. Rescued by the Nightborn King, Victor, as a baby, Oraya has lived every moment of her life as a sheep among wolves, the only human in a court of vampires. She’s trained herself to be deadly and to trust no one except Victor, and she yearns for the day she can shed her humanity. Luckily, a chance to do just that arrives in the form of the Kejari, an ancient tournament with an incredible prize: a chance to request anything from the goddess Nyaxia. Raihn, a new vampire to the court, offers her an alliance, which Oraya cautiously accepts. But can Raihn be trusted as he and Oraya try to survive the trials of the Kejari?
Oraya’s first-person perspective fills the pages with her suspicion, ruthlessness and loneliness. That sense of dread is balanced by the fact that Oraya is somewhat of a badass: There are fight scenes galore in this book, and it’s easy to root for Oraya as she swirls her swords against foe after foe. It’s no wonder that Victor nicknamed her “little serpent.”
Broadbent wisely allows Oraya’s walls to come down one brick at a time, especially when it comes to her interactions with Raihn. A yin-and-yang relationship slowly develops between the two as trust heals old wounds and their odds of winning the Kejari becomes more real. Broadbent uses the looming threat of a war between the vampire kingdoms to add heft, a decision which elevates the stakes of the tournament and grounds the story in a real crisis.
Fans of The Hunger Games or Red Rising will enjoy this bloody twist on the tournament trope, and just about any reader will love Oraya and Raihn’s relationship.
Fans of The Hunger Games and Red Rising will enjoy The Serpent & the Wings of the Night, Carissa Broadbent’s action-packed vampire romance.
The epigraph of Louisa Morgan’s The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird comes from Emily Dickinson: “One need not be a chamber—to be haunted— / One need not be a House— / The Brain—has Corridors surpassing / Material Place—”. This brief passage beautifully encompasses the novel’s core idea, that plumbing the depths of one’s past trauma can reveal, and hopefully abolish, the shades that haunt us all.
Dr. Beatrice Bird is quite happy being alone. Self-isolated on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest in 1977, she takes care of simple things in her small cottage. She milks the cows the previous owner left behind. She watches the shoreline. She picks up groceries when they come over on the ferry. She misses her partner, Mitch, whom she left behind in San Francisco.
But Beatrice’s solitude keeps the ghosts at bay.
She sees them whenever she encounters another person: Their fears, pains and shames orbit grimly around them where only Beatrice can see. When a young woman named Anne Iredale arrives on the island to escape her own past, Beatrice senses a kindred spirit and offers to take her in. A psychologist by trade, Beatrice slowly uncovers Anne’s story. But the ghosts that haunt Anne are some of the foulest Beatrice has ever seen. Can she and Anne heal enough to banish the ghosts once and for all?
This book has a healer’s heart, revolving around Morgan’s inquisitive, sensitive and measured look at trauma. Yes, ghosts are present and yes, they do inject tension, but they’re used more as conduits for the real work of psychological examination. As Morgan jumps between both women’s perspectives, including some flashbacks to key moments before the island, the reader feels as if they’re putting together the pieces alongside Beatrice as she helps Anne start her healing journey. Morgan knows how to let a conversation develop slowly, and Beatrice and Anne’s friendship blooms at the same natural pace. Trust is earned, truths are confessed and time passes. No one can rush someone like Anne into a breakthrough. It has to happen naturally.
The importance of women healing other women appears in many of Morgan’s other novels (The Great Witch of Brittany, The Age of Witches), and The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird is an especially kind and empathetic expression of the same theme. Though Beatrice sets out to help Anne, Anne inevitably helps Beatrice. Pain is wiped clean by understanding, like a gust of air off the ocean. Find a comfy seat and settle in. You’ll be glad you did.
In this inquisitive, sensitive novel from Louisa Morgan, ghosts become a vehicle for psychological examination—and a healing friendship.
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