Chris Pickens

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird

Review by Chris Pickens

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.
Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

These Burning Stars

Review by Chris Pickens

In a distant star system known as the Kindom, a group of noble families rule with an unbreakable grip. But a single secret, in the right person’s hands, can change everything. A multilayered saga full of courtly intrigue and indelible characters, Bethany Jacobs’ These Burning Stars warps readers across the galaxy on a devilishly fun thrill ride.

Jun Ironway has just nabbed the biggest score of her thieving career: a data drive containing explosive evidence that one of the ruling families was involved in planetary genocide. It could bring in quite the payday. Or, it could get her killed. Hunting her are two of the Kindom’s finest clerics, members of a religious order that serve as law enforcement. Esek, heir to the Nightfoot family fortune, leads enigmatically and punishes ruthlessly while her counterpart, Chono, is impassive, devout and efficient. Haunting the steps of this trio’s deadly dance is a wanderer known only as Six, who seems to have a stake in the data drive as well. But who is Six and whose side are they on? And can Jun find a way to expose the truth before Esek and Chono catch her?

These Burning Stars is plotted like a chess match, confident and surprising as Jacobs moves each piece thoughtfully across her board. There’s a sense of delicate control as the pace and tension ebb and flow, and the characters approach and retreat from each other. Enriching flashbacks fill in relevant information, but only when the narrative calls for it. Jacobs has an applause-worthy restraint, holding her cards until they can be played for maximum effect.

All four main characters are extremely fun to follow, and this reviewer will be thinking about them long after filing this piece. Esek in particular stands out: a brilliant, haughty, rule-bending and gregarious sociopath who is as unpredictable as she is determined. Her scenes feel electric, like anything could happen, with Chono, her shadow and opposite, playing foil time and time again.

I’m happy to report that These Burning Stars opens a trilogy set in the Kindom. If Jacobs’ second entry is anything like the first, we’ll have so much more to discover across her universe in the years to come.

Bethany Jacobs’ These Burning Stars is a confident and surprising start to a sci-fi trilogy that boasts memorable characters and excellent plotting.
Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

The Terraformers

Review by Chris Pickens

Warm, imaginative and often funny, Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers thoughtfully examines the price and cost of corporate colonialism and humanity’s ever-present need to expand.

In the distant future, Destry, a ranger who works for the Environmental Rescue Team on planet Sask-E, discovers a hidden city. Destry and the rest of her team are tasked with ensuring ecological stability on Sask-E, which is owned by the terraforming corporation Verdance, before Verdance sells plots of the planet’s land to the highest bidders. The ERT thought they were the only inhabitants of Sask-E. But the city Destry discovers is populated by an entire previous generation of terraformers, and she and the ERT consider whether to stand against Verdance and their murky motives. Centuries later, while a planetwide conspiracy threatens everything the ERT has done to turn Sask-E into a hospitable planet, the fallout from Destry’s conflict with Verdance resurfaces.

The Terraformers is an expansive, entertaining book, full of comprehensive world building and exacting detail. Every living thing in the terraformed areas of Sask-E provides data that flows back to the ERT: Messages can be sent through blades of grass or through water. Robotic drones converse with people, and genetically enhanced animals can communicate via text message. Newitz giddily explores the convergence of digital and ecological systems, and their enthusiasm is infectious. The Terraformers is full of parallels to contemporary issues (corporate greed versus environmental sustainability, the intersection of machines and humans), and while Newitz intensely examines these topics, the reader will never feel lectured, bored or disconnected from the characters.

But once The Terraformers concludes, the questions it poses remain. In our race to remake the universe for ourselves, what kinds of stewards will we be?

Entertaining and full of thorny questions about the fate of humanity, Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers explores a distant, corporation-controlled future.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Foxglove King

Review by Chris Pickens

When you get home from a stressful day at work, do you kick back with a nice cold beer? Or do you prefer hemlock tea? In Hannah Whitten’s The Foxglove King, poisons are drugs that produce a potent magical high. Full of courtly intrigue, smart characters and will-they-won’t-they romance, The Foxglove King is a heady concoction that will satiate anyone looking for an absorbing new fantasy world.

Lore is a poison dealer in the city of Dellaire, and she has a huge secret: She was born into a cult of death-worshipping witches. After she escaped as an adolescent, she swore she’d never let the witches find her again. It’s easy to hide in Dellaire’s underground, but it’s a lot harder to hide when you’re arrested by the soldier-monks of the Presque Mort for dealing poison and forced to serve the Sainted King in his court. Trapped, Lore must use her street smarts to investigate a series of terrible attacks on border towns across the kingdom. To top it off, she’s right in the middle of a tense feud between the king’s son, Bastian, and her Presque Mort guardian, Gabriel. It’s going to take all of Lore’s cunning and skill to survive the court and uncover the mystery behind the attacks.

The Foxglove King is built on opposites: death magic versus life magic, wealth versus poverty, pain versus pleasure and truth versus fiction. But what makes this book so fascinating is Whitten’s willingness to subvert expectations. Sometimes, diametrically opposed forces work better together than against each other. Such is the case with Bastian and Gabriel. Former friends, these very different men become more complex characters over the course of the narrative, each one enriched and challenged by Lore. The love triangle among them adds texture but never distracts from the central storyline. 

Medieval-adjacent fantasy societies can feel stuffy and ancient, but Whitten cannily avoids this trap. Her characters speak with a modern sensibility, which makes the story accessible and often heightens the tension. Lore is a fun guide throughout, snarky and confident one moment, vulnerable and thoughtful the next. Her depth and complexity as a protagonist bode well for future entries in the Nightshade Crown series, with Whitten skillfully tying Lore’s background into the reveals about the broader universe and its unique, dangerous and more than a little creepy magic system. (A dead god buried deep under the city is leaking death magic that infects everything in Dellaire? Rad.) 

Whitten’s already gained a following with her Wilderwood duology, and the perfectly balanced Foxglove King proves that her success was not a fluke.

Hannah Whitten gained a following with her Wilderwood duology, and the perfectly balanced Foxglove King proves that her success was not a fluke.
Science Fiction & FantasyHorror

A House With Good Bones

Review by Chris Pickens

Do you ever get a little creeped out when you visit your grandparents’ house? There’s something about the stillness of unused rooms and the sweet, dusty smell that can give you a slight sense of dread. But if you were to visit the Montgomery house in T. Kingfisher’s A House With Good Bones, you’d leave with more than an uneasy feeling. In fact, you might not leave at all! (Cue thunder and lightning.) 

Sam Montgomery has to move back in with her mom. The archaeoentomologist’s latest dig (she studies insects in archeological sites) has been put on an indefinite hold, but the good news is that Sam loves her mom, Edie, who lives in Sam’s grandmother’s old house in rural North Carolina. But Edie seems tired and nervous, very unlike her normal self. Sam has strange dreams about her dead grandmother, vultures circle outside all day, ladybugs spill out of the faucets and Sam swears that bony fingers touch her hair in the middle of the night. But Sam’s a scientist. Shouldn’t there be a reasonable explanation for all of this? Determined to find out the truth, Sam starts unearthing secrets about her family that were better left undisturbed. 

Kingfisher is in her element when the tension is at its highest. She keeps a narrow focus on Sam and the handful of other major characters, amplifying the sensation that threats are imminent. Danger in horror can sometimes feel arbitrary and nonspecific, but in this house, you know what’s haunting you. As things get stranger and stranger, the writing gets choppier, like Sam’s panting breath and racing heart. And Kingfisher isn’t afraid to embrace the weird: A House With Good Bones’ climax is strange, scary and unforgettable.

That being said, don’t write off this book if you’re not a horror enthusiast—A House With Good Bones is also laugh-out-loud funny. Sam’s inner monologue is full of hilarious observations about living with her mom, not having reliable internet and simply being 32. The aforementioned vultures? They have names and belong to a neighbor. The book is balanced with knife’s-edge precision between fright and humor in a way that brings Jordan Peele’s sensational Get Out to mind. You’ll be craving the next tense moment, because it means the next joke is right around the corner too. 

A House With Good Bones shares another key trait with Get Out: Both works derive their frightening power from placing reasonable people in unreasonable circumstances and forcing them to respond. It’s nerve-wracking for a character to ask “Is this real?” when faced with something strange; it’s downright terrifying when the answer is “Yes.”

Impressively weird, nerve-wracking but still laugh-out-loud funny, A House With Good Bones is another horror hit from T. Kingfisher.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Sword Defiant

Review by Chris Pickens

Consider the stereotypical ending of a fantasy novel. The heroes have prevailed against a tide of darkness, the evil has been purged from the land and all rejoice as peace is restored. But what happens next? Who rules over the defeated kingdom? What will the mighty heroes do with no one left to fight? Gareth Hanrahan’s The Sword Defiant suggests that, once the war is over, the heroes will fight one another. 

Years ago, Aelfric and his nine companions saved the world, banding together to defeat Lord Bone and conquer his dread city of Necrad. Now the heroes are the rulers of Necrad, even though, truth be told, none of them really volunteered for the job. It’s just what was needed to keep the peace. In addition to this, Aelfric was tasked with carrying Spellbreaker, Lord Bone’s enchanted, sentient broadsword. Though the sword bestows incredible magical power to the wielder, it thinks for itself and constantly yearns for bloodshed. When Aelfric and Spellbreaker discover that Lord Bone’s tomb has been opened, Aelfric suspects that one of his eight remaining companions broke in and stole the body. But who? And why?

Hanrahan does a great job constructing Aelfric’s backstory and developing nostalgia for his once-simple life. Aelfric and his companions’ shared history is sprinkled throughout, and the cracks within the group slowly become apparent. Aelfric is a soldier, a monster-slayer with no desire to rule, and he loves his companions even as he suspects some of them of heinous acts. It creates a wonderful sense of tension that is also tinged with sadness; Aelfric is painfully aware that the group is both getting older and growing distant from one another.

However poignant, this story could still come apart if the world building wasn’t up to snuff, but I’m happy to report that it’s fantastic. Hanrahan creates fully realized environments with rich histories, rendering the murky city of Necrad, towns and inns along the road and an elvish kingdom with precise detail. He also employs a second perspective, that of Aelfric’s sister, Olva, to show the reader other parts of the kingdom. Her mission—finding her wayward son, Derwyn—is engaging, but sometimes less so than Aelfric’s gripping quest.

A creative writing professor I once had said, “When you figure out how it ends, stay there,” urging us to push past what seemed like the expected conclusion and instead see what would happen if we let things continue to play out. I have a feeling Hanrahan would excel at such an exercise.

Gareth Hanrahan’s gritty and rousing fantasy novel The Sword Defiant explores what happens after the good guys win.
Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

The Blighted Stars

Review by Chris Pickens

Space opera fans, rejoice! Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Blighted Stars delivers futuristic technology, a power-hungry ruling class, a bit of mystery, a sprinkle of the macabre and a compelling, complicated relationship between its two leads.

In the distant future, the Mercator family maintains a tight control over humanity’s life among the stars. The Mercators mine “cradle worlds,” planets that are lush and unspoiled, for resources, but the side effect is a fungal bloom that eventually kills the planet.

Idealistic, passionate Naira Sharp is a member of the Conservators, a resistance group that tries to save these cradle worlds through sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Tarquin Mercator is the heir to his family’s empire, but he’s a scientist at heart, and he wonders where the planet-killing fungus comes from. Their worlds collide when Naira poses as Tarquin’s bodyguard in order to infiltrate and destroy the Mercators from within. But when their ship crashes onto the newest cradle world, Naira and Tarquin are faced with the supposedly impossible: The planet has already been devoured by the fungus. Together with the other survivors of the crash, they must work together to survive and uncover the truth.

O’Keefe is a master world builder, and The Blighted Stars has one of the most fascinating sci-fi concepts of the year. In her universe, people can load their consciousnesses into new bodies. Get killed out in the far reaches of space? No problem, your neural map can be beamed back to civilization and placed into a new 3D-printed body right away. (Though sometimes neural maps don’t load properly, resulting in grotesque and zombielike monsters.) Before beginning her mission, Naira uploads her consciousness into a printed body of Tarquin’s bodyguard without anyone on the doomed ship knowing. O’Keefe finds multiple ways to have fun with this plot device, and the payoffs of Naira’s secret identity are well earned.

The Blighted Stars would be a terrific starting point for anyone interested in dipping a toe into the space opera subgenre. O’Keefe largely restricts herself to Naira’s and Tarquin’s points of view, which brings an immediacy and focus to the story that is echoed by the relative simplicity of the plot. The complex and engrossing relationship between Tarquin and Naira holds everything together; the fresh world building and interstellar intrigue wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying if not for the believable relationship at the book’s core.

If future entries in O’Keefe’s Devoured Worlds saga are as exciting as this book, sci-fi fans will be thanking their lucky stars for years to come.

Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Blighted Stars has one of the most fascinating sci-fi premises of the year: People upload their consciousnesses into 3D-printed bodies.
Science Fiction & FantasyHorrorFantasy

Night’s Edge

Review by Chris Pickens

If you want to know what kind of book Liz Kerin’s Night’s Edge is, look no further than the first paragraph: “It’s two in the morning. The fridge is empty. And Mom is dead on the couch.” How much terror would that provoke in a 10-year-old girl? Especially when she subsequently sees her mom’s eyes shoot open? Vampire tales often center on passed-down trauma, and Liz Kerin’s gruesome, tense and heartfelt novel takes this concept to its very limit.

After her mother’s resurrection, Mia’s life takes a very dramatic turn. Izzy has been infected with Saratov’s syndrome, which makes her stronger than a normal human, sensitive to light and reliant on human blood. The world has only recently discovered the existence of Saras, as they’re known, and it isn’t friendly to people like Izzy. She and Mia eventually settle in Tucson, Arizona, where Izzy runs a bar (she only goes in at night) and drinks only the now 20-something Mia’s blood. But Mia worries that Izzy has gotten back in touch with Devon, the underground activist for Sara rights who turned Izzy. When Mia meets a girl she really likes, she finds herself at a crossroads. Can she leave Izzy behind? Would Izzy let her leave? And if she wouldn’t . . . what would she do to keep Mia at home?

Kerin’s skill cannot be overemphasized: The physical and psychological pain that Mia and Izzy experience would be nearly unreadable in lesser hands, but Night’s Edge is engrossing throughout. Of course, there is physical pain; blood flows through the pages of this book, as expected of a vampire novel. But the psychological pain hits even harder. Mia’s mental health has been significantly impacted by the things she’s seen her mother do in the name of keeping their family safe. As Izzy and Mia’s relationship fractures, they constantly find new ways to hurt each other—when they aren’t ripping open old wounds. It’s heartbreaking but believable.

A playwright and screenwriter, Kerin knows exactly when to start a chapter, when to pick up the pace and when to give the reader a break. Her precise pacing switches from slow and intimate to tense and frenetic without being jarring. Kerin is a master at building memorable moments, and whenever she gets a chance, she cranks up the excitement: Several sequences in which Izzy shows off her Sara powers are downright thrilling, and a particularly tense scene in a hospital is a showstopper. The perpetual dread and clear-eyed insight of Night’s Edge will be haunting readers for years to come.

Liz Kerin’s engrossing and haunting Night’s Edge is a masterful new take on vampire mythology.
Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

The Deep Sky

Review by Chris Pickens

The Earth is about to die. A single ship will travel to a hospitable planet far beyond our solar system where the 80 original crew members and their children will begin a new chapter for the human race. But in Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky, those plans go horribly wrong. The passengers aboard the Phoenix might not be having a good time, but readers certainly will be as the pages in this exhilarating, smart sci-fi mystery rocket past.

Asuka doesn’t feel like she belongs on the Phoenix. The last member to join the ship, she’s merely an alternate to the other 79 crew members, even though she graduated from the same highly competitive school. Perhaps it’s because she’s an afterthought that she’s asked to investigate a strange object on the surface of the ship. Just as she and a teammate reach the object, a massive explosion tears through the ship, killing several crew members and blowing the Phoenix dangerously off course. Now, in a race against time to correct the Phoenix’s flight path, Asuka must uncover the truth about the explosion . . . even if it implicates someone on board.

It’s a pitch-perfect setup for a space thriller, and the stakes could not be any higher: The fate of the human species relies on the Phoenix’s ability to make it to the new Earth. Alliances change and suspicions shift as Asuka’s investigation proceeds and propulsive chapters often end in cliffhangers. Flashback scenes set at the school that selected the Phoenix’s crew counterbalance the mystery, revealing just the right amount of information about characters’ history and corresponding with important story beats in the present. In both timelines, Asuka wrestles with her parental relationships, childhood grief and complex feelings about her Japanese-American identity. While these sections deepen the character, they occasionally feel like an interruption of the more suspenseful moments aboard the Phoenix.

The Deep Sky feels very close to our own reality: The Phoenix has landing modules and solar shields, rather than laser cannons. That said, Kitasei’s Digitally Augmented Reality (DAR), which allows crew members to adjust what they see around them through their visors, is a brilliant device. Rather than seeing the stark white hallways of the Phoenix, they could choose a lush rainforest or the deck of a pirate ship. Kitasei gets a lot of mileage out of DAR, especially in some key moments in the later parts of the book.

As interested in where we came from as where we’re going, The Deep Sky is a study in belonging and how Asuka’s intersecting identities (Japanese-American, crew member, classmate, friend, daughter and woman) buttress her during the most important moments in her life. Pick up The Deep Sky to discover how Asuka, and the Phoenix, rise from the ashes.

A Hail Mary effort to save humanity goes awry in Yume Kitasei’s smart and exhilarating sci-fi mystery, The Deep Sky.
Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

He Who Drowned the World

Review by Chris Pickens

When I reviewed Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became The Sun in 2021, I had no doubt it would top all the best books lists of that year. Some books just have a gravitational pull, each sentence drawing you closer to their core. Parker-Chan’s sequel, He Who Drowned the World, matches and at times exceeds its predecessor; its darker tone, deeper intrigue and visceral set pieces more than live up to the promise of book one. Be warned: No one will be left unscarred in the war for supremacy in northern China, even the reader.

Despite her victories over the Mongol legions, Zhu Chongba, now called the Radiant King, knows the work has only just begun. Though her forces control the southernmost part of the Mongolian territory, she and her people are not safe as long as the Mongolian khan and his armies still threaten from the north. Meanwhile, the traitorous General Ouyang also seeks vengeance against the khan. Can Zhu and Ouyang, two mortal enemies, realize their shared ambitions and work together for a common victory? Perhaps, but unbeknownst to both, a cunning member of the Mongol court is secretly spinning a treacherous web.

She Who Became the Sun had to build up to the multifaceted, continent-crossing thrill ride it became, but He Who Drowned the World starts as a beautiful, brutal ride and never lets up. Military and political intrigue drive the plot forward as characters whiz across the map fighting battles, sneaking into hidden bases, charming pirate kings and so on. A helpful refresher opens the book, and Parker-Chan’s organization and clarity ensures that readers won’t ever lose track of the multiple opposing factions. 

The sharpness of each character’s ambitions, the depth of their emotion and the sheer beauty of the writing will grab hold of readers from the very first page. Sentence by sentence, Parker-Chan’s prose is unrivaled in modern fantasy. It’s so consistent in its richness, so precise in its sequencing that even the grimmest of moments become enthralling and vital. Several scenes between Zhu and Ouyang positively crackle with energy, supercharged by Parker-Chan’s writing as these two titans finally see each other for the first time.

The fearless Parker-Chan pulls no punches, repeatedly pushing characters to their limits and beyond. Their motives range from murky to outright despicable as Parker-Chan examines how identity and personal trauma drive ambition. Like flint against steel, characters spark against one another, often producing flames both literal and figurative. This may be the strongest lasting impression He Who Drowned the World leaves behind: The pain we carry reacts to another’s, and those who master their pain will rule.

He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan’s sequel to She Who Became the Sun, is the most finely crafted fantasy novel of the year.
Science Fiction & FantasyHorror

Knock Knock, Open Wide

Review by Chris Pickens

Neil Sharpson’s Knock Knock, Open Wide is a dizzying blend of Celtic folklore, gruesome terror and family drama. Gripping, funny and touching, it’s sure to please anyone looking for a horror-mystery with heart.

The story begins when a young Irish woman Etain Larkin discovers the corpse of a man in the middle of the road. Desperate for help, she takes the body to the nearest farmhouse. If she hadn’t stopped, hadn’t taken the body to this one specific home, she would have escaped a night of true horror. Twenty years later, Etain’s daughter, Ashling, is traumatized by her mother’s alcoholism and paranoia. Ashling has started a relationship with her schoolmate Betty, but she can’t let her fully in until she finds answers to explain her family’s terrible past. Ashling has nightmares about “Puckeen,” a well-loved children’s television show in which an unseen entity in a black box serves as a warning for misbehaving kids. But are the dreams just dreams, or something more?

Knock Knock, Open Wide is inspired by Celtic myths and legends, but Sharpson heightens the dread by refusing to explain every strange or terrible thing. Knock Knock, Open Wide shifts from funny and touching to outright terrifying in the blink of an eye, keeping the reader in a suspended state of unease. At any moment, Ashling and Betty might encounter something like “hungry grass,” a patch of cursed earth where someone starved to death. Sharpson bounces from past to present and shifts character perspectives with each chapter as he slowly unspools the mystery of what’s haunting Etain and Ashling, a structural choice that emphasizes the generational trauma the mother-daughter duo can’t seem to escape.

Ashling and Betty’s tender relationship grounds the book when it needs it most, offering a gentle counterpoint to the eerie goings-on. There are a few moments of plot contrivance where they abstain from exchanging key pieces of information, but the couple is so believable and lovable together that one is happy to overlook such a detail.

Knock Knock, Open Wide compellingly juggles various tones, structures and plot threads to produce a skillful examination of familial pain.

Knock Knock, Open Wide, Neil Sharpson’s horror novel inspired by Celtic folklore, shifts from charming to moving to outright terrifying in the blink of an eye.
Science Fiction & FantasyHorror

Bad Cree

Review by Chris Pickens

A line from Jessica Johns’ haunting, atmospheric and beautiful debut novel, Bad Cree, has been tumbling around in my head since I set the book down. “That’s the thing about the [prairie]. . . . It’ll tell you exactly what it’s doing and when, you just have to listen.” Johns’ protagonist, a young Cree woman named Mackenzie, tries to hear things she’s been ignoring: grief, her family, the lands she grew up on. But there’s something else lurking just outside her perception, something more dire. Strap in for a dread-filled novel that examines the impact of grief on a small community. 

Mackenzie hasn’t been sleeping well. To be more specific, she hasn’t been dreaming well. Every night, her subconscious shows her terrifying things, painful memories and, always, a murder of crows. Soon she notices crows outside her apartment window, following her to work and watching from power lines. Something is wrong, and she fears it has to do with the years-ago death of her sister. Mackenzie’s auntie pleads with her to come home, to be among her people, the Indigenous Cree of western Canada. There, with her mother, cousins and aunties, Mackenzie searches for what haunts her mind. Hopefully she can find it before it finds her. 

Jessica Johns on the lingering nature of loss—and what makes a great dive bar.

Bad Cree began as a short story, and it’s still tightly written, brisk and efficient as a novel. Johns does, however, slow down when it comes to themes she clearly cares about, such as female relationships. A bar scene midway through the narrative does a particularly lovely job at enriching the portrayal of the community of women who surround Mackenzie. Their camaraderie shows just how important these relationships can be to people feeling lost or alone.

This web of powerful, positive connections stands out all the more in the face of Bad Cree’s truly frightening moments. The dream sequences are both spectacle and puzzle, a mix of memory and fiction, but it’s clear that something beyond just bad dreams is happening to Mackenzie. The unanswered question of what exactly that is provokes a consistent feeling of dread, and the climax is tense, horrific and exciting.

Bad Cree examines how grief can warp someone, how it can terrorize a person by slowly turning reality into nightmare. But there is also a beautiful hope at the center of Johns’ vision: Grief can be tempered by embracing your community. Alone, Mackenzie is just one person, but by returning home, she becomes a thread in a human fabric, woven together to make something stronger.

Jessica Johns’ Bad Cree examines the impact of grief on a small community, mixing truly frightening moments with warm camaraderie.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Hell Bent

Review by Chris Pickens

Rejoice, Bardugo fans and dark academia lovers: You’ll get much more of the spooky stuff you crave in the extraordinary Hell Bent.

After her first brush with the dark underworld of Yale University—in this world, the school’s infamous secret societies are called houses, and their members are practitioners of magic—Alex Stern deserves a sabbatical. But as firmly established in author Leigh Bardugo’s excellent Ninth House, Alex isn’t built for rest, especially when there’s still work to do. Alex is a member of Lethe, the ninth house, which monitors the other houses to make sure they don’t go too far. She’s capable and cantankerous, but in Hell Bent she’s also desperate. Darlington, the wunderkind of Lethe, Alex’s mentor and maybe something more, is gone, presumed dead after the events of Ninth House. Alex vows to bring him back to the world of the living, but things are never that simple in New Haven, Connecticut.

Without Darlington to guide her and back her up, Alex is overwhelmed and vulnerable, which makes each new challenge she faces even more riveting for the reader. She’s already investigating a series of strange murders of faculty members, and to make matters worse, Alex and her friend Dawes make a horrific discovery in Darlington’s family home: a demonic presence, restrained by magic—for now. Together, they must find a way to bring Darlington back while keeping whatever’s in his house from being unleashed on the world. Can Alex survive all that Hell and Yale throw at her?

Once again, Bardugo shows she’s one of the best world builders in the business. Her version of Yale and its people is so richly rendered, it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what’s imagined. Not a page goes by without a line from Yeats or a fact about the architectural history of New Haven or a bit of biblical allusion. And yet, the book whizzes along, marvelously balancing these details with The Da Vinci Code-esque clue-hunting, demonic rituals and lectures from a particularly uptight school administrator.

Gut-wrenching and deeply human, this book will tug at your heartstrings even as it chills you to the bone. In spite of all of its magic, world building and shenanigans, Hell Bent stays true to its characters, never compromising them for the sake of genre thrills or expectations. Standing head and shoulders above the already impressive Ninth House, Hell Bent is one of the best fantasy novels of the year.

Gut-wrenching and deeply human, Leigh Bardugo’s sequel to Ninth House will tug at your heartstrings even as it chills you to the bone.

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