At first glance, The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering looks like Interstellar meets The Stand. Centuries from now, in a post-scientific society where astronomy “is regarded as a delusional cult scarcely more respectable than Jesus Lovers,” a powerful corporation discovers a perfectly intact Orion spacecraft hidden beneath the ruins of Cape Canaveral, along with detailed instructions from NASA on how to launch a voyage to Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon.

Meanwhile in Miami, Rowan Van Zandt is sentenced to hard labor for stealing a tour bus, until he’s offered a deal by Bosom Industries: pilot the spacecraft with his brother, mother and father, and avoid serving time.

But the story of the Van Zandt family isn’t a quixotic space mission. In a frame narrative set 10 years after the discovery, Rowan records his coming-of-age story from the Paranal Observatory in Chile, home of the world’s only remaining telescope. So it’s clear from Chapter 1 that Rowan, at least, never leaves Earth, making comparisons to Interstellar misleading at best. Instead of a high-stakes adventure through the solar system, Rowan’s journey across the dystopic remnants of America is a dark comedy, a clever, funny satire on the way reality is distorted by time and willful ignorance.

Rotter’s second novel is just as funny as his first (The Unknown Knowns), and—in our own age of populist challenges to science—just as topical. “It is a comfort,” Rowan posits eerily, “to know how swiftly and thoroughly a civilization can crumble when nobody wants it anymore.”

In V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic, three versions of London exist side by side in parallel universes. There’s Grey London, where magic is basically extinguished; Red London, where it’s abundant; and White London, where it’s somewhere in between (and where the control of it as a resource is jealously and viciously contested). There was also a fourth—Black London—whose inhabitants were devoured by magic and which should no longer exist. Schwab’s male protagonist, Kell, is one of the few with the power to travel between those Londons, and as such, serves as a diplomatic courier of sorts between the monarchies of each.

As premises go, it’s a solid yet simple framework that is both easily grasped and potentially rich to mine. Of course, it’s one thing to have an interesting setting, and another to bring that world (or worlds) to life. Fortunately, Schwab populates her many Londons with compelling heroes, villains and bit players. Kell is joined as the primary protagonist by Delilah Bard, a Grey London resident whose name and aspirations could have come straight from the D&D gaming table (or perhaps the Dragon Age character creation screen). That may sound like faint praise, but again, it’s what Schwab does with her characters after the initial outline that matters, and it doesn’t take long for the reader to become engrossed in the fortunes of Bard, especially after she pickpockets a certain worlds-traveling mage and lifts an item of dark origin and dangerous power.

Ultimately, A Darker Shade of Magic feels familiar, especially to anyone who has read any of the stories in Robert Lynn Asprin’s classic Thieves’ World shared-world anthology. Though crisply drawn, the depths of Schwab’s characters are pretty quickly and clearly plumbed—a reader won’t be left wondering too long about who the real villain is or from where comes the real threat. But it’s a familiarity that breeds interest, and this is less a weakness than the result of a writer who recognizes and employs the shorthand native to the genre in which she works.

By novel’s end, readers may be left wondering if the various threats haven’t been resolved in a manner that’s a tad too tidy. (They have been.) And they will certainly be curious if new adventures await. (Let’s hope so.) But regardless, they will have likely found the time with Kell, Bard and the rest of the inhabitants of the three Londons time well spent.

Nick Harkaway has a strange way of making us feel at home as readers even when we are in a decidedly strange place, of immersing us in something new and somehow making it feel familiar at the same time. With Tigerman, he again spellbinds with witty prose and inviting characters while taking us into a world that needs an unexpected hero.

After a hard tour of duty in Afghanistan, Sergeant Lester Ferris is sent off on a supposedly leisurely assignment in a fictional British territory called Mancreu. He’s meant to simply keep an eye on things, despite the island’s growing criminal reputation. In the quirky, chaotic and often unexpected grind of daily life there, he meets a young boy obsessed with comic books and quickly grows fond of him. They forge a somewhat unlikely friendship as the boy influences Lester’s worldview. Then, an outbreak of violence shakes Mancreu, and when faced with a new path, Lester must contemplate being a hero again, not just for the island, but for the boy he’s come to love.

British writer Harkaway (The Gone-Away World) is known for sweeping us off to alien worlds that are somehow strikingly and humanly familiar. With Tigerman, he pulls that off again. Mancreu is a fascinating place, smeared over with a particular kind of fantasy, one where the reinvention of self seems to hang in the air. The characters who populate it are equally compelling.

If you look closely, though, you’ll see that Harkaway’s gift lies not just in his knack for imagining environments teeming with a kind of transportive magic, but in the prose itself. Lester’s dreams of a new life, and the boy’s musings about and fixations on the heroes he worships, are just as filled with depth and charisma as the novel’s completely inventive plot.

Harkaway shows his brilliance on a micro and macro level, and the result is a funny, touching and meditative page-turner that will leave you thinking about what it really means to be a hero for days after you’ve finished it.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Nick Harkaway for Tigerman.

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the summer of 1976, 19-year-old David Barwise takes a job at a holiday resort in the seaside town of Skegness, England, hoping to avoid spending the summer with his mother and stepfather. But there is something more sinister underlying David’s reasoning: The beach resort is where his biological father died 15 years earlier, and David feels strangely drawn to the area, despite the tension it causes within his family.

The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit is a startlingly clear tale of a blistering English holiday season, the hottest in English history. The seasonal staff, made up of eccentrics and show people, accepts David into the fold—even hulking, ill-tempered resort employee Colin, with whom David develops an interesting relationship. His days are filled with organizing treasure hunts, setting up talent shows and judging sandcastle contests, and his nights are spent restlessly attempting sleep as he grapples with the odd feelings that being at Skegness brings. As David attempts to navigate the social structure of the resort staff, he becomes entangled in political movements and love triangles, both forbidden and dangerous. Meanwhile, swarms of ladybugs plague the town, and his attempts at building a life in Skegness are haunted by sinister and troubling visions of a man in a blue suit who wanders the beach, grasping a rope and an unidentifiable young child.

Graham Joyce’s fiction has earned him the O. Henry Award, the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award, and praise from horror and fantasy-genre greats like Peter Straub and Stephen King. In The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit, Joyce weaves a bizarre, colorful story, full of nostalgia, indecision, emotion and tension, and this genre-spanning novel is sure to be a favorite of fantasy, suspense and thriller fans.

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.