Trains are, for whatever reason, surprisingly common in contemporary genre fiction. Perhaps it is their predictability, with their reliance on firmly laid tracks and regular timetables representing an imposition of order on a chaotic world. But rarely is this made so explicit as in Sarah Brooks’ The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, where a train is the last bastion of civilization in the region that was once Sibera, which has now become a chthonic cauldron of mutated flora and fauna, all of it hostile to humankind.

Brooks never explains why, exactly, Siberia transformed into the riotous Wasteland. She simply asserts that it has, that it is enclosed by a wall and that only one entity dares cross it: the Company, via its Trans-Siberian Express. On its last voyage, there was an accident that resulted in the deaths of three people. The Company, being a sinister avatar of faceless, capitalistic inhumanity, is dedicated to preserving the secrecy around these events, while Marya Petrovna, daughter of the glassmaker who was blamed for the accident, has dedicated herself to piercing that veil. However, none of the train’s crew or its most frequent passengers seem to remember what happened, from its captain and first engineer, Alexei, on down to a bookish professor and the enigmatic Zhang Weiwei, who has spent her entire life on the train.

Part of me felt like I had read this book before, or perhaps seen it on film. The obvious comparison is Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, but I found more commonalities with classic sci-fi like Asimov’s Foundation and Earth and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, mixed with Borges’ more animistic magic and a few dashes of Agatha Christie for good measure. The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands reads more like magical realism than fantasy, forcing the reader to inhabit the same inexplicable universe as the characters themselves. Brooks’ concise prose prioritizes clarity over decoration, and is suffused with casual slang and inside jokes. This steampunk fairy tale may be largely populated with archetypes and borrowed tropes, but Brooks has still made it compelling and novel. Her train through perdition is a worthy addition to the pantheon.

Rose Rushe wants to be a court musician more than anything else in the world. With Queen Elizabeth I newly ascendant on the throne, her goal feels within reach if she can only get an audition. But the universe (and Rose’s mother) have different plans for her. After the death of her father, Rose, her mother and her friend Cecely are all accused of witchcraft and forced to flee to London. Rose finds refuge in the home of Richard Underhill, the son of one of her late father’s friends. Security for her family is within reach as long as Rose plays the meek woman and secures a place within Underhill’s household as his wife. But the prospect of such a life is anathema to Rose. As she struggles to avoid the web of her mother’s well-intentioned meddling, an escape path lined with brothels, astrology and a young writer named William Shakespeare presents itself—if only Rose is brave and foolhardy enough to take the first step. 

In A Rose by Any Other Name, author Mary McMyne explores a question that scholars and English teachers have debated for centuries: Who was the “Dark Lady” depicted in some of Shakespeare’s most iconic sonnets? McMyne gives this mystery woman shape, autonomy and desire in the figure of Rose, whom she guides through a dark Elizabethan England full of traps for women—especially queer women like Rose—who crave independence from the men who hold their leashes. While Rose’s struggle for freedom may include some familiar tropes and character types, the original world that McMyne has created shines. Her descriptions of magic are rich with heavy, cloying scents and skin-tingling sensations. Her streets feel full of possibility and danger. And Rose and her imperfect, wild compatriots seem to spring from the page. A captivating blend of forensic literary analysis and dark magic, A Rose by Any Other Name is a fascinating exploration into the world of “what if.”