In their youth, sisters Signy and Oddny and their friend Gunnhild were linked by a prophecy portending great sacrifice and sorrow—but also the potential for great power. The three girls swore themselves to one another after hearing the prophecy, promising to always be there for one another. But their paths diverged after the seer ferried Gunnhild away to train as a witch, allowing her to escape her mother’s constant abuse. Years later, Signy and Oddny’s homestead is attacked and Signy is stolen away by raiders led by a mysterious and vindictive witch, forcing Gunnhild to return to the home she fled so many years ago. From the future king of Norway to one of the very raiders who stole Signy away, Gunnhild and Oddny must befriend unlikely allies in their quest to save their bonded sister and, in the process, confront the prophecy that linked them all those years ago.
Gornichec’s debut novel, The Witch’s Heart, was lyrical and dreamlike, but The Weaver and the Witch Queen is as precise as a needle, threading together a vivid tapestry of the joys and terrors of 10th-century Viking life under the reign of King Harald Fairhair. Gornichec obviously revels in historical accuracy, and never sugarcoats what it meant to live in medieval Northern Europe. From frank depictions of the lot of Viking thralls (people enslaved during raids) to the threat of being married off for political alliances, she doesn’t shy away from the ugly parts of the society that she’s recreated. But despite the less than savory parts of this world, Gornichec’s joy in being able to share it is palpable, suffusing her prose with a wonder befitting a story dripping in ancient magic.
While The Weaver and the Witch Queen includes legendary male figures from Norwegian history such as Harald Fairhair and Eirik Bloodaxe, it focuses on the struggles of women. Eirik and his ilk are certainly interesting characters, but theirs are stories that have largely been told. Gornichec’s novel, rather, is about women in conflict, whether that conflict is with their own mothers, with rival witches or between two best friends. Gornichec exults the cleverness of these women and their power to thrive through their communities and their own strength of will. It’s a saga of blood and magic and hardship that explores what we owe to those we love—and what it costs to actually pay that debt.
Genevieve Gornichec’s sophomore novel, The Weaver and the Witch Queen, is a vivid tapestry of the struggles and triumphs of Viking women, including the legendary Queen Gunnhild.
When 24-year-old Bridge arrives in Portland, Oregon, to sort through her mother’s belongings after her untimely death, she discovers a magical artifact in the back of the freezer. The “dreamworm,” as her mother, Jo, referred to it, is the key to traveling between alternate realities, and Jo’s seemingly delusional quest to find it defined Bridge’s chaotic childhood. After eating the dreamworm, Bridge embarks on a universe-hopping journey to understand what really happened to her mother. We talked to author Lauren Beukes about the allure of the multiverse and what she’s learned about herself since publishing The Shining Girls.
I love the idea of the dreamworm. How did you come up with the idea? Oh god, it’s the last decade(s) of turmoil in the world, the realization that we all live in completely separate and conflicting realities that feel true to us. I’ve been horrified by the tip towards fascism and far right politics of hate, anti-vaxxers and anti-trans legislation, the reversal of abortion rights, shareholders’ profits-over-all, climate-change deniers. So, we already live in different dimensions to each other.
Also, psychedelic experiences like Dreamachine in London, which was hallucinatory without any additives except light and music, my lifelong love of Narnia and that simplest and most profound act of reading, which transports you into other worlds and other lives.
What about it appealed to you as a writer? It’s the appeal of the road not taken, all the might have beens in your life and the choices you didn’t make. How useful would that be, to be able to audition other versions of you, correct your mistakes, learn from your successes?
This is a (mostly) plausible alternate reality story in that all the universes are compatible with ours, similar enough that it’s easy to slip between the other lives and other versions of you. There are no Spider-Hams or sausage fingers, for example, to shout out those other two perfect multiverse stories of late.
“We already live in different dimensions to each other.”
This book required a fair amount of neuroscience knowledge. What was that research process like? The research is the best part of writing for me! Any excuse to hang out with interesting people and pick their brains and have them geek out about their specialties, including Cape Town, South Africa, neurosurgeon Dr. Sally Rothemeyer who talked me through epilepsy and tumors and my friend Dr. Hayley Tomes, who lent her name to the fictional disease Tomesians. The chapter set in the neuroscience lab is based on my visit to Hayley’s lab, and I couldn’t resist including all the good science and weird trivia. I did pick up excellent facts, but my favorite thing to come out of this was a physical memento.
After spending half a day with Hayley looking at slices of rat brain and mushed-up tapeworm larva under the confocal microscope, she asked me if I wanted a piece of rat brain to take home. I said, “Obviously!” I keep it in my 1930s medical cabinet with other writing mementos like the vintage My Little Pony from The Shining Girls, the Zoo City-inspired sloth scarf I wore to the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the cheap “satanic” jewelry I was gifted by Detective “Auntie Ghostbuster” from South Africa’s Occult Crimes Unit. My rat brain slice looks like a tiny piece of dried snot on a glass slide in a plastic case. Naturally, I named it Pinky.
The characters in Bridge have an impressively realistic balance of admirable qualities and concerning flaws. Did you have any core inspirations for Bridge and Jo? Did one come into focus earlier than the other? Bridge is a departure from most of my protagonists, because she’s so uncertain, so adrift in her life. Part of that is in reaction to growing up with Jo and Jo’s obsession with a reality-switching artifact, partly it’s being young in the 2020s in a world that feels very chaotic and scary right now. She’s trying to come to terms with her mother’s death, that the weirdness of her childhood was maybe real, not one of Jo’s delusions, and who the hell she’s supposed to be. She’s always been paralyzed by choice, but the situation she’s catapulted into is going to force her to make some really big ones.
Jo was easier to write because she’s dead set on what she wants, but that single-mindedness exploring other realities has cost her a lot in this one, including her relationship with her daughter.
It’s been 10 years since you wrote The Shining Girls. What have you learned about your writing along the way? This is a big one. In the last year, I got my adult ADHD diagnosis! Which explains why I’m probably never going to write a sequel (because it’s not shiny and new), the magpie nature of my novels, the weird places my research takes me and how it all comes together—and also why there were five years between Broken Monsters and Afterland.
Post-divorce in 2014, I was, like Bridge, lost, thrashing around, unable to settle on one thing, paralyzed by choices: wheel-spinning in the parking lot on the motorcycle of doubt. To be fair, I was also rebuilding my life from scratch, and I wrote two graphic novels and put together a short story collection in that time. But it turns out big life changes like divorce can throw people who have coped with their ADHD all their lives.
Since I’ve started medication and all the good lifestyle things around sleep and exercise and eating well, my depression and anxiety are basically gone and writing is a joy again. Still tricky, still sometimes like wading knee-deep through taffy swamplands, but doable. I think a lot of that experience is reflected in who Bridge is as a character, just as the creators of Everything Everywhere All at Once have talked about it as an ADHD allegory.
I don’t know if I’ve learned anything new about writing. Rather, I’ve come back to something I always knew: the most important thing is to finish the work and allow yourself to be messy and rough in the first draft. Stop wheel-spinning, stop doubling back, stop wondering if you should have taken the other exit. There’s a profane South Africanism that works here. Vokvoert. Literally fuck-forward, but really, fuck it, do it, go.
“Stop wheel-spinning, stop doubling back, stop wondering if you should have taken the other exit.”
You’ve written several serial killer mysteries and, without spoiling too much, there are some measured and practical, yet still quite violent scenes in Bridge. What attracts you to these scenes and/or characters? Why is violence such a compelling artistic subject? I grew up in apartheid South Africa, an incredibly violent society, and I’ve seen the repercussions of that kind of ruthless repression: the deep, historical, systemic issues that can’t be magically undone with a democratic election, even almost 30 years later, even with one of the best constitutions in the world. It’s the air we breathe, filled with knives. South Africa has the highest wealth inequality in the world and one of the highest rates of gender-based violence, especially against women of color and even more so if they’re queer or trans. That goes back centuries, to colonialism, to the slave trade and capitalism and the channels of power. Violence—personal, systemic—has shaped the world. It always will.
The people who perpetrate violence will always find ways to justify it to themselves, as the antagonist does in Bridge. I’m interested in those moral contortions, in what violence is and what it does to us, the choices we make.
What are some of your favorite pieces of media you experience this last year? There has been so much incredible TV, from season two of “The White Lotus” to the gleeful genre-mashup mystery of “The Afterparty.” “Better Call Saul,” “Barry,” and “Succession” were perfect and I may be slightly biased here, but I thought “Shining Girls” was such a smart, beautiful, thoughtful adaptation by showrunner Silka Luisa that was true to the bloody heart of my book. But the best thing I saw this year was “Search Party.” It’s such a weird wonderful show that gets progressively more batshit but absolutely consistent with the characters. (Of course, of course, that is where they would end up.)
Movies: Everything Everywhere All at Once (natch), Triangle of Sadness, Men.
Books: Nick Harkaway’s plutocrat mutant murder, Titanium Noir; Catriona Ward’s meta mystery puzzle box, Looking Glass Sound; Lisa Taddeo’s remarkable Three Women; two books by dear friends (again, slightly biased)—Sam Beckbessinger and Dale Halvorsen’s ’90s riot-grrrl small-town horror, Girls of Little Hope which wears its bloody heart safety-pinned to its teen punk T-shirt and Sam Wilson’s The First Murder on Mars, a fast and sharp sci-fi thriller. Oh, and Louie Stowell’s third middle grade Loki book, which she wrote and illustrated, is my favorite take on that excellent trickster (just like Lego Batman is the definitive Batman in my universe).
What’s your favorite way to work? I rent a studio space with a bunch of illustrators, animators, designers, filmmakers and writers in the hip East London neighborhood of Dalston. Writing is such lonely, in-your-head work it’s really important to me to have other people around and specifically other artists. It’s really social, but also focused and it means I can separate work and home, keep normal hours and get lots of freewheeling thinking time as I cycle in.
If you could pick one author from the past or present to have tea with, who would it be? I’m lucky to have a lot of author friends and I’d jump at any chance to spend more time with them. But among people I don’t know personally: Atwood, for her words, her insight, her curious mischief.
What’s next for you? I have an original TV show in development with two of my closest friends, Sam Beckbessinger and Dale Halvorsen (I did say I was slightly biased above) and I’ve just started germinating a new novel, but what I’d really love to do is write an immersive theater project. I was blown away by Swamp Motel’s Saint Jude where you’re assigned to help guide a coma patient through their memories, and Phantom Peak, which is Punch Drunk-meets-“Westworld” with less sex and murder and more cosmic platypuses.
Photo of Lauren Beukes by Peter Kindersley.
The author of The Shining Girls and Broken Monsters returns with Bridge, a thriller that’s trippy in more ways than one.
Our top 10 books for August 2023 include Colson Whitehead's riotous sequel to Harlem Shuffle, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest horror novel and an engrossing look at race in Shakespeare’s works.
Remy Lai juxtaposes serious topics with charming humor in Ghost Book, a lushly illustrated folkloric contemporary fantasy that will inspire readers to learn more about
Crook Manifesto more than matches the finely hewn psychological tensions that haunted Colson Whitehead’s main character in Harlem Shuffle. The interplay between context and character
Nicola Dinan’s debut is a vulnerable, moving, riotously funny and deeply honest story about trans life, first love, art-making, friendship, grief and the hard, slow
Whether you need a gift for an old friend, or a bedtime story for a little one who loves to watch the night sky, Comet & Star is the perfect choice. Just like Halley’s Comet, books with this unique magic don’t stop by every day.
Gillian Anderson asked women to send her their sexual fantasies. The result is a provocative, original volume that will help women and genderqueer people feel more empowered and less ashamed.
Our top 10 books for August 2023 include Colson Whitehead's riotous sequel to Harlem Shuffle, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest horror novel and an engrossing look at race in Shakespeare’s works.
John Scalzi returns with another sci-fi romp after last year’s The Kaiju Preservation Society, and the plot sounds like a Tumblr thread come to life—which we mean as the highest of compliments. When Charlie unexpectedly inherits his uncle Jake’s supervillain business (complete with “unionized dolphins” and “hyper-intelligent talking spy cats”), he also inherits his uncle’s feud with a group of even more terrifying bad guys: ruthless corporate overlords.
The Fragile Threads of Power by V. E. Schwab
Tor | September 26
There are many wonderful entry points to the work of V. E. Schwab, and fantasy fans swear by her Shades of Magic trilogy, which travels between four alternate versions of Regency London. Schwab completed the trilogy in 2017 and ventured to other genres and categories, writing the popular Cassidy Blake middle grade horror series, a young adult fantasy and a little book called The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. But now, Schwab will check back in with the heroes of the Shades of Magic trilogy in The Fragile Threads of Power, which takes place seven years later as new threats rise in two of the four Londons they call home.
Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
Del Rey | September 26
The vibe of Chuck Wendig’s latest horror novel sounds like cottagecore, but make it terrifying, and we are very much here for that. The picturesque small town of Harrow is forever changed when its inhabitants become obsessed with some mysterious, beautiful and powerful apples that transform them into better versions of themselves. But as harvest draws closer, the true nature of the apples and the town’s bloody history will be revealed.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Tor | October 3
Alix E. Harrow’s third novel appears to be a dark echo of her debut, The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Opal is another young woman in a mysterious house, but she’s not trying to escape like January Scaller. Rather, Opal is determined to make a home in Starling House, no matter what dark and terrifying forces lurk within it.
The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey
Tor Nightfire | October 3
Cassandra Khaw made a name for themself with the ambitious and creative horror novellas Nothing But Blackened Teethand The Salt Grows Heavy. Next, they’ll be teaming up with urban fantasy writer Richard Kadrey for a duology following a burnt-out New York City magician who accidentally puts the world in jeopardy while trying to save her best friend.
Throne of the Fallen by Kerri Maniscalco
Little, Brown | October 3
YA powerhouse Kerri Maniscalco’s adult debut, Throne of the Fallen, follows a prince of hell who falls in love with a painter. In a canny move, the novel is set in the same world as Maniscalco’s Kingdom of the Wicked series, which will thrill the books’ many adult fans who have been hoping for more mature content.
The Night House by Jo Nesbø, translated by Neil Smith
Knopf | October 3
There are complicated setups and then there are hooks like the one iconic Norwegian mystery writer Jo Nesbø employs in his first horror novel: What if you saw somebody die by getting sucked into a phone? That’s what happens to 14-year-old Richard in Nesbø’s The Night House and since no one believes him, Richard embarks on a quest to try and figure out why dark forces are targeting his small-town home.
Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare
Del Rey | October 10
With the end of her iconic, megabestselling and wildly popular Shadowhunter Chronicles in sight (one more trilogy, then it’s curtains!), Cassandra Clare is making the leap to adult fiction after 16 years as one of the reigning queens of YA. Sword Catcher will follow Kel, a nobleman’s body double, and Lin, a physician with magical abilities, as they uncover a conspiracy at the very heart of the powerful city-state of Castellane.
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Saga | October 31
Iconic speculative fiction author Tananarive Due returns with The Reformatory, which is based on the same horrifying real school as Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys—a school to which Due has a family connection. It’s 1950, and 12-year-old Robbie Stephens Jr. has just been sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys. But since Robbie can see ghosts, he begins to realize that something terrible is happening to the boys of Gracetown.
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
Tor | November 7
Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes was a major hit last year, delighting readers in search of low-stakes cozy fantasies. His next book will move from a coffee shop setting to one just as soothing: a bookshop in a seaside town. As it turns out, Legends & Lattes’ Viv once spent a summer recovering from a wound in the tiny beach town of Murk—and what happened to her there set her on the path to becoming the aspiring coffee shop owner with whom readers fell in love.
A Power Unbound by Freya Marske
Tordotcom | November 7
Freya Marske’s beloved Edwardian historical fantasy series comes to an end with A Power Unbound, which tells the love story of privileged Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, and cynical writer and thief Alan Ross. The two men have the sort of enemies-to-lovers, opposites-attract dynamic that thrills romance fans, and if Markse’s previous novels are any indication, A Power Unbound will be another perfect combination of love story and grand fantasy adventure.
System Collapse by Martha Wells
Tordotcom | November 14
Martha Wells’ beloved Murderbot is back for another smart and hilarious adventure in System Collapse, only this time, there’s something wrong with our stalwart hero’s programming! Murderbot will have to fix its internal bugs and figure out what exactly is going wrong inside itself before it can save the day.
Inheritance by Nora Roberts
St. Martin’s | November 21
The legendary Nora Roberts begins a new fantasy romance series with Inheritance, which will explore the haunted history of the Poole family. Sonya McTavish didn’t know her father had a brother until her uncle died and left her a beautiful Victorian house on the coast of Maine. She has to live in the house for three years to claim it, but once she’s there, she realizes the house may be haunted by the spirit of Astrid, a woman who was murdered after marrying into the Poole family in 1806.
The Kingdom of Sweets by Erika Johansen
Dutton | November 28
The Kingdom of Sweets is YA author Erika Johansen’s first novel for adults and her first novel outside of the bestselling Queen of the Tearling fantasy series. A new take on The Nutcracker, The Kingdom of Sweets follows Natasha, a young girl who enters the Land of the Sweets and strikes a dangerous bargain with the Sugar Plum Fairy.
This season, we can’t wait to read the adult debuts of iconic YA authors like Cassandra Clare and see what new delights rising stars like Freya Marske have cooked up. All that, and a new Murderbot novel too!
Empty nester Margaret Hartman is thrilled when she and her husband, Hal, buy a gorgeous old Victorian home. But the house soon begins testing them with annual September “shenanigans”: blood oozing down the walls, creepy spirits of 19th-century children and a demonic boogeyman that even an experienced priest can’t exorcize. Margaret and Hal weather three cursed Septembers, but Margaret in particular is in it for the long haul. When Hal disappears on the eve of the fourth September and his and Margaret’s daughter, Katherine, arrives to search for him, family secrets are brought to light.
From the ghost of a murdered maid to swarms of giant flies, the house’s antics become routine for Margaret, and her wry, witty narration will also accustom readers to these supernatural events. Despite the house’s horrors, it still provides Margaret with a haven, a purpose and an emotional connection to an eerie spirit community. But when author Carissa Orlando reveals why Margaret is so good at putting out proverbial fires and quelling very real ghosts, The September House takes an unexpected emotional turn. Margaret knows that ugly secrets can be carried well beyond the grave, and it’s better to heal, forgive and protect when you can. Her interactions with Katherine are particularly tense and anxiety-inducing as Orlando explores an estranged parent-child relationship impacted by intergenerational trauma.
The September House pulls inspiration from classic settings such as the Bates Motel, Rose Red, the Overlook Hotel and Hill House, but Orlando’s characterization of the old Victorian is fresh and fascinating. The house serves as an analogy for the deterioration of family and mental health, with the collapse of a person’s mind being more terrifying than any specter lurking in the shadows. Some of the body horror moments may feel familiar, but Margaret’s delightfully matter-of-fact voice puts a new spin on even the oldest of tropes, and the novel’s horrifying events unfold at a furious pace. The September House is a riveting adventure that will grab you by the ankles and drag you down into the pitch-black basement you’ve been warned to avoid.
Carissa Orlando’s darkly funny and unexpectedly emotional The September House follows an empty nester who refuses to leave her extremely haunted Victorian home.
Kissen is a veiga, or godkiller, sanctioned by the Middren government to kill nascent minor deities when they become troublesome. She holds a deep hatred of gods, given that her family, who was favored by the sea god Osidisen, was sacrificed to the rising fire god Hseth. So she’s deeply uneasy when she encounters Inara Craier, a recently orphaned noble girl who is somehow bonded to Skediceth, a minor god of white lies. Inara and Skediceth’s connection is an abomination in a land like Middren, which recently fought a war against and killed most of the gods. Soon, the three are traveling to the city of Blenraden, the only place with shrines powerful enough to potentially break the bond between Inara and Skediceth. Joining them on their quest is Elogast, a baker on a secret mission for the king himself.
In Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller, gods are creatures who feed on human devotion, much like Stephen Eriksen’s fading deities or C.S. Friedman’s symbiotic, emotion-eating Iezu. This symbiosis turns, all too easily, to predation and, eventually, bitter generational enmities between gods and their subjects. Unlike the dizzying political intrigue of Eriksen’s Malazan Book of the Fallen or Friedman’s character-driven Coldfire trilogy, Kaner’s work centers on her divine magic system. Godkiller is not a commentary on religion or free will; rather, it is about what happens when power lies in the hands of entities who simply do not care about the consequences of its use.
By far, the best characters are the gods themselves. Humans in Godkiller tend to be defined by single traits, whether Elogast’s honor, Kissen’s anger or Inara’s resilience. The gods are similarly one-note, but because they are all so deeply focused on their own self-preservation, they possess an amoral selfishness that is consistently interesting. Osidisen’s fury at Hseth seems largely motivated by how she stole his worshippers; Hseth herself simply requires an ever-growing coterie of human thralls to survive, like a fire needs a constant supply of fuel. Even Skediceth, despite his friendship and bond with Inara, views acting in his own best interest as the ultimate moral good.
But archetypes are common in fantasy for a reason: They’re compelling and fun. And there are few things more enjoyable than watching a bruised yet honorable man and a vengeance-seeking assassin escort a young girl and her manipulative, telepathic divinity of a familiar to the forbidden city of the gods. Especially when the world they’re traipsing through is so rich and laden with narrative potential.
In Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller, the world is filled with gods both major and minor, all of whom are as powerful as they are monstrously selfish.
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 WhoDrowned 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.
Inspired in equal parts by action-packed wuxia films (a Chinese genre focused on martial artists) and the classic Chinese novel Water Margin, S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws follows a group of heroes struggling to build a place for themselves in an alternative imperial China. Lin Chong, a former arms master who lost her position thanks to a petty and vengeful member of the royal court, is nearly killed en route to a prison camp. She joins forces with a group of outlaws known as the Liangshan Bandits, who have created a refuge for those who are on the wrong side of the law—and the wrong side of gender and power hierarchies. Lin Chong begins to redefine her life alongside poets, progressive thinkers and others rejected by the empire. But their refuge isn’t guaranteed to last forever, and Lin Chong and her new companions must fight in order to preserve their community.
With The Water Outlaws, Huang explores the space between what is good and what is lawful. Despite often claiming to work for the good of the emperor and the empire, Lin Chong and her compatriots do not always (or even usually) stay within the confines of the law. They lie, cheat and even kill to maintain the peace that they have carved out for themselves within a society they see as corrupt. Their cause is just, Lin Chong reminds herself, even if their methods are not always lawful.
The Water Outlaws is above all else a story of femme and queer resistance. In Liangshan, Huang creates an accepting alternative society that celebrates marginalized gender identities, a mirror of the communities that exist in our own world to protect the most vulnerable. That isn’t to say that The Water Outlaws is a gentle story: Its pages are filled with violence against the Liangshan Bandits and also against women like the noble Lu Junyi, one of Lin Chong’s former students who is trying to work within the confines of the empire to enact change. But amid the darkness its characters face, The Water Outlaws captures the wonder and fun of wuxia, complete with epic fight scenes, death-defying feats of martial arts and the occasional bit of actual magic. Huang champions the underdogs, even in the face of the impossible.
S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws is a glorious, wuxia-inspired saga of femme and queer resistance in the face of oppression.
Kel has worked carefully to assimilate into the culture of her adopted homeworld of Loth. She’s a daredevil climber of xoffedil, the local megafauna, and is a somewhat dour friend to Lunna, a cheerful youth from the nearby village. But Kel has a secret buried under the floorboards of her house—the kind of secret best left right where it is, for everyone’s safety. However, when a derelict war machine left behind by an expansionist interstellar empire mysteriously reactivates, Kel’s best option is to dig out her old weapons and hope she doesn’t have to make use of them.
Valerie Valdes’ Where Peace Is Lost reads like Star Wars co-written by Scott Lynch and Tamsyn Muir. Kel and Lunna are soon joined by Savvy, an appropriately named space captain, and Dare, Savvy’s strong and silent companion. The four mismatched leads try to solve a problem that’s locally a very big deal, but beneath the notice of galactic politicians and imperial commandants. Along the way, there are hijinks at varying levels of violence, some involving the loquacious Lunna charming their way out of (or into) trouble, others involving Dare hitting things with a high-tech claymore. And then there’s Kel, whose secret could solve all their problems, but also create newer, much bigger ones.
Where Peace Is Lost could easily be the first book in a series revolving around this volatile quartet as they traipse around the galaxy, solving problems with implausibly big swords and amusing chatter. Valdes ties up the main plot without answering several significant questions about her core characters and their respective histories, perhaps leaving room to flesh things out in sequels. Or perhaps she’ll just . . . leave it at that. When the characters and their relationships are as well-drawn as they are in Where Peace Is Lost, a reader’s imagination can easily fill in the gaps.
Where Peace Is Lost, with its ambitious, imaginative brand of escapist social commentary, is part of the current resurgence in optimistic speculative fiction, where the good guys are actually good and some of the bad guys might be decent deep inside. Readers will forgive a few just-so plot twists and predictable romances in order to spend time in this gift of a story where nobody locks their doors, the greedy get what’s coming to them and and the artifacts beneath your quiet, secretive neighbor’s floorboards can save the world.
Where Peace Is Lost is an ambitious, imaginative space adventure with an escapist, soothing brand of social commentary.
In their high-octane and highly entertaining update of Water Margin, a classic Chinese novel about a band of noble bandits facing off against an oppressive government, S.L. Huang evokes the joyous spirit of classic martial arts films.
The characters of Lin Chong, a combat instructor who eventually joins the bandits, and Lu Junyi, one of Lin Chong’s aristocratic students, feel like they are in conversation: One strives for big change and the other strives to be a model minority. Did you conceive of them as two sides of the same coin from the start? It’s somewhat unusual for me to plan a character arc to this extent, but yes, that was 100% planned. In the real world, I’m frequently frustrated by a sort of “flattening” of people who are in marginalized spaces; we’re frequently perceived as a monolith who must all have the same views and make the same choices. In reality, there are plenty of difficult intracommunity conversations.
I wanted to portray real-feeling people who cannot be easily “purity tested.” Lin Chong has had to fight and claw to achieve an unusual job and status for a woman, but is determined to keep her head down so as not to lose what she’s wrought for herself. Lu Junyi has more high-flying ideals, but she can also afford to: She’s wealthy and insulated, and her social progressivism is more of an academic than a lived variety. Both are good people on the whole, and both are somewhat frustrated by the other’s politics.
Without giving too much away, I wanted their arcs to, in a way, reflect and cross—and for both of them to fall toward a messier gray area where they have to acknowledge hard truths about themselves and their society.
“I’m always drawn toward writing what I don’t see.”
What do you think Lu Junyi would have been if she could have chosen for herself? Hm, I think it depends on what life experiences she’s faced with. If you plopped her in modern times, she’d probably start off as the type of annoying college student who thinks she knows exactly what all the correct and moral answers are, and is a little bit judgy of people with other opinions. (Lots of us were like that in college!)
On the other hand, she’s open-minded enough that more and more exposure to people different from her would start to expand and complicate her worldview, just as it happens in the book. Although, hopefully less painfully for her.
Eventually, if she were born in modern-day America, I think she’d probably end up doing some pretty amazing media work for a nonprofit she’s passionate about! Elsewhere in the world, she’d probably be doing something similar, though perhaps with slightly more danger to herself . . .
Historically, there’s been a dearth of middle-aged protagonists—especially middle-aged women—in science fiction and fantasy, but that has begun to change in recent years. Why did you decide to center this story around older characters? Partly because there HAS been such a dearth of such characters—I’m always drawn toward writing what I don’t see.
But also, for the story I wanted to tell, I needed characters who had some amount of life experience. I didn’t want this to be a story of only young prodigies; I wanted this to be a story that included people who’d had time to build extensive pasts, histories and baggage.
Many scenes—and characters!—are equal parts humorous and deadly. How did you strike that balance, and why was it important to you to bring it to the forefront? The light but true answer is that I grew up on action-comedy movies! I love action, and I love it even more when it’s lightened by humor.
As much as I tried to treat the themes of The Water Outlaws deeply and seriously, I also wanted it to be escapist and fun.
In addition to your work as an author, you’re also a Hollywood stunt performer and professional armorer. Your love of choreography definitely shines in The Water Outlaws, as does your love of wuxia, the Chinese historical fantasy genre that focuses on martial artists. What originally drew you to those worlds? Honestly, I think the same thing that draws a lot of us to sci-fi & fantasy—a hunger for adventure and a love of imagination.
I’ve said before that I think I ended up doing stunts because it’s basically extreme LARPing, ha. I guess I never grew out of yearning for that immersive experience of living the stories I grew up with. And my favorites were always the ones with swords!
How did you approach translating the fantastical brutality of wuxia onto the page? I tend to write my action in what I like to describe as a “cinematic” way, in that I want it to feel both real and also slightly larger than life. This fits very well with wuxia, which tends to have a similar feel—think, for instance, of martial arts movies that engage in fantastical wire work without any acknowledgment of special powers.
It’s always important to me to engage with the harm and consequences of physical violence—but equally important to me to write glorious, imagination-spanning sword fights!
We don’t see a lot of magic in the early parts of the book, but it’s always hovering on the edges of your world. What was interesting to you about taking this understated approach to magic? This was very much informed by my love of wuxia! Supernatural elements are often extremely understated, or an accepted part of the world that only comes up when it comes up. It’s not an approach I see a lot in European-derived fantasy—where the magical world building is often a central focus—and I was very interested in writing in that paradigm.
Classical Chinese literature also tends toward this approach to the supernatural, that it’s an expected part of the world and not the focus of the narrative. This includes Water Margin, which was the direct inspiration that I was reimagining in this book!
You have a beautiful, poetic way of describing gender and bringing the nuances of gender fluidity to life. Why was it important for you to explore this territory in The Water Outlaws? Well, it’s personal to me and to many of my friends. My day-to-day life intersects with a lot of queer spaces, so the gender diversity of the bandits is simply a reflection of my reality!
(Although I adjusted the terminology and dialogue about it for my fantasy world, as I didn’t want it to feel exactly one-to-one with how any modern culture talks about it today.)
Was there anything in Water Margin that you wanted to put in The Water Outlaws that just didn’t fit? And was there anything you were happy to leave behind in your own retelling? There was so much that didn’t fit! In particular, three of my favorite characters—Hua Rong, Dai Zong and Wu Song—don’t appear in the main narrative. Hua Rong I managed to add into the epilogue as a master archer, but Dai Zong’s main ability, Taoist powers of traveling magically fast, was slightly too story-breaking to introduce. And Wu Song’s tale, which is full of tiger-fighting, adultery and revenge, was just far too large and expansive to do justice along with all the other pieces I was already focusing on.
Hopefully I can add some of them if there are sequels!
In terms of what I was happy to leave behind, there was plenty of that, too. I love Water Margin to death, but part of the reason I wanted to do a genderswapped version in the first place was that the original is such a highly male-centric and misogynistic tale. So that was first on my list to turn on its head in my retelling.
In particular, one of the bits I was pettily excited to cut was the marital fate of Hu Sanniang, one of only female bandits out of the 108. Despite its misogyny, the original rarely has our ultra-violent heroes engage in sexual violence or coercion, thankfully. But unfortunately, the reason for this feels a lot less like a knowledge that it’s wrong, and much more like a scorn of anything having to do with carnal desires. The bandits have a single member who shows strong desire for women, which is somehow equated with him carrying off women by force—and the leader stops him by “finding him a wife,” i.e., marrying him to one of the onlythree female bandits.
That female bandit is Hu Sanniang, an amazing fighter who is capable of beating most of the men, and one of the best characters in the original novel. I strongly object to how done wrong she was by this piece of the original book, and I took great delight in giving my Hu Sanniang a backstory of escaping an undesired marriage and cutting her would-be forced husband entirely.
Photo of S.L. Huang by Chris Massa.
The Water Outlaws is a paean to liberation and resistance—and also an absolute blast.
Set in the 1800s, R.F. Kuang’s historical fantasy novel Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution follows the adventures of Robin Swift, a Chinese student at the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University, where the act of translation is used to derive magical power. Though languages like Bengali, Haitian creole and Robin’s native Cantonese are the source of much of this power, Britain and its ruling class reaps almost all of the benefits. As Robin progresses at the institute, his loyalties are tested when Britain threatens war with China. The politicization of language and the allure of institutional power are among the book’s rich discussion topics.
Jason Fitger, the protagonist of Julie Schumacher’s witty campus novel Dear Committee Members, teaches creative writing and literature at Payne University, where he contends with funding cuts and diminishing department resources. He also frequently writes letters of recommendation for students and colleagues, and it’s through these letters that the novel unfolds. Schumacher uses this unique spin on the epistolary novel to create a revealing portrait of a curmudgeonly academic struggling to navigate the complexities of campus life. Reading groups will savor this shrewdly trenchant take on the higher-ed experience, and if you find yourself wanting to sign up for another course with Professor Fitger, Schumacher’s two sequels (The Shakespeare Requirement and The English Experience) are also on the syllabus.
For a surrealist send-up of the liberal arts world, turn to Mona Awad’s clever, disturbing Bunny. Samantha Mackey made it into the MFA creative writing program of Warren University thanks to a scholarship. The other writers—a tightknit circle of wealthy young women known as the Bunnies—convene regularly for a horrifying ritual. When Samantha is invited to take part, she learns difficult lessons about female friendship and her own identity. This haunting, often funny novel probes the dark side of academia and the challenges of the artistic process.
In her uncompromising, upfront memoir, They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up, Eternity Martis writes about being a Black student at Western University, a mostly white college in Ontario. Martis was initially thrilled to attend the university, but the racism she experienced in the classroom and in social settings made her question her life choices. Her smart observations, unfailing sense of humor and invaluable reporting on contemporary education make this a must-read campus memoir.
Go back to school with tomes that spotlight the scandals and drama of life on campus.
The top 10 books for September include the latest from Angie Kim & Zadie Smith, plus a compelling mystery from William Kent Kruger and a helpful guide for talking about food with kids.
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Family & Relationships
In a thoughtful attempt to reckon with the past, Meg Kissinger delivers a spellbinding account of how mental illness and addiction ripped her family apart.
Zadie Smith writes eloquent, powerful and often quite humorous novels with social issues at the fore, and The Fraud is no exception. Its firm grounding
Angie Kim’s suspenseful follow-up to Miracle Creek follows a family that lives in a quiet and even bucolic neighborhood near Washington, D.C. They try to
Lucy Parker’s breezy and winning new rom-com, Codename Charming, follows a reserved royal bodyguard and the perky personal assistant of the prince he protects.
Emily Witt’s sharp, deeply personal memoir, Health and Safety, invites us to relive a tumultuous era in American history through the eyes of a keen observer.
In the vibrantly illustrated Djinnology, a fictional scientist travels the world to learn about sometimes malevolent, sometimes benevolent spirits of Muslim folklore.
Julie Heffernan’s first graphic novel, Babe in the Woods, is a mesmeric work of autofiction loosely retelling how she became an artist while following a hike in the Appalachian Mountains with her infant child.
Anyone suspicious of the luster of capitalism and its promises will find much to mull over in Entitlement, Rumaan Alam’s slyly provocative fourth novel.
In The Wildes, novelist Louis Bayard shows us Oscar Wilde through the eyes of his wife and sons—presenting a portrait of the poet and playwright as engaged father, loving but distant husband, self-absorbed keeper of secrets and a terrified man unable to love openly.
Tony Tulathimutte’s facility with verbal stunt-piloting borders on the dazzling in Rejection, a novel in seven stories that chronicles vivid responses to the experience of being turned down, or turned away.
The top 10 books for September include the latest from Angie Kim & Zadie Smith, plus a compelling mystery from William Kent Kruger and a helpful guide for talking about food with kids.
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In 2019, we’ve enjoyed a number of good comic tales—but they’re dark, a little wicked, and even when they’re a little fantastical, they’re deeply, utterly real. Here are five of our favorites.
The author of The Night Ends With Fire, a new fantasy romance inspired by the legend of Mulan, shares her bookstore habits and favorite library memories.
