Given our culture’s widespread embrace of all things nerdy and the ever-increasing popularity of romance novels, it’s no surprise that readers are flocking to stories of true love in magical realms and soulmates bantering their way through intergalactic intrigue.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
Mika Moon has a large following online, dazzling her audience with potions and her sparkling personality. The difference between Mika and other young women posing as witches with vlogs is that Mika is actually a witch. Taught to keep her abilities under wraps by her overbearing guardian, Mika knows that the biggest rule of witchcraft is that you never talk about witchcraft. Still, she believes her online activities are innocuous enough: After all, who would truly believe that witches exist? When a mysterious estate called Nowhere House entreats her to come and train a group of three young witches who don’t have control over their powers, Mika is immediately intrigued—and worried. After all, generations of witches have stayed safe by not congregating or doing anything suspicious. But she goes anyway, armed with nothing but her trusty dog, Circe, and a winning smile. At Nowhere House, Mika quickly runs into problems, not just from her young charges but also from Jamie, a testy librarian with trust issues who can’t decide if Mika is the answer to their problems or an even bigger problem herself. But as Mika settles into her role, she begins to understand that Jamie’s thorny exterior guards a man who may not be nice but is kind. And his steadfast presence might just be enough for Mika to lower the walls around her own heart.
In The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, author Sangu Mandanna tells a story of found family, taking chances and, of course, romance. Mandanna combines two classic rom-com tropes—forced proximity and a grumpy-sunshine pairing—with the charm of the English countryside, evoking restrained yet fluffy tales of governesses and duty but in a modern setting. Like a good cup of tea, Mandanna’s novel warms you from the inside out. It’s got just enough sugar and cream to bring a smile to your face but not so much that it seems saccharine.
—Laura Hubbard
Eclipse the Moon
Jessie Mihalik returns to her Starlight’s Shadow series with Eclipse the Moon, an action-packed, sci-fi romance with a central couple that readers will adore.
A hacker and bounty hunter aboard the spaceship Starlight’s Shadow, Kee Ildez needs a break from the ship’s close quarters and the presence of one of her alien crewmates, steely Valovian weapons expert Varro Runkow. She thinks a few weeks of solo investigation on the space station Bastion, where someone seems to be trying to start a war between the humans and the Valovians, will help her shake off her frustrating attraction to Varro. But her plan is upended when she realizes that he has followed her onto the space station. As tensions rise between human and Valovian designers during a fashion exhibit, Kee tries to stay professional and keep her mind on her mission. The peace between the two races has been tentative at best, and even something seemingly innocuous could plunge the galaxy into war.
Mihalik moves the plot along quickly, mixing deadly intrigue, fast-paced action and political diplomacy. Kee and Varro are incontrovertible heroes, and Mihalik embraces the idea of good triumphing over evil, giving Eclipse the Moon a vaguely old-fashioned, space Western-esque feel. Their romance unfolds slowly, as their mutual attraction comes to a head amid the danger on Bastion. The mystery plot often takes center stage, which will please more drama- and action-oriented readers. But Mihalik knows her audience and makes sure to include some very steamy moments amid all the dangerous tension and close combat.
—Amanda Diehl
A Taste of Gold and Iron
A Taste of Gold and Iron is a slow-burn romance wrapped in a fantasy novel full of court intrigue. Alexandra Rowland’s latest novel opens as Prince Kadou of Arasht has made a grievous political misstep, one that leaves two of his own bodyguards dead and angers both his sister, who happens to be the sultan, and the father of her child. In an attempt to save face for the royal family, Kadou is temporarily banned from court and assigned a new bodyguard, Evemer. Evemer’s disdain for Kadou is matched only by his dedication to formality and protocol, but what he lacks in congeniality he makes up for in skill and dedication. As Kadou and his household are pulled into a conspiracy of break-ins and money forgery, Kadou will have to trust Evemer if he is to pull the royal family out of harm’s way.
Political intrigue dominates much of A Taste of Gold and Iron, so those looking for a book that primarily centers a love story would do well to look to other avenues. However, for readers who enjoy forced proximity and bodyguard romances, A Taste of Gold and Iron offers both, wrapped in a delightful package of espionage and royal duty. In addition to their deft handling of multiple conspiracies and political disputes, Rowland also impresses in their nuanced depiction of anxiety. Kadou has panic attacks that leave him vulnerable to manipulation from both political opponents and his own staff. The story’s acceptance of Kadou’s anxiety expands A Taste of Gold and Iron‘s focus from romantic love to trust and vulnerability as well.
—Laura Hubbard
These reads from writers Sangu Mandanna, Jessie Mihalik and Alexandra Rowland have a couple to root for and a world to get totally lost in.
With its hundreds of spires and stone facades, Oxford University looks like a cathedral of knowledge, unassailable and ancient. What dangerous texts might its highest towers and deepest libraries contain? R.F. Kuang’s Babel perfectly employs Oxford as a backdrop for the story of a group of eager students in the middle of a magical war. A standalone fantasy that takes its cues from The Secret History and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Babel is a methodical, unforgiving examination of the cost of power and the pain of achieving it.
When the family of a young boy named Robin Swift dies of cholera, a stern English professor takes him away from China. He arrives in an alternate Oxford, England, in 1828 and is thrust into lessons in language so that he might one day join the prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel. Throughout his years of study, Robin hopes to eventually attain the highest knowledge Babel offers: the mysteries of silver-working, a magical process that has helped the British Empire maintain its worldwide dominance for decades. Sensitive to the injustices wrought by Babel and silver-working, Robin joins the Hermes Society, a secret organization that steals silver and sabotages the expansion of British power from within. Are Robin and his fellow members revolutionaries? Or are they doomed to be powerless witnesses to the march of empire?
Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy is one of the most acclaimed fantasy series of the last few years. A finalist for the Nebula and Locus awards, the series was vicious and engrossing, dark and thoughtful; I personally couldn’t put it down. Babel feels different from her first trilogy, but this is undoubtedly a Kuang novel. There’s a sense of inevitability in her work, each book moving toward a climactic breaking point.
This carefully built momentum results in an addicting read. Kuang takes her time ramping things up, focusing for the first half of Babel on Robin’s assimilation into school and broader English culture, finding friends and growing up. Kuang nails the ups and downs of being young with precision. It’s nearly impossible not to compare Babel to Harry Potter, but Kuang’s magical teens feel more grown-up, more layered than J.K. Rowling’s well-known trio. Their banter, camaraderie and angst consistently satisfy as anger and loss harden them, and as they eventually realize the horrible truths they couldn’t grasp as young students.
Kuang, who is completing her Ph.D. in East Asian languages and literature, has gone to incredible lengths to wrap the history and evolution of language into silver-working, which is an impressively unique magic system. The Bablers, as students in the Institute of Translation are called, uncover meanings lost in translation and historical connections between words and then etch them into silver bars. If the words have a strong connection, magic happens. It’s a wonderful way for Kuang to incorporate a topic she clearly loves and deeply understands.
Ultimately, Babel asks a pointed question: What is the price of power? The novel’s full title is Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, which both gives the book a sense of realism and hints at Kuang’s ultimate answer. British colonialism perpetrated destruction on every civilization it encountered. Babel provides a long overdue reckoning, cast in silver and doused in blood.
Babel, R.F. Kuang's standalone follow-up to her acclaimed Poppy War trilogy, is an unforgiving examination of the cost of power.
The Ringers, the aliens that descend to Earth at the beginning of Ruthanna Emrys’ A Half-Built Garden, are perhaps the best-case scenario as far as aliens go. They’re a multicultural community made up of different interstellar life-forms, they value parenthood to the point that they show up to negotiations with children in tow, and they’ve come to Earth for the express purpose of airlifting humans off of our doomed planet. The only problem? Communities like the one protagonist Judy Wallach-Stevens belongs to have made enormous progress in healing the Earth, and they may not want to abandon it after all.
What interested you in a first-contact story that takes a more peaceful route than the murderous invader angle we see so often? First contact has been my favorite subgenre of science fiction since I was a teenager. “Exposure Therapy”—my first professional publication, in Analog many years ago—was a first-contact story. The challenges of communication and cooperation are so interesting, and aliens let me turn the questions that humans face with one another up to 11.
I have trouble seeing how a propensity for murderous invasion is compatible with the level of internal cooperation needed for interstellar travel. I’m sure I could come up with reasons to justify it if I tried, but murderous invasion is banal and evil, and not a direction that I’m terribly excited to write about. There’s metal and water spread throughout the universe. Why come all this way to kill people when the only resources that differ across star systems are the ones produced by thriving, living sapients? Interstellar invasion to kidnap artists and bring them back to Alpha Centauri . . . that I could get into. I think Catherynne Valente wrote that one!
I’m also an optimist who likes stories in which communication and cooperation are possible. During the process of writing the book, we brought an African grey parrot into our household, and next time I write a first contact, it will probably be influenced by the difficulties of communicating with an English-speaking nonhuman from Earth.
“I have trouble seeing how a propensity for murderous invasion is compatible with the level of internal cooperation needed for interstellar travel.”
Were there any ideas about the way the Ringers look that you discarded or modified over time? What was the initial spark for their appearance? In my first two books, Winter Tide and Deep Roots, I used aliens originally invented by H.P. Lovecraft, who, for all his faults, was very good at nonhumanoid body plans. So I didn’t want bipeds with funny foreheads—but I did want forms that stemmed from recognizable ecological niches and that could, with some effort, be compatible with living in the same environments as humans. So, no visitors from gas giants.
The plains-folk were sparked by M.C. Escher’s roly-polies, which have fascinated me from the time I was a little kid looking at my parents’ Escher coffee-table book. I made them bigger and more reasonably biological, but still something that curls up in a ball for defense with (some of their) eyes sticking out. I added the extra limbs and eyes and skinsong later, because complicated sensoria are fun.
I don’t recall the tree-folk origin as clearly, but playing with body plans that make humans nervous is always fun, and arboreal biology is also fun to play with. I wanted something that would look more aggressive than it is, so “sort of a giant spider if you don’t look too closely” seemed like a promising direction. I added the extra eyes and mouths and manipulators later, because complicated sensoria and radial symmetry are fun.
The gender and parenting aspects of both species came out of themes that I wanted to play with as sources of friction and connection between species—in particular, that for the plains-folk, being a mother is an indication of dominance and leadership, and the way that shapes the whole culture of the Ringers.
“Why would you even make a Dyson sphere—and what would it take to make one and still be worth talking to?” was also a core question that shaped the Rings. Politically speaking, I think Dyson spheres are a bad idea; I wrote the Ringers to argue with me.
The choice of whether to stay on Earth or to abandon the planet lies at the heart of this book. Do you foresee humanity having to make a similar choice at some point in the future? I’m not actually convinced that it’s a feasible choice; that’s another place where I wrote the book to argue with myself, as well as with the assumption threaded through so much science fiction that life in space is our inevitable destiny. The Ringers have made several technological advances that make this assumption viable, but it’s not clear yet that those advances are feasible in the real world.
I have some serious side-eye for triumphalist predictions about terraforming from a species that so far seems very skilled at taking a habitable planet and making it less habitable. When we’ve proven that we can keep the air breathable and the temperature under control on the easy setting, I think we’ll be ready to spread out!
Motherhood in all its forms is a key element of the story. Was it clear from the beginning that this story would circle around it, or did that element emerge in the drafting process? What about motherhood did you most want to convey or examine while writing? Parenthood (not just motherhood) was one of my major starting points. In particular, I wanted to challenge the way that our current culture places parenting in conflict with accomplishing just about everything else, and with playing any other role. Modern American culture is worse about motherhood, but that’s because fathers are expected to prioritize those other roles. Every culture in A Half-Built Garden, even the corporate one, has some way of better integrating parenting into the rest of life. Some of them have all-new problems, but that’s where plot comes from!
What aspects of your version of Earth’s future do you think are most likely to become reality? Sea level rise and unpleasant weather, unfortunately. But 80% of the technology for the dandelion networks is out there and already being used by citizen scientists, and that—along with the algorithms that deliberately build in biases that we want—is ready to become reality if we work at it!
This book is full of different communities. (I loved the strangeness of the social games on the corporate island of Asterion!) Was one of these groups more fun to construct than another? They were all fun in their own ways. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Network builds on things I love about my own communities and want to see grow. Judy’s neighborhood is, in fact, my neighborhood, with some additions that we’ve started (the food forest) or discussed putting in (the runoff mitigation garden with the frogs). The remnant U.S. government is a love letter to the nerdy wonks I’ve worked with inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C.
Asterion was definitely a lot of fun to write, and I wasn’t planning them at the start of the story. At some point I got stuck figuring out the corporate reps, and I decided that what this book needed was really sexy villains. And people who, like me, are actually a lot more into gender presentation than gender per se. I wouldn’t want to live on their island, but I would enjoy a vacation there a lot more than Judy does! As long as they’ve labeled the food.
The Ringer multiculture was also a lot of fun, both in figuring out how to build infrastructure for the two species’ symbiosis and dropping hints of what things are like in other habitats. My secret favorites are the tech-obsessed group with the food pills, though, like Cytosine. I wouldn’t be terribly excited about their potluck contributions.
When you think back to writing this book, do any sections stand out to you? A Half-Built Garden is in many ways a novel of manners, and my favorite novel-of-manners trope is the fraught dinner party. So I knew early on that each group would get to host a fraught dinner party and that the Chesapeake party would be a Passover Seder. Since most novels-of-manners are British or pseudo-British, I really feel that literature doesn’t contain enough fraught Seders. I loved writing a science fictional version of my family’s weird progressive interfaith Seder and how well suited it was for forcing people to talk to one another at a time when some of them would rather have hidden from the consequences of previous events.
If aliens landed on Earth today, what do you think would happen? Could we exist peacefully, or perhaps even join their civilization? It depends on where they land! Come to suburban Maryland, and like Dinar, my family will be eager to host the world’s most high-stakes potluck on no notice and to invite friends at NASA to join us before anyone less friendly can get there. On the other hand, I can imagine landing sites where people would be a lot less welcoming. And plenty of companies, like Asterion, would push to build franchises on the nearest Dyson sphere. I hope that the aliens would be enough like us to accept us despite shared imperfections—and enough unlike us to accept us despite those imperfections!
I did cheat a bit by having the Ringers learn human languages from our broadcasts; I didn’t want the whole plot to be about language learning, even if Judy’s linguistics-nerd co-parent is annoyed about it. In practice, I think we’d have a long process of finding common communication methods, and if parrots are any indication, there would probably be a lot of reasonable-to-one-side biting along the way.
Photo of Ruthanna Emrys credit Jamie Anfenson-Comeau.
We talked to the author about writing a book to argue with herself and why literature needs more fraught Seders.
Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for fiction, Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book is a searing portrayal of the Black authorial experience. At the center of the novel is an unnamed Black author on his first book tour struggling to navigate the publishing industry and make sense of the modern world. His narrative is offset by chapters recounting the story of Soot, a young Black boy in the South. Poignant and often funny, Mott’s novel draws readers in as it scrutinizes race in American society and the power of storytelling.
Marlon James’ epic fantasy Black Leopard, Red Wolf is narrated by Tracker, a hunter with an acute sense of smell. Accompanied by a shape-shifter named Leopard and a band of misfit mercenaries, Tracker travels through a landscape inspired by African mythology and ancient history on a dangerous quest to find a lost boy. Hallucinatory and violent yet marvelously poetic, this first entry in James’ Dark Star trilogy won the 2019 L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. There are an abundance of potential topics for discussion, such as James’ folkloric inspirations and Tracker’s unreliable narration.
Following the death of her aunt from an uncommon ailment called Chagas, or the kissing bug disease, Daisy Hernández decided to research the illness. She shares her findings in The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease. Hernández talked to physicians and disease experts throughout the United States, and her interviews with patients reveal the human cost of the American healthcare system’s inadequacies. Hernández displays impressive storytelling skills in this masterfully researched volume, which won the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado’s powerful chronicle of a toxic love affair, won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ nonfiction. In the book, Machado reveals that she fell hard for a magnetic, emotionally unpredictable woman who became abusive. In structuring her memoir, she draws upon various narrative devices and traditions (coming-of-age, choose your own adventure and more), and the result is a multifaceted, daring and creative portrayal of a deeply dysfunctional relationship.
These superbly crafted retellings present an opportunity to revel in tales we might think we know well but that still have the ability to surprise.
The Book of Gothel
Framed as a medieval text found in a German woman’s attic, The Book of Gothel centers on the woman who became the witch who imprisoned Rapunzel in her tower. As a young girl, however, Haelewise is neither powerful nor a witch. She is merely an outsider, marked by both her intermittent fainting spells and her deep, black eyes. Her mother, Hedda, is the respected local midwife, but most in their village believe that Haelewise’s fainting spells are of demonic origin. After her mother dies and her father remarries, Haelewise takes refuge in a secluded tower called Gothel, where she becomes an apprentice to a wise woman. But despite her existence on the margins of her world, Haelewise is soon pulled into intrigue, from princesses fleeing cruel fiancés to princes with wicked spells cast upon them. With secrets behind every whisper, Haelewise must tread carefully if she is to survive.
Mary McMyne’s debut novel is dark and moody, full of distrust, doubt and more than a little bit of drama. Far from being a simple villain origin story, it explores Haelewise’s family, her epilepsy and the stark world of 12th-century Germania. Despite the bleak nature of the era, McMyne’s prose is full of vivid color, whether it’s the mysterious golden fruit that Haelewise finds growing in Hedda’s garden or the madder-red gown given to Haelewise by a childhood friend turned would-be lover. It’s a world where Christianity and older religions and traditions coexist but where even a hint of witchcraft could put herbalists and midwives in danger of being stoned. This atmosphere, combined with the deep longings and confusion of a girl just entering womanhood and the fact that readers have a good idea of the fate that awaits her, shadows The Book of Gothel with an overwhelming sense of dread—but will also compel readers to keep going to the very end.
★ The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s latest novel, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, starts in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in the 19th century, as the titular doctor is looking for an assistant. He finds one in Montgomery Laughton, an Englishman with alcoholism and a mountain of debt. Montgomery helps the aging doctor create human-animal hybrids, which are destined to work the plantations of Dr. Moreau’s wealthy benefactor. Carlota Moreau, the doctor’s daughter, leads a relatively carefree life on the estate, with plenty of hybrid companions and her studies to keep her company. The only thing marring her life is a lingering childhood illness that requires her to have weekly injections of one of her father’s mysterious serums. When the handsome son of Dr. Moreau’s benefactor, Eduardo Lizalde, unexpectedly visits, the sheltered estate is thrown first into discord and then into total disarray as the Moreaus’ secrets are pulled slowly into the light.
Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic, Gods of Jade and Shadow) is a master of dramatic tension. Her decision to reimagine H.G. Wells’ visionary 1896 novel on an isolated estate instead of an island creates a sense of furtiveness, a constant fear of discovery. The insertion of Carlota, who is not a character from the original book, gives a human face to an inhuman (or, at the very least, inhumane) story, adding something precious that could be lost if the delicate equilibrium of Moreau’s estate is unbalanced.
Moreno-Garcia revels in her setting’s tropical color palette, which is reflected in the rich green of Eduardo’s eyes and the bold colors of Carlota’s dresses. Moreno-Garcia also includes small, down-to-earth details of pastoral life on the estate, resulting in a world that feels immediate enough to slip into. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau will pull readers in even as a pit grows in their stomachs, given all the things they know can—and likely will—go wrong.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia takes on The Island of Doctor Moreau, and the witch from "Rapunzel" gets a haunting origin story.
If the climate crisis continues its horrifying course, will what’s left of the land and ocean be salvageable? Or will we need to make the jump to an intergalactic existence? In Ruthanna Emrys’ philosophical, warmhearted and intriguing novel A Half-Built Garden, humanity has a chance to chart a new course.
On a warm night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens and her wife, Carol, take a stroll in their neighborhood. A collaborative community tasked with monitoring and preserving a local watershed, their town represents a triumph. The old corporations and nation-states that destroyed the Earth’s environment have been banished from power, and communities like Judy’s are slowly, painstakingly resurrecting our planet. Hope is starting to return—that is, until the aliens arrive. A massive, sleek spacecraft lands in front of Judy, and out step the Ringers. These strange beings have been searching the universe for signs of life and hope they can convince humanity to join their symbiotic civilization before Earth becomes unlivable. Because Judy is the first person they see, she instantly becomes their ambassador. Will humanity decide to leave Earth? Or is the progress they’ve made too precious to let go?
Emrys roots her story in Judy’s reflective, empathetic perspective, and readers will waffle between courses of action right along with her. Humanity gets to know the Ringers, eventually coming to trust and collaborate with them, but Judy is fiercely loyal to the good work her community and similar groups are doing. Emrys takes her time building up arguments for both choices, letting her characters expound on the ethics involved in such decisions in thoughtful, somewhat sad passages.
When you think about aliens coming to Earth, you may picture a secret, paranoia-inducing invasion or open warfare a la Independence Day. But what Emrys does in A Half-Built Garden is far more interesting, creating a scenario in which aliens and humans delicately peel back each other’s layers. How the two groups greet each other, raise children and celebrate, how they view themselves and what they believe in—all become key moments of understanding. The Ringers are offering humanity a spot in their collective community, and Emrys circles this theme again and again with questions on the nature of family: what it is, what it isn’t, its boundaries, its rules, its flexibilities.
Emrys ticks off all of the expected future-Earth details one would expect: wild technology, vast glittering cityscapes and cool spaceships. But such trappings are never the story’s main concern. Emrys cares far more about the conversations that occur between “us” and “them” and about examining the distance between those two entities. Deciding to leave our planet behind would be an incredibly painful thing to do. But if we do have to leave Earth one day, I hope it would look something like the chance offered here: together, hand in hand, rising into the stars.
In Ruthanna Emrys' philosophical and warmhearted novel, humanity must decide between whether to heal a ravaged Earth or abandon it for life among the stars.
The Book Eaters, Sunyi Dean’s debut, is a dark, haunting fantasy that follows Devon Fairweather, a Book Eater who subsists on ink and paper and the knowledge it provides her. The Book Eaters, or ‘eaters, live on the fringes of human society, and were it not for the special, fang-like teeth that they unsheathe before a literary meal, they would look like ordinary people. Devon has always detested the staunch traditions of her isolated clan, and The Book Eaters jumps back and forth in time as she tries to forge her own path.
One of the most memorable and haunting elements of Dean’s world is how Book Eater society is structured around elements of Arthurian legend that are used to justify patriarchal, tyrannical rule. The young Devon lives a sheltered life as a Princess. Female Book Eaters are rare, and she is expected to marry early and promptly give birth to more of their kind. While her brothers eat books about politics, history and academics, she is limited to the same old fairy tales time and time again. Knights maintain order and govern the Dragons, who are born as Mind Eaters, unpredictable individuals who constantly crave human souls. Drugs keep their hunger at bay and force them to submit to their handlers’ orders.
Devon has always seen through the facade of the happily ever afters she consumes, and when she gives birth to a Mind Eater son, Cai, she realizes she is the only person who can save him from becoming a Dragon. In the present timeline, Devon and the now 5-year-old Cai have escaped the ‘eaters, but Devon is struggling to keep him under control and out of the Knights’ grasp while she searches for a way that they can both be free for good.
Dean fully invests readers in Devon’s struggles, both as a girl attempting to prise tiny snatches of freedom from a patriarchal society and as an adult mother frantic to protect her son. The Book Eaters‘ depiction of the sacrifices and joys of motherhood is particularly nuanced, grounding the fantasy elements of the story in the relationship between Devon and Cai. And Dean expertly expands the scope of the story to explore even more characters’ experiences, such as the other ‘eater women’s oppression and loneliness, Devon’s friend Yarrow’s isolation as an asexual person in the procreation-obsessed ‘eater society and Cai’s pain at being viewed as a monster.
The Book Eaters is a far cry from the fairy tales Devon consumes: It is a winding, harrowing, deliciously nightmarish story of people taking control of their bodies and destinies after generations of repression and abuse.
In Sunyi Dean's debut, beings who consume books to survive hide on the fringes of society. It sounds like a fairy tale, but it's actually a nightmare.
The Monsters We Defy is a book about demons—or as Clara Johnson calls them, Enigmas. Clara was born with the ability to see and interact with Enigmas, making her highly sought after as a sort of broker between these dangerous spirits and the people who seek their help, costs be damned. Clara is all too aware of the severity of those costs: The only reason she has continued to act as spiritual go-between is to satisfy a compulsion from her own deal with an Enigma, made years ago. But when young people in her orbit start becoming listless or disappearing, she is dragged into a sordid conspiracy that could wreak havoc in the mortal world and must fight for both the survival of her peers and her own freedom.
Author Leslye Penelope successfully blends a folkloric sense of the supernatural, derived from sources such as Ethiopia’s Kebra Nagast, with a Gatsby-esque vision of the Roaring ’20s in Washington, D.C’s ‘s African American community. Replete with historical figures, including a youthfully insouciant Langston Hughes, the unflappably paternal Carter G. Woodson, who founded the Journal of Negro History, and even a cameo from W.E.B. Du Bois, The Monsters We Defy is a fascinating blend of the real and imagined. Even Clara is based on a real person: Clara Minor Johnson, a Black teenager who killed a white policeman in self-defense when she was a teenager. Penelope seamlessly weaves the historical figure into the character of Clara and her world of spirit magic. Throughout, she emphasizes the tenuous nature of Black high society in this era, existing within a white-dominated world it can never fully penetrate but cannot afford to ignore. In Penelope’s hands, the glamour of all-Black masquerade balls, where bootleggers mingle with politicians and opera stars, is an act of defiance, both of the racial power structure of the day and of stereotypical depictions of African American life during this era.
The most effective aspect of The Monsters We Defy is how Penelope portrays the Black experience on its own terms. Even the magic is derived from a combination of African mythology and traditions from the African diaspora, particularly hoodoo. The result is a novel that is both a well-crafted fantasy romp (with a healthy dose of happily-ever-after romance) and a work of revisionist fiction that elevates a vital, oft-overlooked slice of history.
The Monsters We Defy is a well-crafted fantasy romp set among the Black elite of 1920s Washington, D.C.
Young witch Marlinchen and her sisters live under the iron thumb of their father, a wizard intent on preserving the old ways and keeping his daughters safe from the degradations of the rapidly changing outside world. But when Marlinchen falls in love with ballet dancer Sevas, she begins to chafe against her father’s rule. We talked to Ava Reid about her unique Eastern European-inspired world and the gruesome fairy tale that inspired her sophomore novel.
Juniper & Thorn is inspired by the “The Juniper Tree,” one of the more obscure stories from Grimms’ Fairy Tales in which a woman murders her stepson and the father eats him. What drew you to this story? I was always beguiled by its unofficial moniker of Grimms’ darkest fairy tale. There are a lot of horrific and grisly stories in the Grimms’ repertoire, many with the same themes. There’s cannibalism in “Hansel & Gretel,” murder and bloodshed galore in classics like ‘Red Riding Hood’ and “Snow White.” So what sets “The Juniper Tree” apart?
One thing I noted is that there are very few quintessential fairy-tale tropes in “The Juniper Tree.” It’s a strangely quiet, intimate story about domestic violence within a single family.
Once I came to that realization, it seemed most honest to make this retelling a gothic horror novel. It did not feel sweeping in scope or appropriate for an epic fantasy setting. I wanted to maintain this thread of bleak, almost claustrophobic violence, which is the core of the gothic genre. That unnaturalness and upending of a foundational expectation—that parents should love and care for their children—is what makes “The Juniper Tree” so horrible, and what makes Juniper & Thornfirmly a horror novel.
Despite the fact that Juniper & Thorn and your debut novel, The Wolf and the Woodsman, are set in the same universe, they feel like very different stories. Did your writing process or sources for inspiration change between the two? I like to think of The Wolf and the Woodsman and Juniper & Thornas fractured mirror images: If Woodsman is about the pain of being excluded from the narrative, then Juniper & Thornis about the pain of being forced into the narrative, acting out the same rigidly defined role over and over. So while they are very different books that span different subgenres, the common threads are, I think, what makes an “Ava Reid book.”
As for the writing process, by dint of the fact that Juniper & Thornwas the second book in my contract, I had to write it fairly quickly and did so in a month. It changed very little from its initial draft. I had a much stronger sense of my identity as a writer and a very clear idea of what I wanted this book to be from page one.
“I like to set books during periods of upheaval, uncertainty, transformation and violence . . .”
While Juniper & Thorn is set in a fictional world, it’s obviously influenced by Eastern European culture and especially the conquest of parts of the region by Russia. Why did you set your story in this context? Eastern Europe is the setting of many major contemporary fantasy novels, but with few exceptions, these books present an Eastern Europe that is bleak, wintry, remote, forested and very culturally homogeneous. I was intrigued by writing an Eastern Europe that was different: wind-chapped steppes, black sand beaches, boardwalks, smoke-chuffing factories, vibrant with urban life, diverse and dynamic. Early 20th-century Odesa, Ukraine, the city upon which Oblya is based, was considered the jewel of the Russian empire. It was an entirely planned city that became a regional hub of immigration, export and industry. It is also a city where a large number of Ashkenazi Jews lived, including my own family.
Enormous change—industrialization, urbanization, immigration—was disrupting traditional lifestyles, often violently. This setting was fundamental to the story I wanted to tell. I like to set books during periods of upheaval, uncertainty, transformation and violence, where what has always been is not synonymous with what will always be.
The conflict between modernity and magic bleeds into the sisters’ lives in a lot of different ways. Do you think the kind of magic you depict in Juniper & Thorn can coexist with modernity as we think of it? Magic in Juniper & Thornrepresents the old world, a world that is regressive and stubbornly resistant to change. When Marlinchen gives examples of her father’s transformations, they are always instances in which he turns something dynamic or technologically advanced into something lifeless or outdated: a swan into a swan-vase, an electric lamp into a candle. His transformation is reaching backward while the city around them leaps forward. I think it’s inherently anti-modernity. It parallels the way a lot of contemporary European ethnic nationalists imagine their countries’ mythic pasts’magical, in touch with the natural world and of course devoid of any ‘foreign’ or ‘corruptive’ element. Is there a place for this way of thinking in the modern world? Unfortunately, yes, but ideally, these prejudicial, violent attitudes would go the way of the spinning wheel.
Eastern European names are all about diminutives, a nickname formed by adding -sha to the initial syllable of a name. In a book that draws from those cultures, why did you make the majority of your characters’ names defy this custom? I wanted to set the Vashchenko family apart from the rest of society as much as possible. They live an outmoded and traditional lifestyle, and the rigidity of their names, which eschew diminutives, represents this attitude of isolation.
Surnames with the suffix –enko are uniquely Ukrainian, first recorded in the 1400s. Unlike most other Russian and Ukrainian surnames, they do not change with grammatical gender. Ordinarily a father whose surname is Sorokin would have a daughter surnamed Sorokina. But I chose the name Vashchenko specifically because it doesn’t change with gender, to further represent the total dominion Zmiy has over his daughters.
Despite the fact that this is ostensibly a book about witches, there is precious little magic of the wand-waving variety. Instead, your magic is at turns visceral (Marlinchen’s divining ability is all about touch) and existential (Zmiy’s curse). What inspired you to make a magic system that is so sparse and yet so threatening? I often think about what separates dark fantasy from horror, because while The Wolf and the Woodsman is a dark fantasy novel, Juniper & Thornis very clearly horror. And I always return to the idea that fear is different from horror. Fear is staring down a man with a knife; horror is staring down a monster made of knives. Horror shifts your view of the world, your view of yourself. It is something beyond comprehension. So the magic in Juniperis—by intention—a bit blurry around the edges. And I think that’s what makes it frightening.
There are very few physical demonstrations of Zmiy’s magic, even though he makes plenty of threats. Marlinchen begins the book convinced that her father is all-powerful. The fear that he instills in her is real, but whether it is the result of physical, tangible magic is uncertain. This uncertainty is the nature of horror, and it’s also the nature of abuse. Marlinchen is gaslighted and manipulated into a state of bewilderment and insecurity, unable to trust herself or her perceptions. A more ambiguous and elusive form of magic felt fitting for a book that’s so much about psychological abuse.
“Fear is staring down a man with a knife; horror is staring down a monster made of knives.”
Whilethe characters (Sevas in particular) insist that they are not in a fairy tale, there are a lot of elements of Juniper & Thorn that use the mechanics of such stories. How did you toe that line between being inspired by a fairy tale and creating something completely new? Fairy tales remain essential parts of our culture because they contain themes or lessons that feel universal, even aspirational: Strangers are dangerous (“Red Riding Hood”), beauty is goodness (“Cinderella”), justice is always done (take your pick). These beliefs are so fundamental that they are rarely ever questioned or even remarked upon. I wanted to write a book that dismantled as many of these foundational assumptions as I could. Sevas, a stranger, is in fact Marlinchen’s savior. Marlinchen, plain-faced, unremarkable, is the story’s heroine. The world of Juniper & Thornis by design deeply cruel and unjust. Once I had my list of tropes and mechanics, I began trying to take them apart. So while I was obviously inspired by fairy tales, my goal was always to turn them on their heads.
In several scenes, Marlinchen talks about her storybook-infused views on family, such as the dangers of having sisters or the fact that you can have a kind mother or a mother who’s alive but not both. Why do you think these themes are so ubiquitous in fairy tales? Folklorists and anthropologists have had hearty debates on this subject. One defining element of fairy tales is their simplicity: There are archetypes, not characters, the settings are always vague, and the plots are straightforward. As Marlinchen says, they are stories that aren’t meant to be questioned. They are answers in and of themselves. Italo Calvino defines a fairy tale by its brevity and concision of language. They occupy a strange space in our culture that seems to be outside the realm of logic or realism—yet they have their own logic that is seductively easy to swallow.
Juniper & Thornis a recrimination about how fairy tales are weaponized as instruments of oppression and abuse, and I do believe that is often true. At the same time, I’m not ready to surrender fairy tales entirely, to give them over to the Zmiy Vashchenkos of the world. I think certain motifs occur and remain because of our common humanity. It’s easy to see the strains of misogyny, patriarchy, antisemitism, etc., as nefarious—and they are—but they are also evidence of a shared past. Reminders of this common humanity can be powerful, restorative and brimming with hope.
Your descriptions of the ballet, in particular of Sevas’ skill as a dancer, are breathtaking. What drew you to the imagery of dance? Ballet is an important part of Russian culture and Russian national identity, particularly in the early 20th century, when the book is set. Iconic ballets like ‘The Firebird’and ‘Swan Lake’draw from Russian folklore and fairy tales, and of course, both feature imagery of birds and themes of transformation’so it seemed deeply fitting.
I also thought a lot about ballet as both an art form and a sport; it requires incredible physical strength and an almost ascetic level of dedication, especially to achieve the success that Sevas has. But unlike many other sports, aesthetics are crucial to its performance. Ballet’s emphasis on beauty, fluidity and effortless grace while camouflaging the physical toll it takes on the dancers knits together very well with the larger themes of the book.
Do you think that Marlinchen would have eventually rebelled if she hadn’t met Sevas? Where would they both be now if they hadn’t met each other? It’s honestly impossible for me to conceive of these two characters apart from each other, because I wrote them to be soulmates: They understand each other instantly to the deepest possible degree, and even though they appear quite different on the surface, they are perfect mirror images. They have been trapped, misused and pushed to the bleakest point of desperation, and that’s when they find each other. I think it’s easy to see Sevas as Marlinchen’s knight in shining armor, but she rescues him just as much as he rescues her.
Photo of Ava Reid courtesy of the author.
The author's gothic horror novel, Juniper & Thorn, is inspired by Grimms' most gruesome tale.
The last wizard in the city of Oblya has three daughters, and his youngest, Marlinchen, is meek and subservient, bending to her father’s tempestuous nature and her sisters’ scornful criticisms. But Marlinchen knows the boundaries of her proscribed life and does not stray outside them. That is, until her sisters drag her into the city to go to the ballet. The dance awakens something in Marlinchen, as does the sight of its principal dancer, Sevas. The door to rebellion now cracked open, Marlinchen begins to strain against the cords that bind her to her father’s will. And as she steps out of his shadow bit by bit, there is no returning to the way things used to be.
Set in the same universe as Ava Reid’s debut novel, The Wolf and the Woodsman, Juniper & Thorn tells a haunting story of modernization, love and escape from abuse. Reid’s prose is at times heavy and muted and at others soaring and poetic, contrasting Marlinchen’s family home, the only world she has ever known, with Sevas’ seemingly liberated life—a life Marlinchen desperately wishes to experience. The expansiveness Reid evokes in Marlinchen’s interactions with Sevas (via his dancing but also simply his earnest, luminescent presence) is welcome and necessary, turning a claustrophobic story into one that is also transcendent and hopeful. This combination of sweeping, emotional descriptions and scenes of tightly wound suspense brings to mind both Eastern European ballet classics such as Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” and Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” and gothic horror like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House—a juxtaposition that makes Juniper & Thorn an utterly compelling read.
Readers who would prefer to avoid themes of abuse and self-harm, as well as intense depictions of gore and body horror, should avoid Juniper & Thorn, since these elements recur with frequency. However, readers who are prepared for such territory will find a brilliant novel both tender and chilling, one that will challenge their ideas about monstrosity and magic and drag them from the depths of dread to the heights of hope.
Set in the same world as her debut, The Wolf and the Woodsman, Ava Reid's Juniper & Thorn is a tender, chilling story of love and escape from abuse.
Relentlessly cynical and sarcastic, Mat Johnson’s Invisible Things offers sociopolitical commentary wrapped in the trappings of a classic space adventure.
An unknown force has been plucking humans from Earth and bringing them to New Roanoke, an American city that has been constructed miraculously and mysteriously on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, and sheltered from the elements by an enormous dome. These humans, as humans do, have simply re-created everything that America represents today—all the same class struggles, hardships and, of course, consumption. (The word McMansion is used several times.) When the first manned mission to Jupiter discovers New Roanoke, the SS Delany‘s crew soon find themselves trapped along with the colonists.
Johnson uses the astronauts of the Delany and their reactions to the world of New Roanoke to represent strains of modern politics: Sociologist Nalini Jackson is a left-leaning moderate who provides dry, dissociative commentary; Dwyane Causwell, a highly accredited astrogeologist, is a liberal eager to spark revolution; and born-to-money engineer Bob Seaford, who is eager for any semblance of control and power over his fellow humans, represents the capitalist hard-right.
As you might imagine from these descriptions, Johnson’s political stance is clear. However, Invisible Things avoids soapbox territory as Johnson focuses instead on engaging, often funny conflicts between his well-drawn characters while the plot circles around two key questions: Will New Roanoke’s inhabitants and the crew of the Delany band together to escape the colony? And who put them there in the first place? The intriguing mystery combined with Johnson’s irreverent sense of humor make it easy for the reader to engage with the satirical elements—a refreshing trait given that social commentary in modern sci-fi is often either watered down, thrown in by default or both.
Invisible Things is a wonderful sci-fi ride full of lovable characters that dissects modern American capitalism with a barbed, sardonic wit.
Invisible Things is a wonderful sci-fi ride full of lovable characters that dissects modern American capitalism with a barbed, sardonic wit.
If aliens descended from a higher plane of existence to bestow upon us lowly human life-forms the answers to every cosmic mystery, how would we communicate with them? Sounds, shapes, colors, mathematics? Eddie Robson’s Drunk on All Your Strange New Words posits that telepathy will connect our two species—with a catch, of course. Converting a Logi’s telepathic thought to speech renders a human translator drunk. Such is the humor and charm you’ll find at the heart of Robson’s cheeky, breezy sci-fi mystery.
Lydia, the telepathic translator for Fitz, the Logi cultural attache, is getting fed up with her work. She likes her boss, but she’s tired of feeling rip-roaring drunk on the daily. The problem is she isn’t particularly good at anything else. But when a terrible event throws her into the center of an international and intergalactic crisis, Lydia takes it upon herself to unravel the truth that the police seem incapable of finding.
The simple fact that intoxication is a central component of Lydia’s work leads to a lot of funny moments, which pop against the rather bleak setting. In Robson’s future Earth, people are even more obsessed with social media, polar ice caps have flooded parts of New York City and people are no longer impressed with the fact that aliens exist. It’s a place where humans bungle everything while the Logi watch serenely, and a little pityingly.
Drunk on All Your Strange New Words moves at a fast pace, and the proceedings are never complex just for the sake of it. The mystery’s twists and turns are satisfying throughout, and Robson keeps a tight grip on the reins as Lydia discovers more and more pieces to the puzzle. There are many truly surprising moments both funny and strange (one of which totally floored this reviewer). Like Cassie Bowden on HBO’s “The Flight Attendant,” another woman trying to hold herself together long enough to solve a crime, Lydia oscillates between self-doubt and conviction in the face of the unknown. She’s not always an easy person to root for, but watching her resolutely commit to her cause will win readers over.
Drunk on All Your Strange New Words combines the sci-fi and mystery genres in a way that does justice to both of them, and that’s no small feat. Perfect for anyone looking for a fun, thought-provoking and unintimidating foray into sci-fi, this book will have readers smiling on every page, drunk on Robson’s clever words.
In Eddie Robson's sci-fi mystery, aliens and humans can communicate—but translating telepathic thought into speech makes a human translator rip-roaring drunk.
The dystopia envisioned in singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe’s third album, Dirty Computer, provides the backdrop for her first story collection, The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer (12 hours).
New Dawn, a totalitarian regime that rules through surveillance and memory erasure, has deemed that only the “clean” are worthy. Others—particularly members of the LGBTQ community, people of color and their allies—are labeled “dirty computers” and must be reprogrammed or destroyed. The five stories of The Memory Librarian, each written in collaboration with a distinguished speculative fiction author (Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, Eve L. Ewing, Yohanca Delgado and Sheree Renée Thomas), describe the fear of living under such a regime as well as the joy and courage that can be found in a community of resistance.
Monáe’s narration of the preface and first story is elegant and measured. Her reading of “The Memory Librarian” is particularly taut, reflecting the balancing act that the librarian Seshet must perform between her duties under New Dawn and the hidden memories and desires of her inner life. Voice actor Bahni Turpin’s performance of the remaining four tales is electrifying, particularly in the finale, “Time Box Altar(ed),” in which three children learn to dream of a better future, and then fight for it.
Elegantly narrated by author Janelle Monáe and voice actor Bahni Turpin, The Memory Librarian explores the joy and courage that can be found in a community of resistance.
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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.
