Sometimes, opening up a fantasy book is about leaving your world behind. But sometimes, it’s more about stepping into a brand-new one, so vividly detailed that you know the textures and tastes and the smells in the air. That’s the kind of world Freya Marske has created in Swordcrossed, set in the bustling city of Glassport. Detailed, intricate and meticulously planned, this fantasy romance will dazzle genre fans who crave an immersive experience and a rich love story to lead them through it.
When Marske’s tale begins, Mattinesh Jay doesn’t have time for a love story. What he needs is money, enough to keep his disastrously unlucky family from financial ruin. That money will come at Matti’s upcoming wedding to Sofia Cooper, via his bride-to-be’s bond price (i.e., her dowry). The wedding has to go without a hitch, and that means hiring the best swordsman Matti can afford to be his ‘best man,’ a role that includes defeating any challengers at the ceremony. Given the unfortunate fact that a talented duelist has strong feelings for Sofia, a challenge is all but inevitable. When Matti falls victim to a scam and his financial situation gets even worse, the best swordsman he can afford is . . . well, the scammer himself: Luca Piere, a man who is as silver-tongued as he is deft, as dangerous as he is tempting, and as infuriating as he is gorgeous.
This is a book for those who like their romance mixed with a hefty dose of world building—and more than a bit of intrigue, as it’s quickly revealed that the failing fortunes of the Jay family owe more to sabotage than to bad luck. Unraveling all the different factors and parties involved takes over a lot of the story. But the love light still manages to shine through as Matti and Luca fight each other, then fight against their feelings for each other, and then finally learn to give in to what they truly want. Their happy ending is one of the most satisfying I’ve read all year, showing that luck might be at the whim of the gods, but love is always a gift.
Freya Marske’s dazzling Swordcrossed is an immersive fantasy with a rich love story at its heart.
Debut author Maiga Doocy weaves a charming, captivating tale with Sorcery and Small Magics, the first installment of her Wildersongs Trilogy.
Leovander Loveage is a successful sorcerer, but only when it comes to minor charms; he keeps the stakes low and colors inside the lines. His lesser spells may not ever win his father’s respect, but his lighthearted enchantments make people happy, and he’s accepted that powerful magic never works out for him. His nemesis, Sebastian Grimm, is his opposite. Grimm’s approach to magic is confident, strong—and gets on Leo’s nerves.
Leo and Grimm are students at the Fount, where Leo is a scriver, or writer of spells, and Grimm is a caster. They get into trouble when Grimm accidentally casts an illegal spell that binds Leo to obey his commands. It’s a power imbalance that is refreshingly never abused: Rather, it compels these two young sorcerers to work together to find a counterspell before anyone finds out what happened. They’ll have to employ the help of a powerful sorcerer who supposedly lives deep in the Unquiet Wood, a forest full of monsters and other dark things. As they embark on a quest together, it becomes clear that this grumpy-sunshine pairing just needed the right opportunity to find their way to happiness.
Doocy makes the academic pursuit of magic seem so normal and tactile that the reader feels they might open their own desk drawer and find quills and paper and ink. Matching the light tone of Leo’s witty narration, the stakes of using forbidden magic aren’t high beyond the personal fallout for him and Grimm: The world won’t end, the walls around the Fount won’t crumble, nobody’s going to die—but they will get cast out of school. Leo and Grimm are realistically flawed, lovingly hopeful characters, both of whom discover that they have more inner strength than they ever suspected. The two men have “never been anything but too much for each other,” but by the end of Sorcery and Small Magics, “too much” is just enough.
A sorcerer’s rival accidentally casts an obedience spell on him in Maiga Doocy’s witty and refreshing Sorcery and Small Magics.
Ezri Maxwell doesn’t know whether their childhood home had ghosts, exactly, but they do know that it was haunted: determined to maim, traumatize and scare them and their Black family into leaving their mostly-white Dallas suburb. Desperate to distance themselves from a childhood of constant dread, Ezri and their sisters fled the former model home as soon as they were old enough. Their parents, however, stayed where they were—right until the day they died under mysterious circumstances. In the aftermath of the apparent murder-suicide, the remaining Maxwells must reckon with not only their parents’ deaths, but also their relationships with one another and their past experiences. All the while, they must wrestle with a singular question: Were their parents’ deaths as they seemed, or did they die at the hands of the spirit the three siblings all tacitly agree haunted their childhood from the moment they moved in?
To call Model Home a haunted house novel is like saying that It is about a clown. Yes, you would technically be correct, but you’d be missing the point. At its core, Rivers Solomon’s latest novel is a study of the interior landscape of someone trying to make sense of their life in the wake of extreme tragedy. Ezri’s head is cluttered with the detritus of trauma, from their mother’s ambivalence toward them as a child to the repercussions of living with mental health issues for years, (“a host of diagnoses—which change with whatever clinician I see”). That emotional clutter often makes Ezri an unconventional narrator, and occasionally it makes them an unreliable one. It also explores how Ezri’s struggles to learn to be a parent mirror their mother’s obvious reluctance to move from academic to full-time mother. Add that to the long-reaching malice of the house itself, and Model Home makes the point that the past doesn’t just inform the present: It haunts it. A disturbing tale that explores self-doubt, family drama and childhood trauma, Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon.
Rivers Solomon’s Model Home is a powerful and gut-wrenching addition to the haunted house pantheon.
Humans are walking petri dishes in Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The dystopian cyberpunk future is here, and the Mandate, humanity’s fascist government, punts its criminals and political opposition to alien worlds. Those who survive the journey (punctuated by an airdrop from space as their disposable shuttle falls apart) face a lifetime sentence in an off-world labor camp. While there are other camps on other planets, Tchaikovsky focuses on just one for this story: Kiln.
Xeno-ecologist (someone who studies the environments of alien worlds) Arton Daghdev is shipped to Kiln after finding himself on the wrong side of the Mandate. Once there, he’s shocked to learn that the planet is home to actual, extraterrestrial life, a secret that’s been kept hidden from the people of Earth. Monolithic white structures dot the surface of Kiln, and were apparently crafted by some type of intelligent life. While whatever species made the monoliths is not readily present, horrific beings of another sort roam the surface of Kiln. Each of these “beings” is made up of multiple, independent creatures that act as their organs, like stomachs or lungs. (Imagine that your lungs are little dudes with their own brains, hanging out in your body. One day, you pass a dying person on the road; they’re mostly dead, but their lung-dudes are crawling away looking for a new body. The dying person’s lung-dudes are shinier and cooler than your lung-dudes, so your body rejects your old lung-dudes and picks up the newer models instead. This is how all life on Kiln works.) Arton and his fellow humans are stuck on a planet crawling with lung-dudes and stomach-dudes and heart-dudes, all ready and eager to replace the organs in their bodies, no matter what the humans themselves have to say about it.
This frightening biology contributes to Alien Clay’s thesis: Science cannot be contained, no matter how much humanity may cling to our arbitrary, artificially restricted “reality.” Commandant Teloran, the director of the camp, relentlessly pushes his staff and the imprisoned scientists to find explanations for the life on Kiln that conform to the Mandate’s established rules of science, despite all the evidence that doesn’t fit within those parameters. Tchaikovsky draws a clear contrast between the hyper-adaptive, ever-changing environment of Kiln and the harsh world of the labor camp, where prisoners slave away at various tasks from toilet cleaning to analysis of alien artifacts.
Arton is fascinated with the planet and waxes philosophical often, creating a moody, introspective atmosphere. Kiln, Commandant Teloran’s regime and the disgruntled prisoners increasingly find themselves at odds, and as life within the walls of the camp becomes more and more hostile, Arton’s options become less and less appealing. Eventually, he must choose between the safety of the science he knows and understands, or the new understanding that Kiln can teach him. Tchaikovsky is just as laser-focused on the life of Kiln as his protagonist, which may disappoint some readers interested in a broader exploration of the characters or the greater universe they inhabit. But those willing to abandon all else in pursuit of uncovering Kiln’s mysteries will be continually fascinated—and often horrified—by Alien Clay.
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Alien Clay presents a vision of extraterrestrial life that’s as fascinating as it is horrifying.
TJ Klune’s gentle yet politically pointed tale of six magical orphans, their devoted caretaker, Arthur, and Linus, the government official who comes to love them, The House in the Cerulean Sea, was hailed as a beloved modern classic practically the second it hit shelves. Klune’s sequel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, is told from Arthur’s perspective as he, Linus and the children continue the fight to protect their makeshift family.
The title card for the novel coming after the prologue felt wonderfully cinematic. How and why did it end up there instead of in the very front of the book? I thought of some great moments in film, television and video games where the title card comes not at the beginning, but partway through. I tend to be a visual writer, and the thought of the title coming after the prologue felt like a neat little trick. Not only that, it’s different! I want to try and find new ways to tell stories, and this is just the first step.
The technology in Somewhere Beyond the Sea, which takes place in a world just a few steps away from our own, is both fantastical and outdated—almost like what people thought “futuristic” would look like in the 1960s. What inspirations did you have for the setting, especially its technology and time period? I adore the idea of retro-futurism. It’s kind of funny how I chose what and what not to include. For example, there are radios and computers, but no mention of cell phones or televisions. Music gets played on records. People dress a certain way. It’s timeless, in a way, but also very much in the right now. It gives the illusion of this being a fairy tale of sorts, while allowing me to write about issues of today while still bopping about in the old-school.
The rich and playful sartorial choices in Somewhere Beyond the Sea are delightful. What visual or cultural influences went into our beloved characters’ iconic looks? OK, stick with me here because this might sound a little weird: You know Studio Ghibli? The makers of such animated film treasures like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke or The Castle in the Sky? No one—and I mean no one—can animate food like they can. The soups! The bread! The big hunks of meat! Not only do I want to create literary visuals on par with Studio Ghibli (Reach for the sky!), but I want readers to feel like I do when I see Studio Ghibli animated food. It is such a weirdly specific thing, I know, and yet, it is something that gets stuck in my brain. You can feel the love and passion the animators have over such little details. That’s what I want to do with my writing. I think so many authors can get stuck on the Big Picture which, OK, fair play. To me, however, it is these little details that mean just as much.
“So many decisions are being made on behalf of children, but why is no one asking what they think or want?”
Poetry and song lyrics, especially from jazz standards, are absolutely everywhere, whether it’s via direct quotation, allusion or description. Why is music so important to Somewhere Beyond the Sea, and why the emphasis on jazz in particular? Music has always been a big part of my books, perhaps none more so than in these two books. But with the sequel, I wanted to push it a little further. Jazz music in particular feels like these characters, given how many variations of jazz there are. Jazz can bounce, it can sneak and slither, sometimes all at once. Particularly, I think of Lucy and Chauncey and Talia [some of Arthur’s charges] in terms of jazz music.
There are multiple moments in Somewhere Beyond the Sea when older generations try to pass down the defense mechanisms of respectability politics, an act that is generally met with justified pushback from the children. What do you hope people—especially older readers—take away from this debate? That so many decisions are being made on behalf of children, but why is no one asking what they think or want? It boggles the mind that some people seem to think that they can take away books or come down hard on trans students and not expect there to be repercussions. The youth of today are smarter, more worldly than we ever were at their age, and we expect them to just sit there and take it? That’s not going to happen. Kids know what’s going on, and they are furious about it. They walk out of schools in support of their classmates. They’re marching in the streets to show that they won’t let people in power get away with taking away their rights.
This book is meant to show that no matter how hard you prepare kids for the future, there will always come a moment when you have to step back and let them make their own decisions, their own mistakes. It’s part of growing up.
The idea of equity and human rights as an intersectional struggle comes up several times, from comments about nonbinary pronouns, to opposition to queer couples adopting, to race. You could create whatever kind of world you wanted, so why did you decide to create one where transphobia, homophobia, sexism and racism are still issues? Because I remember how certain people reacted in 2015 when same-sex marriage was legalized. They said things like, “Homophobia is over now that queer people can do what everyone else can!” Do you remember what followed? We were told that allowing same-sex marriage was a slippery slope toward degeneracy.
And now, here we are, in 2024, and the world has gotten that much worse, especially with regards to the LGBTQ+ community. If we don’t face these things head on, if we don’t call them out immediately, then they fester and grow.
Same-sex marriage isn’t even a decade old, and we have certain Supreme Court justices signaling they think the 2015 decision oversteps. We were told Roe v. Wade wouldn’t fall, and yet it did. The same could very easily happen with same-sex marriage.
And it boggles the mind that there are people in the queer community—mostly cis white gay men—who are just as transphobic as right-wingers are. Do we really think they’ll stop at the trans community? They won’t. If people in power have their way, they’ll come for the rest of us next. It brings to mind the fun little internet expression coined by Adam Brott on Twitter in 2015: “ ‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”
All the children have their own stories and struggles, but Lucy’s transformation into a child who loves actively and fiercely over the course of both books is such a powerful one. How do you balance that with the fact that he is, technically, the Antichrist? Initially, I chose to include the Antichrist in the first book as I wanted an “extreme,” someone who is capable of great power. It fed into the idea of wanting to explore nature versus nurture. What would happen if a child like Lucy, a child of immense power born of darkness, was given the chance to be a child? What would that look like if he got to grow up just the same as everyone else?
In these stories—particularly in the sequel—we get to see Lucy reckon with the idea of what it means to be human. As he says, it is so hard being human. And it is. What I love about Lucy is that he takes this all in and makes his own decision about what it means to be human, or what it means to be good. Though I adore Arthur, I think it’s important to show that not everything is black and white; there are so many shades of gray that we can fall into, and still try to be good. That’s where I think Lucy is.
“Not everything is black and white; there are so many shades of gray that we can fall into, and still try to be good.”
Arthur’s relationship with the basement changes by necessity when David, a new addition to the orphanage moves in. Why did you put David’s bedroom there? These stories have always been about healing. What does it look like? How can it be different for each individual? How long does it take, or is it a lifelong process?
Part of Arthur’s healing was to remove the power that some places/people/things can hold over us. In his case, the basement was a place where Arthur was held because he was told he was a monster. To take something that caused pain and suffering and turn it into a beautiful thing, a room for a boy who has never had his own room before, seemed like something Arthur would do. It is for David, yes, but I like to think it was also for Arthur, too.
David mentions wanting to be a monster—and wanting to scare people—as a way of giving them what they want and bringing them joy. To say that Arthur is at first ambivalent about this concept feels like an understatement. How do you think each of their perspectives has changed by the end? Arthur has spent so long fighting against that word: monster. Not only for himself, but for his children, his community. And then, to have a child come to their home, one who finds power in that word? While Arthur is lovely and caring and would do anything to help, he’s also a bit stuck in protective mode, as many parents are. Bringing David to the island with his monstrous talents was meant to show that even Arthur can sometimes make mistakes. He too needed to grow, and I think David was the best thing for that.
Lucy mentions Florida as a place to send an unwanted individual, and the existence of Ella Fitzgerald does imply that the U.S. exists somewhere in this world. Does it—and Florida—exist as we know it in your version of Earth, or has Lucy glimpsed its unique horrors through the fabric of the cosmos? I do believe the U.S. exists in this world, at least some variation of it. And let’s be honest: Florida is probably not so great there, too. How delightful is it that even children who have never been know not to travel there? Though Chauncey would probably enjoy all the hotels along beaches in Florida, he would be dismayed at the fact that the Florida government isn’t allowing rainbow colors to be shown during Pride. As Chauncey says, “Gay rights are human rights!”
Photo of TJ Klune courtesy of the author.
How jazz and Studio Ghibli helped the author write a sequel to his bestselling The House in the Cerulean Sea.
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You might think you know what to expect from a book titled Voyage of the Damned. Author Frances White, I’m sure, will be pleased to upend your expectations. Murder, mystery and magic await, but there’s also a generous helping of humor, and an unforgettable narrator, too. Title be damned, this utter joy of a read would be Agatha Christie’s favorite fantasy.
To say that Ganymedes Piscero is a bit of an underachiever is putting it very nicely. To be fair, it’s easy to be an underachiever when your province is the butt of every joke in Concordia. At least he’s one of the Blessed, the heirs to the empire’s 12 provinces. Maybe the upcoming boat trip around the realm will bring him closer to the other Blessed aboard. They’re a varied group of characters, each of them possessing a secret magical talent, and Ganymedes has been more than happy to play the class clown for years. But when one of the Blessed turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, Ganymedes finds himself needing to be something he’s never been before: brave. Can he find the murderer and save the rest of the heirs aboard before it’s too late?
At times, fans of the genre can forget how important it is for a fantasy story to be fun. From start to finish, Voyage of the Damned proves just how pivotal a sense of joy can be. Ganymedes is one of the most entertaining narrators in years, full of snarky comebacks and nuanced layers. The mystery elements are sturdily crafted, and surprises abound. There are moments of intense emotion, as befits the subject matter, but White unleashes Ganymedes’ laugh-out-loud humor often, lightening the mood when the going gets rough.
Voyage of the Damned would make a fantastic travel book, sure to keep you reading even as your journeys distract you. Thanks to its mix of murder and mystery, even readers who are new to fantasy will find it impossible to put down. Climb aboard, watch your back and enjoy this juicy caper.
Despite its ominous title, Voyage of the Damned, Frances White’s fantasy-mystery hybrid, is an utter joy.
Arthur Parnassus, a survivor of the regressive policies of the Department of Magical Youth (DICOMY), would never have imagined his adult life could be so happy. But even as he enjoys his status as soon-to-be adoptive father to the six magical children who live with him and his boyfriend, Linus, on Marsyas Island, the world is becoming more dangerous for people like Arthur and his charges. In an effort to shine a light on the treatment of magical beings at the hands of DICOMY, Arthur publicly testifies about his past and the issues with the current system of orphanages and segregation of magical children. But it soon becomes clear that the government is less interested in what Arthur has to say than in painting him and the children as dangers that must be subdued to defend “normal” families. After Arthur’s testimony inevitably ends badly, Marsyas is saddled with a new inspector determined to prove that the children must be removed and order restored.
On the surface, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, the highly anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s beloved 2020 bestseller The House in the Cerulean Sea, seems to be taking Arthur and Linus’ story in an ominous direction. The threat of DICOMY looms larger, its lieutenants more threatening and its messaging more overtly fascist. Some of this is a matter of perspective: While the first book followed Linus’ journey from a well-meaning outsider to a solid ally, Somewhere Beyond the Sea is told from Arthur’s point of view. The shift in perspective centers Arthur’s struggle to hold on to what is precious in the face of increasingly bigoted attacks and the weight of personal trauma, all the while trying to figure out the “right” way to protest being abused by his own government. Yet despite its darker framing, the novel remains rooted in the joy of its characters as much as in their struggles. From weekly Saturday adventures to Arthur and Linus’ blooming relationship, Somewhere Beyond the Sea never misses an opportunity to show us the love that permeates Marsyas. Indeed, the novel is a triumphant rallying cry that reminds readers that it isn’t enough to believe in the rights of our brethren: We have to fight for their joy, too.
Somewhere Beyond the Sea, the highly anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, is a triumphant rallying cry for freedom and joy.
Readers familiar with Nnedi Okorafor’s brilliant postapocalyptic fantasy Who Fears Death will already know Najeeba: how she survived a brutal rape at the hands of the sorcerer Daib; raised her daughter, Onyesonwu, to endure the desert; and used her powerful magics to prepare the soil for the even more formidable Onyesonwu’s revolution to take root. But Najeeba has her own history, her own tale of heartbreak and resolve. Her steel did not come from nothing, and neither did her daughter’s. A prequel to Who Fears Death, She Who Knows continues Okorafor’s exploration of why humans discriminate against one another.
Okorafor’s vision of a postapocalyptic future is much like our present, but with all its pretenses and niceties stripped away. Once again, she tackles sexism and sexual violence head-on, and her writing is as direct and uncompromising as ever. You won’t find a delicate array of euphemisms and allegorical treatments; Okorafor’s writing makes no apologies or concessions.
While Who Fears Death analyzed the rot of internalized misogyny, such as female genital mutilation that was encouraged and practiced by women, in She Who Knows, Najeeba contends with a bigotry that is, in some ways, less complicated. There are things women do not do, simply because the men decided there should be things that are theirs alone. Women can garden, but they cannot mine salt. Women can purchase salt, but they cannot sell it. But when she is 13, Najeeba announces that she has heard The Call, the drive that supposedly only men in her village experience to journey the Salt Roads and mine salt. Najeeba’s existence within a community, a community that does not have to face the brutal necessities of survival that marked Who Fears Death, makes the discrimination she faces more insidious. Her family and her hometown perpetuate senseless, unthinking sexism because their lives and livelihoods depend on it. And when Najeeba takes a machete to the orderly weave of this social compact, it has severe consequences for her and her family.
This is Okorafor’s central premise, the theme she returns to over and over, and what makes her approach to Africanfuturism so vital: Injustice persists because it is safe, and her heroes must have enough courage to change what must be changed, despite the dangers that will result. Najeeba’s story may be familiar to Okorafor’s fans, but it is no less inspiring, even for readers who already know how it ends.
In She Who Knows, her prequel to Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor is as uncompromising as ever.
Veycosi, the narrator of Nalo Hopkinson’s Caribbean-inspired fantasy novel, Blackheart Man, is not a good person. He is a near-constant failure with few redeeming qualities; this is a character you may be supposed to hate (and boy did I). We are introduced to Veycosi mid-escapade: attempting to unclog the aqueducts of Carenage Town, a city on the island of Chynchin, with a phosphorus bomb. Despite the fact that he partially floods a whole neighborhood, Veycosi still believes he should receive nothing but praise. At the same time, 15 ships from Ymisen, a country that once conquered Chynchin, appear in the harbor. The rest of Hopkinson’s story features further Veycosi failures and a couple of singular successes as he stumbles through major events in a city wreathed in magic.
Chynchin’s unique culture is one of the most interesting aspects of Blackheart Man. The island’s society is matriarchal after a fashion, with family units typically consisting of one wife and two co-husbands. Only women are allowed to be sailors; men tend to take on supporting tasks such as caring for children. Science (like Veycosi’s phosphorus bomb) mixes easily with obeah, a Caribbean magic tradition that, among other things, can create people like Kaira, a “twinning child” born with no biological father, just a mother. Chynchin is populated by various groups of formerly enslaved people who banded together to defeat their conquerors. Despite that, there are certainly still lower classes, chief among them the Mirmeki, former enslaved soldiers of the Ymisen, who are relegated to physical labor. Hopkinson riffs on French-Caribbean dialect and slang, in addition to including various fictional languages, and readers who enjoy imagining different voices for characters will appreciate Blackheart Man’s plethora of distinct accents and tones.
As the political situation escalates to a breaking point and Veycosi continues on his picaresque adventures, Hopkinson reveals the shrouded, mystical history of Chynchin and its people. However, as the entire story is told through the lens of the incredibly unreliable and frequently intoxicated Veycosi, readers are basically learning this story from the perspective of the town fool. Time skips forward without warning, and incongruities in the narrative are part of the charm; Hopkinson even includes a passage where the book halts to point out its inconsistencies. By the end of the tale, some secrets have been uncovered, but many remain mysteries. Readers ready for a wild, chaotic series of unfortunate events will enjoy seeing how badly Veycosi ruins everything.
Nalo Hopkinson’s Blackheart Man is a picaresque fantasy adventure following a hilariously unreliable narrator as he stumbles through a series of important political events.
Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time proposes a world in which the U.K. government has started collecting people across time and space to test the feasibility of time travel. An unnamed narrator begins work as an assistant for these “expats”—including former spies, WWI captains and explorers from the 1800s—helping them adapt to modern culture.
Audiobook readers George Weightman and Katie Leung use their voices to depict the diverse characters in the audiobook. Leung’s excellent narration covers events in the present, demonstrating a deft ability to recreate the cadences of different time periods for different expats. Weightman narrates moments from the characters’ pasts, giving these reflections a solemn, nostalgic tone. Together, their complementary narrative styles reflect the time-twisting, culture-crossing nature of this book.
Weightman and Leung bring the many histories and personalities of this time-travel adventure to life, making The Ministry of Time a uniquely immersive listening experience.
Audiobook narrators George Weightman and Katie Leung bring the many histories and personalities of this time-travel adventure to life, making The Ministry of Time a uniquely immersive listening experience.
If you had told T. Kingfisher a few decades ago that she would write a novel inspired in part by her love of Regency romance novels, she probably wouldn’t have believed you. After all, the author is best known for her work in horror and dark fantasy, two genres not exactly known for their similarity to frothy series like Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton or Evie Dunmore’s A League of Extraordinary Women.
Indeed, years ago when she discussed romance with a friend (who just so happens to be acclaimed Regency romance writer Sabrina Jeffries), Kingfisher was largely dismissive. “I had the unenlightened, snarky view of romance as just ‘girly stuff.’ ” Her friend pushed back. “She, very patiently, was like ‘Have you ever read one?’ ” Kingfisher hadn’t, so she gave one of Jeffries’ books a try. To her surprise, she liked it. More than liked it, in fact, despite the fact that “nothing actually happens; there are no explosions, no one is getting kidnapped.” So she read more, and she realized that Regency romances are set “just far enough away in history that it feels fantastical.” The subgenre also gave her a look into what she describes as a sort of shared universe: “A good Regency takes you to a world you know and that you’ve read lots of books in, so it’s fun comfort reading.” And because Kingfisher doesn’t read in-genre while she’s writing, Regencies eventually became what she’d read while she was drafting. “Since I write a fair amount of horror these days, I read quite a lot of [romance].”
“There’s a lot of people in the world who are just trying to get by and are just kind of beaten down, and they should be allowed to be the heroes of books too, dammit.”
Years later, Kingfisher decided that she wanted to dip her toes into the familiar “extended universe” of Regency romance and write one herself. “It sort of grows on you, and you think ‘I could do this,’ ” she muses. But it wasn’t so simple to switch genres. As a setting, Regency requires a lot of research, something that Kingfisher admits is something that she can do, but that she isn’t particularly meticulous about. “There are a lot of things that it never really occurs to me to even question,” she says, referencing tiny details like the invention of modern canning practices or the use of specific types of lamps.
Which is a problem if you want to write a Regency romance, she says. The genre has ardent fans, particularly costumers, who care very much about the historical accuracy of the work. “There are people who know exactly what kind of buttons are on things, what sort of boning is in the corsets and what year it came into fashion, and they’re all very nice people. The emails they send are not in anger but in sorrow.” By her own admission, she doesn’t really care about researching clothes, so Kingfisher decided not to write a Regency romance exactly, but “something that’s more fantasy-universe Regency, and it turned into A Sorceress Comes to Call.”
Kingfisher’s horror novel, a crafty reimagining of the classic Grimm fairy tale “The Goose Girl” set in a Regency-esque world, centers on two unlikely heroines. The first is Cordelia, a young teen whose abusive sorceress mother, Evangeline, is determined to ensnare a wealthy and well-placed husband. Usingher cunning, Evangeline lands an invitation to the home of her potential match, Samuel, a squire with a sizable fortune and a love of pretty women. Cordelia is timid and naive, a poor combination for a horror heroine. She initially flounders in her new environment, jumping to help servants with their work and struggling to do more than stutter in front of their hosts. Although she knows what her mother is doing is wrong, she doesn’t feel like she can tell the squire or his family that Evangeline is a murderess with the power to physically control people like puppets (a practice referred to as “making them obedient”). When asked about Cordelia’s nature, Kingfisher grins. “She was too timid. If she would have been the only protagonist, I would have just been yelling, ‘Grow a spine for the love of god and stab someone.’ ”
But, as Kingfisher points out, not every Final Girl is going to be a spunky master of martial arts who is ready to take on evil. “There’s a lot of people in the world who are just trying to get by and are just kind of beaten down, and they should be allowed to be the heroes of books too, dammit.”
Luckily for both the plot and Kingfisher’s patience, the novel has that second heroine: Hester, the squire’s 51-year-old sister. Where Cordelia is unsure, Hester is confident. Where the young girl is guileless, her counterpart has wisdom. The only problem is that Hester is also reluctant to act, understanding that her brother will make his own mistakes and that she cannot force him to make good decisions.
“She would not be a hero unless she was pushed out of her comfortable existence. She is perfectly fine where she is at the beginning of the story,” Kingfisher says of the middle-aged heroine. That is, of course, until the consequences of not acting are great enough to spur Hester into action, something that Kingfisher says is like the story of the world in microcosm. “A lot of things in the history of the world have been done because women of a certain age go, ‘Well, crap, now I have to do something.’ ”
That isn’t to say that Hester is perfect. She can be described charitably as curmudgeonly, and more realistically as resistant to anything that will make her happy. She is a spinster by choice, having turned down a marriage proposal from Lord Richard Evermore, a man that she very much loved. Hester was convinced that Richard would be marrying beneath him, both because of her lack of title and her bum knee. But when Hester calls on her former paramour for help to get rid of Evangeline, she gets a second chance at love. Although, as Kingfisher points out, she does “fight off that second chance very hard. There are people who are just determined not to do something that will make them happy. It’s frustrating, but we’ve all known them.”
Even if A Sorceress Comes to Call didn’t quite end up being a traditional Regency romance, elements from the era still sparkle within the dark firmament of Kingfisher’s fantastical horror. One of these is Cordelia’s obsession with etiquette. She quotes heavily from a real-life tome called The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness, consulting it for everything from how to make conversation with her hosts to the proper way to interact with her childhood friend. Cordelia’s constant check-ins aren’t just for her benefit, though. They’re for the reader’s—and for Kingfisher’s. Young ladies of the time had to follow Byzantine rules of etiquette, and as Cordelia struggled with the expectations of her new home, Kingfisher did too. “I didn’t know the etiquette of things either,” she says. And so Kingfisher mined TheLadies’ Book to assist them both. While many of the social mores outlined in the text struck Kingfisher as silly, she also recognized that “the author cared enormously about her readers and really wanted them to not be embarrassed.”
As she creates a rich tapestry of magic and alchemy, Kingfisher also weaves in a poignant depiction of abuse. Evangline’s power is manipulation, from taking control over another’s body to making them see things that aren’t there. As in many horror novels, there is no established, detailed magic system as there might be in a pure fantasy work: Evangeline’s magic is, instead, more like an elemental manifestation of her own penchant for abuse. “It’s inherently powerful and uncontrolled,” Kingfisher says.
But despite all that magic affords someone like Evangeline, it’s also precarious to try to practice it. The people of Kingfisher’s alternate Regency believe that magic is real, which makes it difficult for a sorceress to operate without being attacked by either non-magical citizens seeking to protect themselves or by their fellow magic users. “If a sorcerer were smart,” Kingfisher says, “they would never ever display any sign of magic whatsoever, and they would tell their children to never show any sign of it either.” One of her characters echoes this sentiment, saying that magic is likely “more trouble than it’s worth,” a statement that makes the author wonder if that character has magic in her own family. (She isn’t sure, wondering aloud during the interview if it’s possible to “have headcanon about your own book.”)
“A lot of things in the history of the world have been done because women of a certain age go, ‘Well, crap, now I have to do something.’ ”
To fight Evangeline’s power, Cordelia, Hester and their allies use a sort of alchemy rooted in the power of water, salt and wine. “I’m not sure where that came from,” Kingfisher says of the alchemical system, other than a question of “What feels vaguely elemental here?” As with Evangeline’s magic, the rules of alchemy are largely obscured, hidden in half-truths and metaphors within dusty tomes. Kingfisher points to the traditions of folk Catholicism as a possible influence. “My grandmother was a very devout Catholic,” she says, but was more of the “putting saint cards in the frame of the mirror type, not the going to church regularly type.” No matter its inspirations, the alchemy in A Sorceress Comes to Call is viewed with the same feelings of distrust and suspicion that Catholic practices would have been in Regency England (which was, by the time the 1800s came around, almost exclusively Protestant).
Despite A Sorceress Comes to Call’s dark subject matter, Kingfisher never abandons her signature dry sense of humor, something that she says is essential to the delicate balance of telling an effective horror story. While she admits that it’s an unavoidable part of her authorial voice, she also contends that the ability to know when to break the tension is an integral part of the genre. “I think it works in horror. It’s the same reason that the music builds, it’s very tense and then it’s the cat. It’s a cliche now, but you can only tighten the screw for so long before it just can’t ratchet any higher. You have to deflate some of it. People can’t just stay at the maximum level of paranoia the whole time.”
And indeed, without the occasional bit of situational humor—Hester and the household servants have a pointed tendency to interrupt Evangeline’s interludes with the squire at the most delightfully awkward moments, much to the sorceress’s frustration—A Sorceress Comes to Call’s dark ambiance would become stifling. As Kingfisher points out, deep horror and humor go hand in hand. “Did you ever watch M*A*S*H?” she asks, and she laughs as she says it. “People under stress crack a lot of jokes.”
Photo of T. Kingfisher by Henry Soderlund.
T. Kingfisher’s latest fantasy-horror hybrid, A Sorceress Comes to Call, takes inspiration from Regency romances.
Stephenie Meyer mastered the love triangle in her famous Twilight Saga, but Edward and Jacob aren’t the only Meyer heartthrobs. In her lesser-known sci-fi thriller, The Host, an equally intriguing love triangle (parallelogram?) forms between bad-boy Jared, sensitive Ian and Melanie—plus the parasitic alien borrowing Melanie’s body. After Earth is invaded by aliens, most humans become hosts before they can even begin to fight back, but a small group resists. When Melanie is captured, the alien Wanderer is placed in her body to to shut down the human rebellion. But Melanie won’t cooperate, and Wanderer finds herself inside a body that still desperately loves another. Wanderer and Melanie become unlikely allies as Wanderer begins to understand why humans fight for love. I find myself returning to The Host often and urge Twilight lovers (or haters) to give another Meyer story a try. When you do, let me know . . . Team Jared or Team Ian?
—Meagan Vanderhill, Production Manager
Thunderstruck
Most people know Erik Larson for his dual-narrative history, the deservedly omnipresent The Devil in the White City, or, my personal favorite, In the Garden of Beasts. However, 2006’s Thunderstruck deserves just as much praise. Like Devil, Thunderstruck centers a shocking, sensational crime—Hawley Harvey Crippen’s murder of his wife in 1910—within a historical event. But in this case, the event is more of a paradigm shift: Guglielmo Marconi’s attempts to patent and popularize radio communication. In a previous era, Crippen may very well have vanished before justice could be served. But thanks to radio, Crippen’s attempted escape to Canada was instead the first true crime news story to unfold in real time for a breathless readership. Larson weaves these tales together with his signature novelistic flair, producing highly entertaining portraits of the loathsome Crippen and the obsessive, passionate and at-times hilariously obtuse Marconi.
—Savanna Walker, Managing Editor
The Shuttle
Reading The Secret Garden (1911) has been a rite of passage for generations. But did you know that Frances Hodgson Burnett first earned fame and fortune by writing for adults? Burnett began her career selling romantic tales to magazines, publishing her first novel in 1877. Dozens more adult novels followed, the best of which is 1907’s The Shuttle. New York City heiress Bettina Vanderpoel has always wondered why her gentle older sister, Rosalie, cut ties to the family after marrying an English peer. Once she’s old enough, Betty crosses the Atlantic to get answers. Her adventure features a dastardly villain, a surly yet handsome lord, a crumbling estate (and an ensuing renovation to delight HGTV fans)and the most charming typewriter salesman in literature, plus plenty of trenchant observations on the differences between the English and Americans that still ring true. If you loved Downton Abbey or wish the works of Edith Wharton were a little less mannered, put The Shuttle on your reading list.
—Trisha Ping, Publisher
Outer Dark
Long before venturing southwest with Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, his most famous titles, Cormac McCarthy plumbed his native Appalachia for visceral cruelty and mythological beauty. Outer Dark may be the most eerie, devastating book in his flawless oeuvre. After falsifying the death of his newborn son—the product of incest with his sister, Rinthy—and abandoning him in the wilderness, Culla Holme wanders through a dreamlike, nebulous Southern landscape populated with bizarre characters. Meanwhile, Rinthy uncovers the empty grave and sets off in search of her child. Alternating between the two siblings’ perspectives, the novel reveals the staggering violence and deep tenderness within the human soul, both of which McCarthy captured with peerless acuity over his seven-decade career. Each scene in Outer Dark has a torrential fluidity: As you drift through this haunting, remarkable creation, remember to breathe.
—Yi Jiang, Associate Editor
A breakout success can bring new attention to an author’s body of work—or, one book can so define them that it overshadows earlier titles that are just as excellent. Here are four overlooked books from great authors that deserve their own moment in the limelight.
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