It’s only fitting that our selections at year’s end showcase the very best writing that fantasy and science fiction has to offer. All three of this month’s novels invoke traditional genre concepts, but these outstanding works build their narrative drive and emotional power from exceptionally well-drawn characters.

Returning home after the apparent suicide of a childhood friend with whom he hasn’t spoken to in years, Paxton Martin discovers the tiny town of Switchcreek, Tennessee, isn’t the same place he left. Oh, sure, the three new species of people which hyper-evolved through Transcription Divergence Syndrome (TDS)—the Goliath-like argos, the parthenogenic betas and the super-muscular charlies—are still very much alive (though largely forgotten by the outside world once TDS was determined to be non-transmissible). But the older charlies, including Pax’s father, a former preacher, are excreting a strange, hallucinogenic substance; a cult and a schism are brewing in the beta community; and the argos cannot bear children. Pax’s best friend Deke is an argo and the de facto Chief, and Aunt Rhonda is a corrupt, scheming mayor (and a Charlie). Paxton does his best to come to terms with his father, with Deke, with his abandonment of family and friends and with his friend Jo Lynn’s death, which brought him home in the first place in Daryl Gregory’s The Devil’s Alphabet. More subtle than some SF novels, The Devil’s Alphabet is an absolutely stunning, intoxicating blend of vintage mystery, science fiction and intergenerational saga which artfully questions the meaning of what it is to be ‘human.’ Despite the strange occurrence of three new branches of our family tree, the heart of this novel is the deeply human, deeply important meaning of love.

Family secrets
Pure, old-fashioned science fiction is perfectly blended with human frailties in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s recursive Diving Into the Wreck. The first of three stories (two of which were previously published in Asimov’s) introduces us to Boss, a deep-space wreck diver and amateur historian who has found a ship containing lost stealth technology. Boss hires a team to dive it, chart it and claim the prize, but the technology is predictably fatal. Nobody is quite who they appear, particularly Squishy, who abruptly quits the team and loses her partner over an ethical issue. The second story dives into Boss’ past—the loss of her mother to the artifact known as the Room of Lost Souls, her father’s military efforts and Boss’ own genetics. The third story returns to the story of Squishy and the devastating effects of stealth technology. Though slender, the volume contains an emotional depth rarely found in SF. It focuses on the lives, deaths and moral quandaries of the characters rather than the technology—particularly the father-son team whose tragedy is brilliantly understated and emotional, and through Squishy who returns home to atone for her sins. Diving Into the Wreck is highly recommended not only for the inveterate science fiction fan, but for any reader looking for an excellent character study.

Fantasy pick of the month
Total Oblivion, More or Less is Alan DeNiro’s excellent debut novel, and an inversion and analysis of genre tropes. Instead of transporting our heroes and heroines to a fantastic world, the fantastic world is brought to our present day. The Scythians (nomadic horseman from the Middle East) and their antagonists, the Empire, appear and quickly dispatch modern nations, politics, economies and militaries. The Palmer family from Minnesota travels downriver to escape, only to discover that escape is impossible, and other choices limited. Macy Palmer is an deliberately naïve teenage girl who loves her father, a displaced astronomy professor; her sister Sophia (shades of Red Sonya) pursues freedom and love only to discover slavery and abuse; her brother, Ciaran, carries The Children’s Book of Heroes and seeks to be a child-hero like Peter Pevensie, Harry Potter, or Sir Abel but finds that fantasy is not reality. Throughout, the novel seems acutely aware of itself as a narrative. Macy identifies characters she is sure she will share many adventures with; young former World of Warfare gamers discover how very different fantasy worlds are from this world; and villains admit to being involved in crime only for the money. Then there is Em, the wooden submarine captain about whom three contradictory stories are told—none of which completely satisfy the characters or the reader. But this is brilliantly deliberate, informing the reader that this narrative is somehow self-aware of the narrative confines, and (like its teenage non-heroes) it is unwilling to do the expected. This is the very rare novel that satisfies on a multiple of levels.

In alphabetical order, Sean Melican is a chemist, father, husband and writer.

This month, our selections illustrate the triumph in overcoming our prejudices. We meet wizards with learning disabilities, heroes with human weaknesses and fantasy that refuses to be confined and limited to a single genre.

Most readers (myself included) have probably taken for granted that sorcerers are fluent in whichever magical language they speak. Thankfully, there are readers—and writers—like Blake Charleton, who might not have the same assumptions. Charleton is dyslexic, and his debut novel Spellwright features frustrated hero Nicodemus Weal, whose own dyslexia is a serious setback—even dangerous—when performing magic, which is literally bound by the written word. Even the simplest of spells are corrupted by his touch. As if things weren’t tough enough for Nicodemus, a keloid on his back possibly marks him as the Halcyon, a prophesied hero—but then again, its imperfect shape suggests he may be the Storm Petrel, destroyer of language and magic. Believing himself to be neither, and protected by his mentor Agwu Shannon, Nicodemus struggles to earn the right to be a lesser, more ordinary wizard. But when another wizard is murdered by a misspell, Nicodemus and Shannon top the suspect list and find themselves embroiled in banal politics and religious fervor and facing down true evil. Following a fairly traditional plot, the novel is well worth reading for its thorough imagining of the effect of language on magic, as well as its insight into the nature of dyslexia.

A hero’s greatest enemy
Robert McCammon’s Mister Slaughter, the third book in the well-researched Matthew Corbett series set 70 years prior to the American Revolution, finds our hero and his mentor hired to transfer a vicious prisoner named Slaughter from an asylum to a ship bound for England, where Slaughter will be tried for murder. But when a lapse in Matthew’s judgment allows Slaughter to escape, it is up to Matthew to track down the killer. Soon he finds help in the form of a tortured, outcast Indian, but time is running short before Slaughter escapes for good—and continues his violent crimes of rape and murder. In previous novels, Matthew found himself a hero, but in Mister Slaughter, he discovers that he is weak and fallible, allowing him to humbly come into his own as both character and hero. There’s an added bonus for fans of the series: Although this initially appears to be an isolated assignment, by the novel’s end, McCammon has reintroduced the series’ supervillain, Professor Fell. Combining the best elements of detective, historical, horror and conspiracy fiction, this is a book and a series that deserves a wide readership.

Fantasy pick of the month
When you first open Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy, Volume 3, the first thing you need to do is abandon your preconceived notions of fantasy. These stories feature nary a dragon, wizard or orphan-savior found in an obscure inn, but instead insert the fantastic into the ordinary, examining with wild creativity both the mundane world and the very assumptions that define it. Standout story “The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children” takes the wry and amusing concept of a promiscuous superhero, but then turns a very dark corner to question the Christian underpinnings of our society. “Is” examines the psychological explanations for the escapist fantasies of Narnia and its brethren, but when the questioning voice is cynical, can we trust the conclusion? “Couple of Lovers On a Red Background” takes the common notion of an icon transplanted to the present (Bach, in this case) but infuses it with sexuality and love. The brilliant “Pride and Prometheus” posits that Jane Austen’s Mary Bennett will assume the pseudonym Mary Shelley and write Frankenstein after meeting the eponymous doctor. This is not typical fantasy; instead it is full-bodied storytelling, making up a collection of writing that repeatedly demonstrates that fantasy and reality are not strictly separate. If that is not enough to convince a reader to pick up the book, then consider that half the stories are from sources not typically associated with the genre. This is fantasy, yes, but more importantly, this is literature.

The gas-lit glamour of the Victorian age is a frequent backdrop for stories of women struggling against oppression. But what if a woman had supernatural abilities, or the chance to acquire them? Two new works of historical fantasy answer that question, weaving compelling tales of empowerment—literal and otherwise. 

Set in the fictional country of Levrene, which resembles belle epoque France save for a small portion of the population has telekinetic abilities, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Beautiful Ones is an elegantly paced novel that moves its characters into place with ease, with careful attention paid to ways a word or a moment can change an entire life.

Drenched in beautiful imagery that brings to mind the dreamy aesthetic of art nouveau, The Beautiful Ones begins as Antonina Beaulieu arrives in the capital city of Loisail for her first debutante season. She’d much rather be back home in the country, where she can pursue her interests in the natural world and use her telekinetic powers without fear of judgment. But Nina is dutiful and dreams of romance, so she submits to her cousin’s glamorous wife Valérie and tries to transform herself into a lady. When the successful telekinetic entertainer Hector Auvray begins to court her, his wealth and good breeding is enough to overwhelm her family’s reservations about his common birth, and Nina is quickly enamored of him. But unbeknownst to Nina or anyone else, Hector and Valérie were once engaged.

Relentless and ferociously intelligent, Valérie is sympathetic even as her actions grow monstrous. Groomed from birth to marry for money in order to restore her family’s faded status, Valérie has rejected every part of her self that cannot be used in service to that goal. Moreno-Garcia takes care to illustrate the ways in which Nina is only free to do as she pleases due to her money and her indulgent relatives, leaving the reader with no choice but to acknowledge that Valérie’s hatred of the younger woman stems from both a legitimate grievance and psychological self-preservation. She loathes Nina and often Hector as well, because acknowledging that she carved any trace of innocence and hope out of herself is just too daunting, and damning, to contemplate.

As a foil to Valérie, Nina initially seems more concept than character, a naïve and good-hearted girl doomed to serve as a pawn between Hector and Valérie. But as her youthful passion and curiosity bloom into hard-won wisdom and self-possession, Moreno-Garcia’s narration from her perspective grows more complex, more layered with memory and forethought. The Beautiful Ones captures a young woman in the process of self-creation, looking down on herself from above for the first time, deciding which aspects of her society she will accept, and which she will quietly refuse. Nina’s embrace of and increasing skill with her telekinetic abilities, despite the censure of upper-class society, is a perfect encapsulation of her growth as a character. She’s literally becoming empowered. Moreno-Garcia carefully tracks each participant in the love triangle with this same attention to detail. As the three step toward and away from each other, she roots each movement in individual character development. For each of them, the choice of who they will love is a question of who they will allow themselves to love—whether they will be what society believes they should be, or who they, desperately, hope to be.

Questions of identity and the price of conformity also haunt Creatures of Will and Temper, Molly Tanzer’s urban fantasy set in Victorian London. Tanzer takes the iconic characters of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, gender swaps a few of them and then throws in a fencing school and demonology for good measure. The execution isn’t as pulpy as one would immediately assume, which does lead to a few unanswered questions about the exact nature of the supernatural elements at play. However, Tanzer draws her characters so precisely, and has such fun playing with the themes of Dorian Gray and other novels of the era, that any quibbles are easily waved away.

The decadent Lord Henry becomes Lady Henry (short for Henrietta), a glamorous aesthete in perfectly tailored men’s suits. When introduced to Dorina Gray on the young girl’s first trip to London, Henry is charmed by her enthusiasm and intelligence but resolves not to act on their mutual attraction, or tell Dorina anything about her more unorthodox pursuits—namely that she and a number of her friends host a demon in their bodies. Demon is a bit of a misnomer, as the beings in Tanzer’s novel are from an alternate world, rather than a Judeo-Christian hell. The specific demon that resides within Henry is devoted to sensory experiences above all else, making it the perfect match for Wilde’s decadent philosophy, represented here (as in Dorian Gray) by Henry. By creating and appreciating beauty in all its forms, Henry and her cadre are actually and truly communing with the eternal, literalizing the aim of aestheticism in a canny bit of genre translation.

A swaggering lady demonologist, who is rightfully viewed with utter adoration by her decades-younger love interest, is obviously a delight to come across. But Tanzer’s most intriguing character may be the determinedly conventional Evadne Gray, Dorina’s older sister. Evadne insists on proper behavior despite her very improper devotion to fencing, and immediately disapproves of Henry and Dorina’s friendship.

Tanzer sketches the complicated relationship between the Gray sisters with remarkable empathy and equanimity. Evadne is shy and not conventionally beautiful, unlike the gregarious Dorina, and Tanzer establishes in deft strokes how Evadne’s insecurity has calcified into snobbery and standoffishness. Dorina reacts with scorn whenever Evadne tries to control her behavior, as she cannot help but see it as judgment and rejection. Yet for all her snobbery, Evadne has a forthright, charming Victorian nobility to her, and protects Dorina with all the fervor of a medieval knight. Tanzer wisely ensures that the love between the two sister is never in doubt—rather, they’re unable to honestly communicate with each other due to years of unintended and imagined slights. This central bond between sisters is the backbone of Creatures of Will and Temper, and woven all throughout are poignant observations on love, art and the cost of freedom. With an attention to descriptive detail and an emphasis on seizing the pleasures of life, Creatures of Will and Temper is a twist on a classic tale that would have made Wilde proud.