Magic, in some form or another, has been an integral part of human culture as long as people have told stories. It is an informal codification of the ineffable forces that lie just outside human understanding, whether it manifests as the will of the gods, the encroachment of a chthonic netherworld or parallel realm or an arcane incantation by candlelight. As a genre, fantasy has contended with this uncertain nature in every way imaginable, and a great many contemporary writers have concocted beautifully detailed magic systems to govern their fantastic realms. But few writers make the attempt to uncover the system behind magic quite as central to their stories as W.M. Akers and Molly Tanzer.

Gilda Carr, the heroine of Akers’ Westside Saints, is a detective specializing in “small mysteries,” such as finding a lost glove or a specific shade of blue. But her natural skepticism often drives her, against her best intentions, to turn her small mysteries into quests to explain the bizarre happenings occurring around her in an alternate Manhattan during the 1920s. For Gilda, human rules that forbid lock-picking and govern social status are irrelevant and easily broken, but natural rules—shadows should not eat people, the dead should stay dead—matter a great deal. So when those immutable laws begin to mutate, Gilda sets off to uncover why, resulting in a magical mystery that ends by revealing not only the agent responsible for the chaos, but also the mechanism they manipulated, warped or outright broke to accomplish it.

In a very real sense, Akers’ stories are about his magical system, probing the limitations of reality and what happens when it is unexpectedly torn. This process is enabled by the strength of his leads, especially Gilda herself, whose practicality and sentiment are constantly at loggerheads. Akers can be a touch matter-of-fact regarding significant events, but his characterization and magic-building are as believable as it gets.

Tanzer’s Creatures of Charm and Hunger, on the other hand, is set in a world where the discipline of summoning demons, called “diabolism,” is not only real, but constrained to a kind of incremental scientific inquiry. This constraint is itself a source of frustration for Jane Blackwood, a budding diabolist whose thirst for glamour is barely slaked by the staid, bookish approach her mother Nancy, the Librarian for the leading diabolist society, favors. Jane’s fellow apprentice, Miriam Cantor, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, is perfectly at home among the stacks and catalogues. When Miriam’s parents disappear into the shadows of the Third Reich amid whispers of treachery, she begins delving ever deeper into the most dangerous branches of diabolism.

Tanzer’s masterful depiction of the relationships among Jane, Miriam and Nancy meshes perfectly with the precision of her magical system. Jane’s ambition and insecurity, along with Miriam’s drive and idealism, run up against immutable limits of diabolism, and their inability to transcend Tanzer’s rules is itself the cause of inevitable tragedy.

Both books are excellent examples of how novel magical systems can drive entire narratives. Westside Saints and Creatures of Charm and Hunger are more than deserving of the spotlight, and are wonderful examples of this remarkable trend in fantasy writing today.

Some authors find inspiration in imagining worlds wholly new, spending hours and days creating place names and fictional histories. But other authors delight in taking the world we know—or think we know—and turning it on its head. They look at the nooks and crannies of our own history and ask themselves a simple question: What if things had been different? What if our world were just a little more interesting?

H.G. Parry is such an author. The second book from the New Zealand writer, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, is a sweeping work that tells the story of change and magic at the peak of the Age of Enlightenment. The novel opens at the end of the 18th century as the world is poised for change, and introduces a cast of reimagined historical figures. On opposite ends of the globe, a young necromancer by the name of Robespierre and a weather mage named Toussaint L’Ouverture are preparing for revolution. In England, Prime Minister William Pitt and his MPs are debating not only abolition, but also the legalization of magic among commoners. And in the background of it all, a dark force lurks, threatening more than simple revolution or social change.

Perfect for fans of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, this magnificent and indulgent story balances a deep understanding of the historical trends and details of the age with a talent for twisting reality. Indeed, Parry’s greatest strength is in her ability to dive into the world of “What if . . . ?” and to come back with a compelling and often surprising answer. While enthralling from beginning to end, the book is not for the faint of heart. Both long and dense, it occasionally evokes the age it depicts in its prose. However, for readers who enjoy a clever turn of phrase or a thoughtful internal monologue, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians sings, turning the part of history class you might have slept through into something new, exciting and deeply magical.

While Parry’s sophomore release treads relatively new ground as far as historical fantasy goes, Katherine Addison’s The Angel of the Crows puts a twist on a story that is deeply familiar. The book opens as an injured Dr. J.H. Doyle returns to London from Afghanistan with a wounded leg and a deep secret. Unable to sustain a life in London on a mere military pension, Doyle is encouraged to move in with an angel named Crow. Crow is unlike any angel Doyle has ever seen. For one thing, even though he isn’t bound to a public building, he isn’t one of the lost Nameless or the destructive Fallen. For another, the strange angel delights in one thing above all others: solving mysteries, especially homicides. Together, Doyle and Crow tackle some of London’s hardest to solve cases even as Doyle is forced to reckon with the ghosts of injuries old and new.

If this sounds like something you’ve read before, it might be because it is. At its core, Addison’s latest book is a clever retelling of Sherlock Holmes, incorporating story elements from across the detective’s many cases. But The Angel of the Crows is not a simple regurgitation of well-rehearsed storylines. For one thing, Addison’s take on Victorian London, full of magic and magical folks, is not the one that Holmesians remember. For another, The Angel of the Crows doesn’t begin and end with murder: It asks penetrating questions of its readers about race, gender and civil liberties, raising issues that are unexplored in Conan Doyle’s original stories.

Both The Angel of the Crows and A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians craft compelling, challenging visions of European history, taking readers on a journey full of discovery, adventure and, most importantly, magic.

Two debut fantasy novels, Lisbeth Campbell’s The Vanished Queen and Andrea Stewart’s The Bone Shard Daughter, bring their rebellion plots down to earth with exemplary grace and skill as their complex female protagonists square up against wicked, corrupt kings.

Stewart’s chief protagonist, Lin, is a princess living under the dual weights of her father’s disapproval and the moral depravity of the necromantic magics he wields to maintain his kingdom. She is joined by Jovis, a smuggler dragged unwillingly into a struggle far grander than running an imperial blockade. Their journeys, both together and apart, are set in a Polynesian-inspired world reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea.

Campbell focuses on Anza, a young student with a fondness for mischief who is drawn into a resistance movement after she accidentally discovers the diary of her country’s missing queen in a forbidden section of her school’s library, and Esvar, a prince waiting for his manipulative father to die so his older brother can inherit the throne of Karegg. Campbell's story is devoid of magic, but studded with gunpowder and machinery, rendering it more a piece of vaguely steampunk, central European-inspired historical fiction than archipelagic high fantasy.

The absence of the supernatural feels as natural and necessary in Campbell’s world as its omnipresence does in Stewart’s. However, these differences seem more aesthetic than fundamental; they are more relevant to how the story is told than the underlying nature of each story itself. In some ways, although both books are clearly and resolutely fantasy stories, they incorporate aspects of world building more common to science fiction. Both worlds are familiar, with clear allusions to recognizable cultures and history. Even Stewart’s bone magic is designed to follow rules, much like a natural force that can be manipulated, rather than offering a route around them as in much contemporary fantasy. These constraints lend both The Vanished Queen and The Bone Shard Daughter the cohesiveness and believability so treasured in dark fantasy, but without requiring the gritty aesthetic characteristic of writers like Erikson and Abercrombie. Instead, they demonstrate the rare combination of conceptual clarity and narrative drive that characterizes peers such as Catherine Rowland and W.M. Akers.

If their debuts are any indication, both Lisbeth Campbell and Andrea Stewart should be mainstays of modern fantasy writing for years to come. Perhaps Stewart will answer some of the tantalizing unanswered questions from The Bone Shard Daughter. Perhaps Campbell will explore the world of The Vanished Queen beyond the evocatively claustrophobic borders of Karegg. Or perhaps not. Either way, they are both welcome and timely additions to the pantheon of modern fantasy.

A clone, a con artist and a girl touched by death grace this month's sci-fi & fantasy column.

★ Remote Control

A beautiful, sad, enthralling novella set in a futuristic Africa, Remote Control is a refreshing oasis of creativity. One day, an object fell from the sky and Fatima forgot her name. The encounter imbued her with terrible, destructive powers, and she gave herself a new name: Sankofa. With a fox companion and a reputation for bringing death to everyone she meets, she searches endlessly for the object in the hope of finding answers to the innumerable questions in her mind. Hugo Award winner Nnedi Okorafor is no stranger to the novella; her Binti trilogy is a laudable (and much lauded) example of how freeing the form can be. Remote Control never includes any detail that isn’t needed, and Okorafor’s word choices have a simple beauty. They’re elegiac, like a translation from a text recently restored to us from the sands of time. I implore you to discover this lovely, captivating story for yourself.

The Mask of Mirrors

Lush, engrossing and full of mystery and dark magic, The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick is sure to please fantasy readers looking to dial up the intrigue. In this first installment of a new trilogy, Renata Viraudax, a thief and con artist, travels to the city of Nadezra to infiltrate House Traementis, planning to take advantage of their weak position within the aristocracy. But she slowly discovers a sinister magical threat and an underbelly of corruption that threaten the stability of the city. Can she find the right allies in a place where everyone’s running a con of their own? The richness of Nadezra—the class systems, the detail with which things like clothing are rendered—is a joy, but the story itself also brims with intrigue, wonder and real pain. Jump in and get swept away.

The Echo Wife

When I read Sarah Gailey’s Magic for Liars, I was drawn in by their wit and nimble control over their prose. Their new novel, The Echo Wife, delivers a tight, thrilling and funny ride. Evelyn Caldwell, a brilliant pioneer in human cloning technology, isn’t happy. She’s haunted by her divorce from her cheating husband, with whom she shared her research. Martine is a clone of Evelyn, designed to be everything Evelyn is not: gentle, submissive and calm. When Martine calls Evelyn in the dead of night asking for help, the two women are forced to find a way to survive together. Gailey’s writing is controlled, visceral and especially dazzling when Martine and Evelyn are in a room together. Fans of “Big Little Lies,” The Island, Frankenstein and “Killing Eve” will love this gripping, skillfully told firecracker of a book.

In these two dark visions of the future, empathy provides a much-needed source of light.

In the future, the world has been dominated by advanced artificial intelligences, and the majority of humanity has chosen to live entirely online. The Caspian Republic presents itself as a traditionalist utopia, the last bastion of humanity. In reality, the country portrayed in When the Sparrow Falls is a repressive surveillance state ruled by a single paranoid anti-AI party. Dissidence can get you killed—assuming you don’t starve first. 

This carefully controlled political ecosystem is thrown into jeopardy after the death of an anti-AI journalist named Paulo Xirau. During Xirau’s autopsy, officials learn the unsettling truth: The writer, a mouthpiece of the party, was in fact an AI himself. In the aftermath of this discovery, State Security Agent Nikolai South is asked to escort Xirau’s wife, Lily, who is revealed to be another AI, as she identifies her husband’s remains. Despite his initial distrust and revulsion, Nikolai soon forms an attachment to Lily, beginning an unlikely friendship that will test the mettle of Nikolai’s morals—and potentially the strength of the Caspian Republic itself.

Neil Sharpson’s debut novel (based on his play The Caspian Sea) is surprisingly retro. Part John le Carré, part Kurt Vonnegut, When the Sparrow Falls feels more like a Cold War-era spy novel than a story set after the singularity. Part of this is aesthetic; the Caspian Republic is a country without a stitch of modern technology in sight, full of poorly bound notepads, stacks of paperwork and face-to-face meetings. The threat of AI takeover is ever present, but it is abstract, more akin to the looming atomic threat during the 1950s than an actual impending attack. 

The other portion of the novel’s Cold War aura is in the nature of the Caspian Republic itself. The hidden eyes of Party Security watch every move from cobweb-filled cracks, an embargo threatens to drive the entire populace to starvation, and a series of purges purify the party and country from within. Together these variables add to a disconcerting, uneasy whole.

While When the Sparrow Falls projects an aura of a dingy, rain-soaked East Berlin, We Have Always Been Here creates a world that is stiflingly sterile and bright. Lena Nguyen’s debut novel tells the story of Grace Park, a socially awkward psychologist tasked with monitoring the 13-person crew of the Deucalion, a ship sent to survey Eos, a strange icy planet far from civilization. 

Park’s position as psychologist immediately puts her at odds with the rest of the crew, who think that she has been sent to spy on them by the Interstellar Frontier. To make matters worse, however, Park prefers the company of the ship’s androids to her fellow humans. In a society where “clunkers” are at best tolerated and often despised, this oddity leads to rising tensions. And when members of the crew start falling prey to waking nightmares and violent fits of insanity, paranoia sets in on the windowless ship. As crew members fall to all-consuming delusions, the terror of the unknown grips Park. The question soon becomes not what the crew of the Deucalion will find on Eos but whether any of them will survive the journey.

Nguyen maintains a delicate balance in We Have Always Been Here. The slow, creeping unease aboard the Deucalion is punctuated by memories from Park’s past that  soften the growing horror of what’s happening on the ship and slow down what otherwise might be a rather straightforward psychological thriller. Flashbacks explore the depth of Park’s relationship with her android caregivers, providing a soothing counterpoint to the anti-android animus on the ship. However, her memories of violent anti-android protests also highlight the lack of regard for android life and the latent distrust for both artificial intelligences and the people who associate themselves too closely with them.

When the Sparrow Falls and We Have Always Been Here show startlingly different yet equally dark views of the future. Sharpson’s future is a mirror of our past, thrusting us into the surveillance state of regimes gone by. Nguyen’s is full of precise lines and icy sharpness, creating a world that is simultaneously oppressively expansive and uncommonly claustrophobic. Despite their differences, the thrillers share a surprising theme: empathy. Nguyen and Sharpson have given us two different views of what life with machines could be like—and the challenges that we will have to deal with as we encounter intelligences dissimilar to our own. But if you aren’t in the philosophical mood, both books share something else as well: insomnia-inducing plots that will leave you looking over your shoulder long after the stories conclude.