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All Science Fiction & Fantasy Coverage

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Science Fiction & Fantasy

Choose your own reality

Feature by Laura Hubbard

Readers and gamers alike will be well served by two refreshing science fiction novels that are both exciting and thought provoking.

Whether you’re looking for a trippy walk through the American Pacific Northwest or a Modern Warfare-esque tromp through a dystopian hellscape is up to you. The only question is this: Are you playing?

Woodpeckers photographed decades after they are thought to have gone extinct. A game in an arcade that suddenly has a level that no one has ever seen before. Videos of violent crimes that never actually happened. These are the hallmarks of the alternate reality game Rabbits, known by its players as just “the game.” Some think the game was created by spy agencies as a way to find new recruits. Others think the game is far older and that it has been going on for centuries. But there are two things that all who know about Rabbits can agree on. First: You don’t talk about the details of Rabbits, ever. Especially with outsiders. If you do, things will go poorly for you. Second: Playing the game, nevermind winning, will change your life.

K (yes, it’s short for something, but don’t ask what) learns this firsthand on an otherwise normal Seattle night. After giving his regular presentation about the history of the game at a local arcade, he is approached by eccentric billionaire (and rumored Rabbits champion) Alan Scarpio. Over rhubarb pie and coffee, Scarpio tells K that there’s something wrong with the game—something that Scarpio needs K’s help to fix before the next iteration of the game begins. K is skeptical at first, but when Scarpio disappears soon after their late-night meeting, K is pulled into a warren of intrigue and danger that will change not just K’s life, but reality itself.

Set in the same world as his pseudo-documentary podcast of the same name, Terry Miles’ debut novel, Rabbits, is all about reality: discrepancies, changes and patterns. Or, more precisely, it’s about the moments of unreality that we tend to shake off, like a store we swore closed a year ago that’s actually still open or a movie we remember watching as children that never actually existed. Miles masterfully evokes this sense of unreality by thoroughly grounding his novel in a sense of place. His depictions of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest are spot on, so tangible that you can nearly feel the constant drizzle and smell the roasting coffee. From his description of the Capitol Hill neighborhood to his exploration of the outer neighborhoods of the cloudy city, reading Rabbits feels like you are walking in step with K for every page of the novel.

That is, until the changes start. Miles slowly chips away the steady ground he’s built for you until it feels as if you are about to step into a sinkhole or a well where gravity has been reversed. The effect is so unsettling that it will leave you looking for those discrepancies—in a sense, playing your own game of Rabbits—long after Rabbits is over.

Where Rabbits deals with the breakdown of reality, Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Firebreak is about the opposite: a game meant to shape our perceptions of reality. The novel's heroine, Mal, lives in a world where the implants she uses to stream virtual reality games are free, but water is a tightly rationed commodity you have to pay for ounce by precious ounce. It’s a world where refugees from a never-ending war live eight or more people to a room, each working three jobs merely to scrape by on instant noodles and soda.

So when a mysterious benefactor offers to sponsor Mal's VR stream of the war game SecOps for five gallons of water a week, it’s hard to say no. But the sponsor has a strange request: She wants Mal to prioritize capturing in-game close-ups of SecOps’ superstar nonplayer characters (NPCs). Modeled on real supersoldiers grown in vats by Stellaxis, the corporation that runs both Mal’s city and SecOps, the NPCs are cultural icons. But the sponsor claims that the story everyone has been fed about the super soldiers is a lie: The soldiers weren’t grown in vats at all. They were orphaned children, just like Mal, who were turned into soldiers when it was clear that they wouldn’t be missed. As the evidence for the strange theory piles up, Mal realizes her sponsor's claim wasn’t so far-fetched after all, and she will have to risk everything in order to make things right.

On the surface, Firebreak may seem familiar. A book about virtual reality in a war-torn corporate dystopia? It’s been done. But after just a few pages in, it’s clear that Kornher-Stace’s novel breaks the mold. Part Snow Crash, part spy novel, part Twitch stream, Firebreak raises serious questions about the power of corporations and the potential to shape public sentiment through virtual reality. Where corporations rule, necessities are commoditized to control the public. Stellaxis, for example, controls the water supply so tightly that even trying to purify rainwater for personal consumption can get you fined or worse.

The level of worker and consumer regulation portrayed is chilling, but it comes nowhere near Kornher-Stace’s terrifying, imaginative depiction of the intersection between war propaganda and VR gaming. In this world, virtual reality games are used to maintain and grow support for a war that has decimated entire cities and left untold thousands of children orphaned. The result is both exhilarating and deeply disturbing, as it shines a light on how easy it can be to manipulate people through the media they consume.

Readers and gamers alike will be well served by two refreshing science fiction novels that are both exciting and thought provoking.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

The machines are coming

Feature by Laura Hubbard

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. 

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

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sci-Fi & Fantasy: August 2021

Feature by Chris Pickens

These three tales are epic in every sense but never lose sight of the characters at their heart.

★ She Who Became the Sun

The best historical fantasies bring an all-new beauty and mystery to familiar things. Shelly Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun spins a tale based on the founding of China’s Ming dynasty that reads like Mulan crossed with The Once and Future King. In a poverty-stricken village, a girl fights to stay alive. Her brother is supposedly destined for greatness, but she has never been more than an afterthought. After bandits raid her family’s house and she is the only one left alive, she makes a desperate choice. Cloaking herself in her late brother’s name, Zhu Chongba, she conceals her gender and joins a nearby monastery. While there, Zhu learns how to survive, even as the Mongol hordes march on China. Parker-Chan’s gorgeous writing accompanies a vibrantly rendered world full of imperfect, fascinating characters. With every turn of the page, the book offers a new set piece, a new revelation, a new horror. Readers who loved the equally excellent Poppy War trilogy by R.F. Kuang will be right at home here. If you’re a fan of epic fantasy, you can’t miss this one.

★ Shards of Earth

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shards of Earth is one of the most stunning space operas I’ve read this year. Fifty years ago, a man named Idris saved humanity from the Architects, enormous planet-size aliens capable of destroying anything in their path. Now, even as he navigates the galaxy’s backwaters on the junky salvage ship Vulture God, Idris can feel something in the depths of space. When he and his crew make a discovery that could upend the fragile peace among scattered human factions, they must choose who to trust before the Architects return to finish what they started. Tchaikovsky’s world building is on glorious display as he throws all manner of spaceships, creepy aliens and strange technology into a delicious sci-fi soup. It’s dense, it’s funny, it’s exciting, it’s touching and it’s perfect for someone looking for a space opera built on a grand scale.

The Godstone

I like to think I have my own preferences nailed down, and then a totally original book like Violette Malan’s The Godstone comes along and thoroughly delights and surprises me. Fenra Lowens is a Practitioner of magic who serves as healer for the residents of a small rural village. When Fenra’s longtime patient Arlyn Albainil receives a summons to the City to receive the valuable contents of a long-lost relative’s vault, Fenra volunteers to accompany Arlyn on his journey. But Arlyn is more than he seems, and he knows more than he tells. Inside the vault is an object of immense power, and he’s the only one who knows how to stop it from destroying the world. There’s a confident briskness to Malan’s pacing; nothing seems to drag over The Godstone’s 300 or so pages. The momentum is only aided by the superb dialogue throughout. Fenra and Arlyn’s banter is so pleasant, so assured, that it at times reads like classic English literature. Readers would be wise to pick up this exciting start to a new fantasy series.

These three tales are epic in every sense but never lose sight of the characters at their heart.

Science Fiction & FantasyRomance

Kiss kiss, bang bang

Feature by Dolly R. Sickles

The stakes are high, the danger is imminent and the sexiness is through the roof in this trio of romantic suspense novels.

Author duo Kit Rocha is back with the second installment of the Mercenary Librarians series. The first, Deal With the Devil, introduced librarians Maya, Dani and Nina, who brokered a deal with a group of AWOL supersoldiers known as the Silver Devils to survive in a post-apocalyptic Atlanta. The Devil You Know is another exciting dystopian adventure packed with danger, sexy romance and fascinating world building.

Maya may not have the combat skills of her fellow librarians, but she’s got as much grit, determination and intelligence in her self-described “soft and squishy” body as anyone in her squad. Raised with the wealthy and well educated, she learned to speak dozens of languages and mastered advanced mathematics, astronomy, programming, cryptography and biochemistry. Now Maya uses her brilliance to help her small community learn to freeze-dry food while building a repository of information more useful and practical than any 20th-century library.

Gray is the consummate sniper—stoic, determined and laser-focused. The Silver Devils, who were once a private security group for medical and tech conglomerate TechCorps, were granted superhuman abilities by implants. But now those implants are deteriorating, and Gray has begun to experience seizures. Despite the secret kernel of affection he keeps buried in his heart for Maya, he’s more interested in keeping her alive and safe than in his arms.

Rocha’s writing is tight and purposeful, keeping readers on their toes as they, along with Maya and Gray, try to figure out who they can actually trust. There are moments of both gasping surprise and laugh-out-loud humor in this fun and totally unique romance.

Alexandra Ivy’s Faceless will ruin any preconceptions readers may have about safe, sleepy small towns.  

When Wynter Moore was 4, she witnessed the murder of her mother in a robbery gone wrong. Despite that trauma, she’s grown into a peaceful woman who lives a quiet life. For the past 25 years, Wynter has returned annually to her mother’s grave in Pike, Wisconsin, and Wynter’s longtime friend Noah Hunter is there waiting for her every time. Loyal, kind and dependable Noah has loved Wynter from afar ever since they met in grief counseling as teenagers, but he’s been hesitant to take things further because he knows that good friends are far more valuable than lovers. 

But then Wynter receives an unexpected envelope containing a still shot from surveillance footage of her mother’s murder, a clue that could unlock the killer’s identity. She turns to game warden Noah, who has been trained in observation and security, to help her investigate.

Ivy ably balances Wynter’s overwhelming emotions upon revisiting her mother’s death with the addictiveness of unraveling the truth. There’s a lot of details to unpack in this book, along with a lot of characters, which unfortunately turns down the slow burn of this friends-to-lovers romance to a simmer. It would have been nice to see a little more of Wynter and Noah’s romantic progression, but in the hectic world of romantic suspense, Faceless offers a breather: It’s a love story with a gentler pace, despite the life-threatening danger the main couple finds themselves in.

Adriana Anders ratchets up the tension to stratospheric heights in the highly anticipated follow-up to 2020’s Whiteout, Uncharted. Set in the Alaskan wilderness, this forced proximity romance delivers a suspenseful TKO.

With staccato-style sentences, Anders brings new and returning readers up to speed on the ruthless Chronos corporation, which has deployed a team of mercenaries and scientists to gain access to a deadly virus. The only thing standing in Chronos’ way is hotshot pilot Leo Eddowes and the other members of her secret military unit. 

Leo and her team have traveled to Alaska in search of a scientist who stole a vial of the virus from Chronos. When the daring Leo decides to follow a lead without the rest of her team, she ends up crashing her plane in the wilderness after being attacked by Chronos’ goons. Leo is saved by the mysterious Elias Thorne, who has his own tortured history with the evil corporation.

Uncharted is ultimately a romance about trust and instinct. Who can you trust? When should you let down your guard? Anders has created two great protagonists who are equally skilled and equally wary of one another. Every sentence, every scene, is packed with emotion, and readers can feel Leo and Elias falling in love as they team up to make it out alive. The landscape provides as strong a foe as the enemies who are pursuing the pair, which makes the story all the more stressful. This is an exhausting book, but in the best possible way. It’s like the literary version of a Bruce Springsteen song, one that’s meant to be sung loudly and reverberate from every pore into the universe.

The stakes are high, the danger is imminent and the sexiness is through the roof in this trio of romantic suspense novels.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Sweltering summers, sliced through with cold terror

Feature by Laura Hubbard

While set in very different worlds and starkly different eras, Summer Sons and Revelator are marvelous modern additions to the Southern gothic canon, full of paranoia and the grotesque (as well as the occasional jump scare).

★ Summer Sons

Lee Mandelo’s Summer Sons opens in tragedy. After the death of his adoptive brother and best friend, Andrew is left with a legacy he never asked for: Eddie's money, Eddie’s sports car, Eddie’s house, the American Studies graduate program at Vanderbilt in Tennessee that Eddie picked out for the two of them and even Eddie’s roommate. Driven by grief and convinced that there is more to Eddie’s death than meets the eye, Andrew slides into the life that Eddie prepared for him, discovering all that Eddie had tried to conceal. As Andrew dives deeper into a world of sun-soaked men, racing and trouble, he is forced to deal with another unwanted legacy. Eddie’s revenant won’t leave him alone, and neither will Eddie’s research into their shared supernatural experience, a topic they had agreed to let lie. Summer Sons is raw and chaotic, driving readers through the disordered grief and anger of its main character. Mandelo’s visceral writing tugs at readers’ hearts as well as their amygdalas. Alternating between discussions of identity and sexuality, the horror of grief and an actual haunting, it is part The Fast and the Furious, part The Shining and part Ninth House.

★ Revelator

While Summer Sons deals in the present, Daryl Gregory’s Revelator is a story of ancestry and ancient powers. Set in the 1930s and ’40s, in the mountainous triangle where Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia collide, it follows Stella Birch: moonshiner, businesswoman and Revelator and prophet to Ghostdaddy, the god under the mountain. The red splotches across Stella’s face signaled this title when she was born and sealed her destiny. She would be the one to go under the mountain and commune with Ghostdaddy, bringing his word out to be recorded and interpreted by the men of her family. That is, until tragedy and rebellion struck. Stella fled, leaving her role and god behind. But when her grandmother Motty’s death calls Stella back to her childhood home and to Motty’s adopted daughter, Sonny, whom Stella has long ignored, she will have to deal with her past if she is to have any hope of a future.

Full of matter-of-fact descriptions of unthinkable horror, Revelator is both weird and wonderful. On the one hand, it tells a story familiar to Southern literature: the chaos resulting from the death of a matriarch. And on the other, it tells the story of a creature so alien that it’s difficult to wrap your head around. Perfect for fans of Lovecraft Country and anyone who wished the 2000 film Songcatcher had a few more monsters, Revelator is full of surprises both fascinating and stomach-clenching.

Both Summer Sons and Revelator serve a slice of cold terror, paired with a view of humanity that is equal parts revelatory and humbling.

Two new novels put their own horrifying spin on the Southern gothic.

Science Fiction & FantasyNonfictionFiction

Leave the lights on

Feature by BookPage contributors

We ranked this year’s Halloween offerings from slightly spooky to totally terrifying.

Chasing Ghosts by Marc Hartzman

Scariness level: You can safely read it by flashlight in the middle of a desecrated graveyard.

In Chasing Ghosts, Marc Hartzman gives a lighthearted historical account of ghostly legends, haunted houses and other unearthly visits from beyond the grave. Using humor, fun illustrations and interesting anecdotes, Hartzman main focus is on humanity’s attempts to reach out to the dead. There are hucksters galore in this entertaining book: mediums, spirit photographers, levitators and automatic writers who used all kinds of gimcrackery and stagecraft to pull off their frauds, separating the susceptible from their healthy skepticism—and money.

So, what are ghosts? Mass hysteria or hoaxes? Reactions to invisible environmental factors or the lingering embodiments of souls? Chasing Ghosts raises these questions but wisely avoids offering definitive answers. So the next time you walk through a sudden cold spot on a humid evening, you might want to consider the possibility that ghosts are chasing you.

(Read the full review by Deborah Mason.)

Horseman by Christina Henry

Scariness level: Strike a match and spark one solitary lantern.

Christina Henry’s Horseman is an atmospheric and haunting reimagining of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Fourteen-year-old Bente “Ben” Van Brunt is the grandson of Katrina Van Tassel and Brom Bones, whose tale-as-old-as-time romance once sparked rumors of the ghostly Horseman and ran a gangly, awkward schoolmaster named Ichabod Crane out of town. Ben, who is transgender, experiences much frustration with fellow townsfolk who insist on repeatedly misgendering him and accusing him of witchcraft. But there is even more that sets him apart: Ben has visions of the Horseman, who says he is there to protect him.

With visceral visions of nightmares, creepy prose and a pace as fast as the rush of horses’ hooves, Henry’s take on Irving’s classic story is a chilling romp into the forest where sometimes the scariest monsters are all too human.

(Read the full review by Stephanie Cohen-Perez.)

★ Slewfoot by Brom

Scariness level: Light a few candles. It’s safe enough to read at home in bed but might cause some goosebumps if you’re alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods.

Abitha, a young Englishwoman, marries into the Puritan society of Sutton, Connecticut, and finds herself an outsider due to her sharp tongue and headstrong manner. When her husband is killed in the woods behind her house, Abitha must decide how to live as a widow in a community that seems to be waiting for her to fail.

If only that were all she had to worry about. Deep in the dark of the forest, something ancient, primal and hungry has awoken. Slewfoot is creepy, crawly, bloody fun. Author-illustrator Brom wastes no opportunity to turn up the spooky factor, whether in prose or in the deliciously creepy paintings that illustrate his tale. If you’re looking for a thrilling ride that also has a philosophical soul, grab a copy of Slewfoot—and don’t put it down until you’ve finished it.

(Read the full review by Chris Pickens.)

Reprieve by James Han Mattson

Scariness level: It’s as creepy as sinking into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Dead Marshes and lighting one little candle.

At some point while reading James Han Mattson’s Reprieve, you’ll think, “This can’t be real. This better not be real.” Quigley House in Lincoln, Nebraska, is a full-contact escape room, in which staff are allowed to physically engage with contestants. If things get too intense, a member of the group can shout, “Reprieve!” at which point the game and its torment ends, though no one wins the prize money. Quigley House is not a nefarious entity, but something or someone within it is. Is it one of the actors hired to play ghouls and freaks? Maybe it’s the folks responsible for the house’s ghastly special effects. Or is it someone among the latest group of thrill-seekers who have taken on the challenge of this grisly obstacle course? As the book’s horrifying events unfold, Reprieve can be read as a commentary on, or even an allegory of, American racism. It’s a horror story, certainly, but it’s not as scary as it is deeply disturbing.

(Read the full review by Arlene McKanic.)

Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

Scariness level: Imagine encountering three Japanese spirits, each holding one flickering lighter.

Cassandra Khaw’s horror novella brings readers to Japan, where a wedding of questionable taste is about to unfold. Nadia, who is engaged to Faiz, has decided she wants to be married in a haunted house. The couple’s megarich friend Phillip secures a venue for them: a Heian-era mansion in a forest, built on the bones of a bride-to-be and other girls killed to appease her loneliness. Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a brooding horror story that incorporates Japanese mythology in colorful, excruciating detail, including spirits such as yōkai and bake-danuki in addition to the malicious, ghostly bride. Readers looking for bite-size horror on a stormy night will appreciate Khaw’s twisted tale.

(Read the full review by Ralph Harris.)

★ The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

Scariness level: You’ll need most of the lights in your room (and perhaps an extra night light in the bathroom).

A woman in search of a husband finds one with more than his fair share of deadly secrets in the atmospheric, well-plotted The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling. In an alternate version of Victorian-era Britain, known as Great Bretlain, Jane Lawrence understands that a married woman is afforded far more freedom than an unmarried maiden. Bachelor Augustine Lawrence, the only doctor in town, seems like a fine option. He agrees, under one simple condition: Jane must never visit his ancestral home. Anyone who has ever read a gothic novel knows exactly where this is going, but Starling does a magnificent job steering clear of the obvious plot beats in this white-knuckle reading experience. For those who crave intense and detailed gothic horror, or those who just want more Guillermo del Toro a la Crimson Peak vibes in their life, this is a must-read.

(Read the full review by Amanda Diehl.)

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

Scariness level: Keep all the lights in your house on—and maybe unplug your smart devices and toss them into the backyard.

In powerfully immersive first-person prose, Gus Moreno’s debut novel provides an inside view of a grief-stricken husband’s worst nightmare. This Thing Between Us feels like a fever dream as Thiago Alvarez, in a one-sided conversation with his late wife, Vera, reexamines the tragic events that led to her death and recounts what’s happened since. A few months prior, Thiago and Vera’s smart speaker started playing music without their request. Odd packages arrived, even though no orders had been placed. And then an alarm clock didn’t go off as it should’ve, throwing their schedule into chaos and placing Vera in the exact wrong place at the worst possible time. Now Vera’s gone, and Thiago is lost. And that’s just the beginning.

There’s no question that this novel delivers the fright. Bodies drop. Violence springs up seemingly out of nowhere. But the most surprising and challenging aspect of This Thing Between Us is that it’s as emotionally taxing as it is terrifying—a novel of domestic conflict and suspense as well as horror.

(Read the full review by Carole V. Bell.)

How many lights does it take to feel safe while reading these books?

Science Fiction & Fantasy

8 unique magical worlds

Feature by Savanna, Associate Editor

Do you love a dash of magic in your fiction? Are you bored with garden-variety sword-and-sorcery fantasies? If you’re ready to take a dive into a different kind of spellbinding story, check out some of our recent favorites. From flying women to futuristic crime families who trade in drug-aided magic, we’ve got a little something for every kind of reader.

The Coincidence MakersThe Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum
Fate. Kismet. Coincidence. Luck. We all have our theories about why things work out the way they do, but Israeli author Blum’s debut poses an intriguing alternative: What if people employed by a supernatural organization were in charge of orchestrating so-called coincidences? These creators of “situations” (formerly imaginary friends) possess strange powers like “the ability to experience the present as something that was the future until a moment ago when it became ever so slightly past.”  Read our review.

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer
(spoiler alert) In Molly Tanzer’s gender-swapped take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, the aesthetes of Wilde’s iconic novel become even more scandalous. Lady Henrietta “Henry” Wotton belongs to a club that contacts demons, which in this case means beings from another dimension, not Judeo-Christian spirits. Most demons are drawn to aspects of our world they can’t experience in theirs, and Lady Henry’s demon is enamored of magnificent aesthetic experiences above all else. Looking down somewhere from a velvet chaise lounge, Oscar Wilde must be very proud. Read our review.

Jade City by Fonda Lee
Lee’s gangsters might be the coolest out of all the magic users on this list. The crime families of Janloon carry jade that gives them increased strength, speed and durability. They train from birth to carry it, slowly exposing themselves to more of the substance over the years. But as you might expect, the demand for jade is enormous, and drugs are formulated that allow anyone to use it, if they’re willing to risk the potentially deadly side effects. Read our review.

 

The Philosopher's FlightThe Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller
In this extremely entertaining alternate history tale, the United States has just entered World War I, and the science behind unaided human flight, known as empirical philosophy, is deeply controversial—mostly because, for the most part, only women can fly. Against the backdrop of tension and drama playing out on a national level, 18-year-old Robert Weekes dreams of following his mother’s footsteps and learning to fly. Read our review.

 

The PowerThe Power by Naomi Alderman
What if women had physical superiority over men? How would that change our world? Read Alderman's award-winning novel to find out, as the women in this world suddenly gain the power to wield (and kill with) electricity. Reading this page-turning thriller feels like holding lightning in your hands. Read our review.

 

The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso
Every magic user in the Raverran Empire is conscripted into service, and jesses are placed on their wrists to prevent the using of magic. Warlocks, called Falcons, are dependent on an assigned Falconer, who can say the incantation that releases their power. The arrangement forces irreverent, cynical fire warlock Zaira and bookish noblewoman Amalia to work together as one, blending classic buddy comedy with fantasy intrigue. We won’t spoil anything, but let’s just say the magic of Caruso’s world gets even more interesting in the upcoming sequel, The Defiant Heir. Read our review.

Torn by Rowenna Miller
In Miller’s wonderful debut, talented seamstress Sophie is able to create charmed clothing for good luck or protection. She draws from her Pellian heritage, in which charm casting is traditionally done via stone tablets. As this tale of political intrigue winds on, Sophie discovers she can cast curses, and that her magic is more nuanced and more dangerous than she ever imagined. Read our Q&A with Rowenna Miller and Melissa Caruso.

 

Winter of Ice and Iron by Rachel Neumeier
The regions and countries of Neumeier’s Four Kingdoms are personified in what their inhabitants call Immanent Powers. The Powers are literal spirits of the land, increasing or decreasing based upon the strength of the region. When Kehera, the princess of peaceful Harivir, flees to the harsh, forbidding domain of the Wolf Lord of Ëaneté, their tentative alliance changes their lives and the Powers they’re tied to. Read our review.

Do you love a dash of magic in your fiction? Are you bored with garden-variety sword-and-sorcery fantasies? If you’re ready to take a dive into a different kind of spellbinding story, check out some of our recent favorites. From flying women to futuristic crime families who trade in drug-aided magic, we’ve got a little something for every kind of reader.

Science Fiction & FantasyHorror

Nothing But Blackened Teeth

Review by Ralph Harris

Cassandra Khaw’s horror novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth brings readers to Japan, where a wedding of questionable taste is about to unfold. Nadia, who is engaged to Faiz, has decided she wants to be married in a haunted house. The couple’s mega-rich friend Phillip secures a venue for them: a Heian-era mansion in a forest, built on the bones of a bride-to-be and other girls killed to appease her loneliness.

Khaw roots the novella in the perspective of Cat, who along with Phillip and the group’s resident pot-stirrer, Lin, is one of the wedding’s three guests. Cat has recently emerged from six months of self-imposed isolation to treat her depression, the exact details of which are left purposefully vague. Cat thinks this retreat has done her some good, but Khaw does not shy from portraying Cat’s ongoing experience with depression in the form of long, spiraling trains of thought. These mental soliloquies color the entire story with Cat’s internal angst. Her barely controlled depressive energy bleeds through every page, punctured by curt dialogue among the small fellowship of supposed friends. Supposed is the key adjective, as each member of the five-person crew has some sort of sordid history with another member—or two. Their friendships, especially as seen through Cat’s eyes, are flimsy at best. Despite flying across the world to participate in this marriage ceremony, the bonds between them disintegrate as the haunting begins.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: The year's best Halloween reads, ranked from slightly spooky to totally terrifying.

Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a brooding horror story that incorporates Japanese mythology in colorful, excruciating detail, including spirits such as yōkai and bake-danuki in addition to the malicious, ghostly bride. Cat’s relative familiarity with Japanese culture (she is Chinese and grew up in Malaysia) means that she is quick to identify certain beings but doesn’t spend unrealistic amounts of time explaining significant details for the audience, a careful balance of clarity and obscurity that will appeal to Japanese horror aficionados and newcomers alike.

Khaw builds horror slowly and evenly. Rather than sporadically appearing to frighten and terrorize the young squad of not-quite-friends, the spirits of the house appear with steadily increasing frequency until they are simply present in every scene. By the novella’s climax, the tension has increased to such an unbearable degree that the final burst of violence is more expected than surprising.

Readers looking for bite-size horror on a stormy night will appreciate Khaw’s twisted tale of foolish young adults, all of whom are poorly prepared for the effects their decisions will have on their psyches (and lives).

Cassandra Khaw’s horror novella Nothing but Blackened Teeth brings readers to Japan, where a wedding of questionable taste is about to unfold.

Science Fiction & FantasyHorror

Slewfoot

Review by Chris Pickens

In 1666, puritanical Christianity found a foothold in the New World. Known for the rejection of nearly everything as being sinful, life in a Puritan community could be pretty tough, especially for women. But Christianity wasn’t the first religion in America, not by a long shot.

Abitha, a young Englishwoman, marries into the Puritan society of Sutton, Connecticut, and finds herself relegated to the fringes of the community, an outsider due to her sharp tongue and headstrong manner. She also brought small charms and potions with her from England, remedies from her mother that would be considered witchcraft in Puritan circles. When her husband is killed in the woods behind her house, Abitha must decide how to live as a widow in a community that seems to be waiting for her to fail.

If only that were all she had to worry about. Deep in the dark of the forest, something ancient, primal and hungry has awoken. Can Abitha survive alone when old Slewfoot comes to her door?

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: The year's best Halloween reads, ranked from slightly spooky to totally terrifying.

Slewfoot is creepy, crawly, bloody fun. There are some downright spine-tingling moments that are sure to stick with you long after the last page. From shadows in cornfields, to pits filled with bones, to entrails scattered across deserted roads, author and illustrator Brom wastes no opportunity to turn up the spook factor, whether in prose or in the deliciously creepy paintings that illustrate his tale. However, what’s especially commendable about this horror aesthetic is the wayt the reader’s reaction to it changes over time. As the story progresses, these passages don’t simply shock; they reveal more and more about the universe of the story. Without giving too much away, by the end of the book, you’ll be rooting for blood.

Indeed, Slewfoot’s most compelling theme is its fascination with change. We see it most with Abitha, who is an incredible character. As she grieves, finds confidence in herself and gets drawn into the ancient power of the spirits of the forest, the reader empathizes with that transformation. There’s also a continuing meditation on good and evil, dark and light, life and death. Do monsters think of themselves as monsters? Are there elements of dark and light in all of us?

If you’re looking for a witchy, thrilling ride that also has a philosophical soul, grab a copy of Slewfoot—and don’t put it down until you’ve finished it.

In 1666, puritanical Christianity found a foothold in the New World. But Christianity wasn’t the first religion in America, not by a long shot.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Putting the “epic” in epic fantasy

Review by Michael Burgin

The release of Steven Erickson’s The Crippled God, the 10th and final book in Malazan Book of the Fallen series, marks the culmination of the single most ambitious, audacious and jaw-droppingly imagined work of epic fantasy since Bilbo Baggins found 13 dwarves outside his door. And it can be argued that even Tolkien’s seminal work lacks the scope—the sheer expanse—of Erickson’s epic.

The central conflict of the series is easy enough to summarize: In ages past, an alien god was torn from its own realm and slammed into this world. In the present, different factions, including the Crippled God itself, battle over what to do about it. To veteran fantasy readers, such a summary might elicit a disinterested, “So?” From Sauron to Shai’tan, from Lord Foul to Voldemort, the fantasy genre practically demands there be a slumbering, chained or just generally surly villain yearning to be free. In fact, though some are well disguised to the point of being fully re-imagined, most of fantasy’s greatest hits populate these pages. The Tiste—be they Andii, Liosan or Edur—are elves. The T’lann Imass are a particularly well-wrought version of the undead. And here there be plenty of dragons.

But attempting to measure Erickson’s achievement by counting tropes and archetypes shared with other “thick-tome generators” in the genre would be like equating Milton’s Paradise Lost with “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”—after all, both are poems. No, it is the ambition of the Malazan Book of Fallen coupled with its execution that dwarfs contemporaries past and present. Fueled in large part by the author’s original day job as an anthropologist, the world of The Crippled God and its nine predecessors is so intricately imagined and layered that it’s an embarrassment of fecundity. The cast and action span multiple continents, worlds, dimensions and, oh yeah, the entire timeline of life’s existence.

It may seem strange to spend so much time writing about the series as a whole instead of the book supposedly being reviewed, but let’s consider the obvious: Anyone who has read the first nine books of Erickson’s epic tale is in it for the long haul, and not even a Robert Jordan-like midstream meandering will stop them. Nonetheless, for those stalwarts, The Crippled God is a worthy capstone to the series, replete with all that which brought you here in the first place. After being separated by chapters, sections and sometimes even entire volumes, virtually all of the series’ most fascinating characters make at least a cursory appearance, and most receive ample, closure-worthy coverage. (Finally, a Malazan book without 50+ new important characters.) The battles, while not quite the “tour de holy cow!” experience of Coltaine’s March or the Siege of Capustan, still pack a punch.

Of course, The Crippled God is not without its flaws, but even those are rather established traits of the series. The first half of the book, especially, suffers from what I can only describe as “excess rumination”—a condition that has plagued Erickson’s series like acne plagues teenagers. But again, any reader who has made it this far will endure, and by the last third of The Crippled God, will likely be so engrossed in watching the myriad pieces fall into place, in watching long-maturing stratagems reveal themselves, that Erickson could throw in some pages from Twilight and no one would care.

As for those epic fantasy fans new to Erickson? It’s not like they would start with The Crippled God, anyway. (Malazan virgin, get thee to Gardens of the Moon!)

But for veteran and virgin alike, The Crippled God represents a moment in fiction that demands recognition—the successful conclusion of something audaciously begun. It’s one thing to start a work brimming with promise; it’s quite another to end it in a manner that delivers on that promise. (And in 12 years, no less—take that, George R.R. Martin!) The Malazan Book of the Fallen is Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. It’s Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy. It’s Mount Rushmore, freshly carved, and the Panama Canal, freshly dug. And as such, fantasy aficionados everywhere should take a moment and appreciate what has been accomplished, even if they don’t find Erickson’s epic to their taste.

After all, the Malazan Book of the Fallen has been an unprecedented seismic event in the history of epic fantasy. Its impact—and its aftershocks—will be felt in the genre for decades to come.

The release of Steven Erickson’s The Crippled God, the 10th and final book in Malazan Book of the Fallen series, marks the culmination of the single most ambitious, audacious and jaw-droppingly imagined work of epic fantasy since Bilbo Baggins found 13 dwarves outside his door.…

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Girl in Landscape review

Review by James Webb

Jonathan Lethem's newest novel, Girl in Landscape, has drawn comparisons to works as disparate as John Ford's The Searchers and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Though there's truth to this, the author of As She Climbed Across the Table has ventured into unchartered territory with this latest book.

I read the book in one night. Granted, I'm a pretty fast reader, but I don't read that fast unless I'm really enthralled, so I guess you could say I liked it. Girl in Landscape is an inventive twist on the pioneer theme, and its plot turns on the strengths and weaknesses of its characters yes, sort of like John Ford's The Searchers, although I found myself comparing it more to William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident. And while Pella Marsh, our heroine, undergoes a sexual awakening, Lolita never experienced such side effects. Then again, Lolita wasn't a science fiction novel (at least I don't think it was). Where Lethem really succeeds, and where the comparison to the classic western is valid, is the way in which pioneering of any sort whether it be in the old west or on a planet light years from Earth strips away the veneer of civilization and returns us to survival mode.

Survival is what Pella Marsh and her family have in mind when they emigrate from an environmentally devastated Earth to the Planet of the Archbuilders, but they end up trading one kind of despair for another. You don't need a history of the 21st century to figure out why Pella's family is leaving having to go to the beach covered in a transparent plastic cone tells you all you need to know. Pella's inept politician father hasn't got a clue what he's doing, but then, neither does anyone else on this world, long abandoned by a super-race of aliens and populated only by their seemingly dim-witted descendants. The only player in this little drama who has control of his environment is, naturally, the villain; Efram Nugent looms large in this book, much like Lee Marvin's Liberty Valence loomed large in another John Ford picture. Pella is both drawn to and repelled by him. And I'm not even going to mention the house-deer.

I really admire writers who do a lot with a little; that is to say, writers who construct their worlds with a minimum of prose, revealing just enough to drive the story, but leaving even more to the imagination.

Jonathan Lethem's newest novel, Girl in Landscape, has drawn comparisons to works as disparate as John Ford's The Searchers and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Though there's truth to this, the author of As She Climbed Across the Table has ventured into unchartered territory with this latest…

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Detective fiction meets sci fi in Wolfe’s latest

Review by Michael Burgin

Home Fires, the new book by Gene Wolfe, starts with a simple premise. A man awaits the imminent   return of his true love from a stint in the military. Will she still love him? But of course, it’s more complicated than that. The beloved in question, Mastergunner Chelle Sea Blue, has been deployed in a far-off star system battling against an alien race called the Os. Thanks to the math of faster-than-light travel, a little more than two years will have passed for Chelle when she returns. For protagonist Skip Grison, the man awaiting her return, it’s been more than 20. Despite the decades, Skip’s love is undiminished, but will Chelle still be interested in a late-40s model of Skip? And what exactly is the perfect gift for a returning war hero? A cruise is a good start. Perhaps a reanimated version of her deceased mom?

Though the presence of interstellar travel, alien foes and reincarnation-capable brain scanning technology—among other things—clearly mark Home Fires as science fiction, Wolfe’s latest novel is more akin to classic detective fiction in pace and presentation. After the initial setup and the return of Chelle, Skip Grison finds himself trying to answer an expanding cascade of questions regarding Chelle, her “mother” and a multiplying cast of characters, all the while also trying to survive hostile hijackers, double agents and a woman scorned. Add whole swatches of back-and-forth dialogue largely uninterrupted by narrative exposition, and the feel of Home Fires is more Hammet than Bova.

Though by no means unprecedented, combining the two genres brings with it additional challenges. On one hand, in speculative fiction, the author must anticipate the reader’s need to get his or her bearings. How are things different? The same? What are the rules? Answer these questions too quickly or too completely, and you risk leaving the reader bored. Too slowly, and you may leave the reader disoriented or impatient. In either case, the book risks going unread. Add to this balancing act the demands placed on the reader from within the story by the mystery genre—like Skip Grison, the reader must try to figure out exactly what’s going on—and that fine line one must walk in speculative fiction is made finer, still.

But this is Gene Wolfe, an acclaimed master of speculative fiction. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before—and done well. As a result, pages turn, chapters fly by, and though the ending of Home Fires leaves plenty of unanswered questions—itself a hallmark of Wolfe’s fiction—most readers will only put this book down after it’s been finished. Or reread.

Home Fires, the new book by Gene Wolfe, starts with a simple premise. A man awaits the imminent   return of his true love from a stint in the military. Will she still love him? But of course, it’s more complicated than that. The beloved in…

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Space opera stories

Review by Michael Burgin

The past two decades have been a prolific period for fantasy and science fiction author David Weber. From 1991 and 2010, between his own works and collaborations with authors such as Erik Flint, John Ringo and Linda Evans, Weber has published more than 35 books. Weber admits that everything he writes tends to “spawn sequels”—there are few single works in Weber’s bibliography. But Weber’s most successful series by far—beginning with 1992’s On Basilisk Station and continuing through 2010’s Mission of Honor—has yielded 12 books as it follows the exploits of female space navy officer, Honor Harrington.

Harrington battles enemy fleets, inimical political machinations and the schemes of genetic slavers in a space operatic milieu that loosely transposes the naval conflicts and political tensions between Great Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars to the far future. (Think a female Horatio Hornblower in space.)

The series has certainly resonated with readers, as several of its entries, including 2000’s Ashes of Victory and 2002’s War of Honor, have reached as high as #12 and #8 on the New York Times bestseller list, respectively.

It turns out that even Weber’s shared-world anthologies spawn sequels—February’s In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor #5 features three new stories based in the “Honorverse.” In addition to Jane Lindskold’s “Ruthless” and Timothy Zahn’s “An Act of War,” Weber himself has contributed “Let’s Dance!” a new Honor Harrington tale.

Though Lindskold, Zahn and Weber’s stories are self-contained enough to keep the interest of a reader unfamiliar with the Honorverse, In Fire Forged is ultimately aimed at an existing fan base. (A fourth and final entry in the anthology, Andy Presby’s “An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design,” which is less a story than a faux scientific treatise, will appeal only to the most dedicated Honorverse technophiles.)

In Fire Forged should help tide over fans of Honor Harrington until the next novel, A Rising Thunder, arrives sometime in 2012.

The past two decades have been a prolific period for fantasy and science fiction author David Weber. From 1991 and 2010, between his own works and collaborations with authors such as Erik Flint, John Ringo and Linda Evans, Weber has published more than 35 books.…

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