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All Science Fiction & Fantasy Coverage

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Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

A Longer Fall

Review by Noah Fram

Fresh from an unexpectedly complicated job in Mexico, Lizbeth Rose is shepherding a mysterious crate from her native Texoma to the nation of Dixie when her train derails and her cargo is stolen. As the only member of her crew left alive and in fighting condition, she attempts to infiltrate the small town of Sally, with the unexpected aid of some old friends from Mexico. Lizbeth must now find her missing cargo, outwit a mysterious order of white supremacists and seek vengeance for the deaths of her crew members. And she must do so in Dixie, accompanied by a Russian wizard pretending to be her husband, and without her precious guns.

A Longer Fall, Charlaine Harris’ sequel to An Easy Death, is just as gritty as its predecessor. Harris’ prose is blunt and uncomplicated, matching Lizbeth’s general sensibility, and lending the novel a welcome readability. This straightforward style meshes well with the first-person narration, implying that the protagonist is relating events in her own words as she remembers them. Each character is filtered through Lizbeth’s biases, resulting in a refreshingly direct story, albeit one in which everyone uses roughly the same cadence and vocabulary and some of the plot twists are foreshadowed into predictability.

The most remarkable aspect of A Longer Fall, though, is the fluency of Harris’ alternate history. Her fractured United States features references to Alexei Romanov’s hemophilia, Russian and Coptic Orthodox theology and the racial dynamics of the Reconstruction-era American South, to name a few. While Texoma communities tend to write their own rules, both Dixie (the former South) and the Holy Russian Empire (California) operate under established hierarchies. In Dixie, these structures are founded on gender and race, while the Holy Russian Empire’s society revolves around religion, genealogy and magical ability. Lizbeth encounters these systems as an outsider both to these specific cultures and to the idea of a firmly hierarchical social structure in general, and her difficulties making sense of them form the central obstacles in both An Easy Death and A Longer Fall. Well, except for the people who keep trying to kill her, of course.

A Longer Fall, Charlaine Harris’s sequel to An Easy Death, is just as gritty as its predecessor.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Lady Hotspur

Review by Laura Hubbard

I’ve always thought that Shakespeare’s histories (especially the Henrys) were a bit dull. Sure, they were epic, sweeping tales of kingdoms won and lost, wars fought with sweat and tears and political machinations. But they seemed like one big speech after another with all the really cool stuff (the battles) happening offstage. I never got over the feeling that there was another, more interesting story waiting to be told. Tessa Gratton’s latest novel, a gender-bent retelling of Henry IV, is the story I always wanted. It doesn’t just fill in the exciting missing details or rehash a story already well-known. Lady Hotspur breathes fresh life into its subject matter and creates a tale both familiar and wholly new. 

The novel opens at the end of a bloody rebellion that has thrust three young women into the spotlight. The first, Hal, had never planned on being a prince. A member of Aremore’s lady knights, Hal is more at home telling fantastical stories and leading drunken quests than she is playing politics. But when the coup leads to her mother taking the throne, Hal is forced to choose between playing a fool and playing a prince. The second, Lady Hotspur, also has no love of politics. Most comfortable with a sword in hand or on the battlefield, the end of the rebellion sees the Wolf of Aremoria in a place she never expected: falling in love with Prince Hal. The third is Banna Mora, the heir to the now-deposed king. Disgusted by the idea of the intemperate Hal ruling Aremoria, Banna Mora flees to Innis Lear to rebuild her strength and fight to reclaim the throne is rightfully hers, setting off a slow-burning rebellion that will force Hotspur to choose between love for family and love for Hal. Together, the three women hold not just their own fate, but the fate of Aremoria between them as well.

Although set in the same world as Gratton’s previous Shakespearean adaptation, readers don’t need to have read The Queens of Innis Lear in order to enjoy Lady Hotspur. While the book does reference the lives of Elia the Dreamer and her siblings, Lady Hotspur stands on its own. Readers also don’t need to be familiar with the novel’s source material. While the novel does largely follow the events of Henry IV, there will be no great insight gleaned from remembering the intricacies of each Shakespearean scene. What readers do need is patience. At nearly 600 pages, Lady Hotspur is a long and sometimes dense book full of beautiful prose and a labyrinthine plot. But readers who are willing to let the story slowly unravel will be magnificently rewarded by an enchanting, worthy read for lovers of Shakespeare and fantasy alike.

Lady Hotspur, a gender-bent retelling of Henry IV, breathes fresh life into its subject matter and creates a story both familiar and wholly new.

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionScience Fiction

A Beginning at the End

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

For Moira, it starts at a concert. Her concert, actually; she’s a beloved pop star, known as MoJo, and she’s on stage at Madison Square Garden when news of a flu-like outbreak called multi-generational syndrome (MGS) sends her fans into a panic. Moira follows the crowd into the streets of New York City and recognizes her chance. The world may be ending, but this is her shot at freedom from her overbearing father.

Rob and Sunny find themselves in quarantine after Rob’s wife, Elena, is fatally injured during a riot. Rob can’t bring himself to tell Sunny her mother has died, and he spends each subsequent day wrestling with the resulting lies. Krista is watching over her dying boyfriend—a victim of the MGS pandemic—when opportunity literally knocks on her door. She chooses life and joins a group fleeing to save themselves.

These four survivors come together in San Francisco, an unlikely group fused by Moira’s pending nuptials, Krista’s role as an event planner and Rob’s desperation to keep his daughter at his side.

A Beginning at the End, the second imaginative novel by technical- and sportswriter-turned-novelist Mike Chen (Here and Now and Then), examines the hysteria of a world where some adopt an “every individual for him- or herself” attitude. Relationships fall apart as most of the world’s remaining population wrestles with a PTSD-like condition.

Even against a science fiction backdrop, humanity is the center of Chen’s post-apocalyptic tale. Krista banks on her clients’ desire to find some joy in the midst of a bleak world. But the real hope comes from the characters’ desires to hide their pasts—and then their willingness to reveal their true selves to one another as they seek something worth living for.

“I’m out here because I love people, and that’s the American Dream today. We mourn, we rebuild, we respect the things we have,” explains one of the men who helped Moira flee her pop-star past, effectively summarizing the crew’s ongoing hope.

Chen’s fast-paced tale is an optimistic look at how our humanity can bring out the best in us, even in the darkest times.

Mike Chen’s fast-paced tale is an optimistic look at how our humanity can bring out the best in us, even in the darkest times.
Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

The Vanished Birds

Review by Matthew Jackson

The best science fiction stories create a bridge between ambitious, precisely calculated genre concepts and the deep, emotional truths that unite us all. Keeping the balance between intricate sci-fi backdrops and delicate matters of the heart is a high-wire act that only succeeds with tremendous care, passion and narrative grace. In his debut novel, The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez has announced himself as a graceful, spellbinding storyteller with the gifts to pull it off.

The Vanished Birds charts, in its carefully selective way, centuries of human history and advancement, ultimately catapulting us into a future carved out of glittering corporate-run space stations and far-flung starships that zip through folds in spacetime. It’s into this future, where time is as much of a commodity as any physical good, that Jimenez drops Nia Imani, a woman whose job as captain of a time-folding ship means she’s constantly losing time. Months of travel for her mean years lost on either side of the journey, and this constant sense of detachment has left her unmoored. Then she meets a mysterious boy who fell from the sky onto a distant planet, a boy with a gift for music who could also be destined for much more. Together, they find a bond neither dreamed possible, but powerful forces also want the boy, and a struggle lies ahead.

Though Jimenez’s prose feels right at home in a universe of interstellar travel and space station settlements, The Vanished Birds soars highest when the author is navigating the complex emotional avenues through which much of this deeply human story unfolds. The book never fails to deliver the science fiction goods, and fans of high-concept leaps will be satisfied, but the book’s emotional core is what makes it fly.

The Vanished Birds strikes a breathless balance between the conceptually dazzling and the emotionally resonant, and it’s in that balance that a bright new voice in genre fiction is born.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Simon Jimenez discusses how our contemporary fear of lost time inspired The Vanished Birds.

The best science fiction stories create a bridge between ambitious, precisely calculated genre concepts and the deep, emotional truths that unite us all. Charting the balance between intricate sci-fi backdrops and delicate matters of the heart is a complex high-wire act that only succeeds with tremendous care, passion and narrative grace. In his debut novel, The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez has announced himself as a graceful, spellbinding storyteller with the gifts to pull it off.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Anyone

Review by Chris Pickens

It seems every new generation gets to witness at least one incredible technological advancement. Something as transformative as the internet or as wondrous as the telephone often redefines life as we know it forever. In Anyone, comics writer-turned-sci-fi scribe Charles Soule builds a world around a similarly staggering invention, but it’s his interest in the people who create it, use it and profit from it that captivates the reader. If you could transfer consciousness to another body, would you be ready for the consequences?

Gabrielle White, a brilliant and determined researcher, is at the end of her rope. Out of funding and losing confidence, she has one last chance to prove that her work to cure Alzheimer’s disease hasn’t gone to waste. When she flips the switch on the laser array in her backyard laboratory, something miraculous happens. For an hour or so, she transfers her consciousness into her husband Paul’s body and back again. Knowing that her financial backers would kill for this technology, Gabby must find a way to keep it a secret while she figures out how to reveal it to the world and ensure that it’s hers.

Twenty-five years later, the introduction of “flashing” has changed the course of world history. Annami is a secretive loner with a chip on her shoulder. By day, she’s a brilliant engineer at Anyone, the company that oversees consciousness transfer worldwide. By night, she moonlights as a dark share, lending her body as a vessel for criminals to take over for a fee. When a dark share deal goes bad and she loses everything, she takes matters into her own hands to fight the evil that flashing has brought to the world.

It is impossible to write about Anyone without first acknowledging the depth of thought and structure Soule has put into flash technology and its potential impact on the world. In chapters written from Annami’s point of view, small details reveal how consciousness transfer affects international relations, sex workers, criminal operations, military aid and more. However, flashing takes a personal toll on everyone in the story. Annami and the characters she interacts with are all direct victims of Gabby’s invention, and Soule’s Blade Runner-inspired cityscape is full of fascinating, often broken people searching for answers.

This gritty future is especially interesting when compared to Gabby’s chapters, which juxtapose perfectly against Annami’s. While Gabby by no means has an easy time of it (some of the troubles she runs into during flash technology’s infancy are gut-wrenching), the promise of a new future that will be better for millions contrasts beautifully with the actual future, where we see that even the purest intentions can be warped into pain and suffering.

In today’s world, we are given glimpses of possible futures impacted by vast technological advancements. But we don’t often consider the costs that might come with those futures. If we really could be anyone, would we want to?

In Anyone, comic writer-turned-sci-fi scribe Charles Soule builds a world around a staggering invention. But it’s his interest in the people who create it, use it and profit from it that captivates the reader.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

Revolution

Review by Noah Fram

Karen O’Neil has already saved the world once. So when an old friend sends her a mysterious package from Havana at the start of W. L. Goodwater’s Revolution, she is reluctant to get involved in yet another magical mystery. But this time, a little girl has gone missing, and the arcane is unmistakably involved. And in her capacity as head researcher on theoretical magic for the Office of Magical Research and Deployment, she has a vested interest in new magical technologies unknown to the United States government. What she finds is a cauldron of incipient revolution, corrupt men with impossible dreams and few trustworthy colleagues, if any. And in the process, she may just have to save the world for a second time.

It would be easy, perhaps, to draw an analogy between Goodwater’s magically infused Cold War and other arcanely altered histories. Historical fiction with a dash of magicians is increasingly common, as evidenced by books authored by such luminaries as Susanna Clarke, China Mieville and Guy Gavriel Kay. Revolution falls squarely in this domain, but unlike the work of those writers, it is defined almost wholly by its taut, compelling plot, rather than by stylistic elements like Clarke’s flowery, Austenesque prose. Goodwater’s writing is direct and efficient, ideally suited to the thrillers he crafts, and adroitly gets out of its own way to allow the story itself to shine through.

Karen O’Neil’s travails in Cuba are great fun (for the reader, emphatically not for Ms. O’Neil), bringing to mind an Indiana Jones adventure with a little more moral ambiguity, a lot more incantations and much stronger female characters. Without exception, the women are smart, capable and independent, while the men tend towards greedy, corrupt or inept, which is a more than welcome change from the genre’s status quo. There are conspiracies, secret societies, guerrilla rebels, mob bosses, nefarious businessmen, Soviet spies, magic artifacts and disembodied voices galore. Goodwater’s ventures into Spanish names (a witch predictably named La Bruja) and dialogue (consisting mostly of single words or simple phrases before veering back into English) leave some verisimilitude behind, but this is a quibble, and does not distract from the book’s overall narrative drive. The cliffhanger ending ensures there will be further chapters in Karen O’Neil’s reluctant quest to save the world from its own worst impulses.

Karen O’Neil has already saved the world once. So when an old friend sends her a mysterious package from Havana at the start of W. L. Goodwater’s Revolution, she is reluctant to get involved in yet another magical mystery.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Queen of the Conquered

Review by Stephanie Cohen-Perez

When Sigourney Rose grows up, she wants to be Queen—not because it is her life’s dream, but because she feels she must take over the islands of Hans Lollik in order to avenge her family’s brutal murders. Born into a society where the indigenous islanders are repressed and suppressed by their colonizers, the Fjerns, Sigourney walks a strange line between the two groups being pitted against each other. She is a kongelig, a member of island royalty, but she is the only one descended from the indigenous islanders. When the childless king, Konge Valdemar, announces that he is seeking a successor to the throne, and Sigourney receives an unexpected invitation to spend the storm season on the royal island of Hans Lollik Helle, she believes it is her fate to participate in the kongelig meetings and convince Konge Valdemar that she is worthy of the throne.

But Sigourney has several strikes against her, the most blatant being the color of her skin and her birth parents. She’s been using an alias, Elskerinde Lunde, her entire adult life to hide the fact that she is the sole survivor of the bloodbath that was her parents’ last night on Hans Lollik—a political murder and hate crime that the other kongelig plotted. She also possesses kraft, psychic powers that the kongelig believe should be only in the hands of the elite themselves, or, in rare cases, sacred slaves they have absolute control over. Any other islander found with kraft is decreed to be killed. The kongelig, including Sigourney due to her role as Elskerinde, take on this duty willingly. Sigourney desires the crown more than anything, but even she isn’t sure who or what she is doing it for—her slaves resent her, the kongelig are disgusted by her and she doesn’t quite belong anywhere or with anyone. When it becomes clear that something is very off about the puppet-like Konge Valdemar, Sigourney must face the truth that everything about her existence has been a lie, and come to terms with what the right and just course of action will be going forward.

Sigourney constantly questions where her loyalties lie, all the while trying to manage her kraft, which allows her to manipulate others’ emotions but often results in transfer of those emotions to her own mind. Callender’s other characters are equally multilayered and full of complexity: A strange newcomer to the Jannik villa during storm season, Løren, possesses both kraft and family secrets that deeply unsettle Sigourney, as well as the other kongelig. The storm season is known to be a period of untimely death, and when the kongelig in line for the throne begin to drop like flies in grisly killings, Sigourney must decide to stay and choose to save the islanders and kongelig from the abnormally evil power that has risen this season, or flee Hans Lollik with her life before it’s too late.

In Queen of the Conquered, Callender deftly handles the subjects of rank and racism, cruelty and privilege, while also providing an exciting whodunit in the fashion of Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None or the more recent Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Readers will experience the same surprising waves of emotions that Sigourney is forced to endure from her foes, victims and potential allies as she navigates the islands that now seem so wrong to her, whose seeming paradise is actually a thinly veiled hell. Callender weaves an unforgettable fantasy plot that reads as fluidly as historical fiction, replete with a vivid, unique setting reminiscent of the Caribbean. Despite the genocide, racism and misogyny that Sigourney has witnessed and ultimately participated in, she faces the conquerors of her people with fortitude and pride in the face of indubitable hatred, and more determination than ever to make them pay for what they did.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Kacen Callender about Queen of the Conquered.

When Sigourney Rose grows up, she wants to be Queen—not because it is her life’s dream, but because she feels she must take over the islands of Hans Lollik in order to avenge her family’s brutal murders.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Fortuna

Review by Chris Pickens

Family life can be tough. Sibling rivalries, parental scrutiny and personal boundaries can sometimes make it hard to remember that you love one another. It’s even more difficult when your mother is an intergalactic smuggler with a frigid demeanor, your brother is enlisted in a far-away war, your younger siblings love nothing more than a good gunfight, and you’re an alcoholic. Yep, Kristyn Merbeth puts a lot of pressure on Scorpia Kaiser and her family. But with a few huge risks, some real bravery and quite a bit of cursing, things might turn out okay for the crew of the Fortuna.

Long after humans left Earth, they settled across a small group of hospitable planets in a far-off sector of space. Each one of these planets developed differently and, despite an alliance, isolated themselves from one another. The only way to gain access to each planet is to be born there. Momma Kaiser, an enterprising individual, adopted a child from each planet so that she could smuggle freely across the galaxy. It’s about as rag-tag a group as you can imagine, but they work together to make a life running contraband. When the family finds itself in the middle of an intergalactic massacre because of cargo they delivered, the two eldest Kaisers, Scorpia and Corvus, must put aside years of differences to figure out how to keep the family safe from a universe certain to track them down.

Fortuna spends time in the separate POVs of Scorpia and Corvus, a storytelling choice that superbly elevates the narrative. Brother and sister have completely different voices, so it’s easy to appreciate how different they are. Scorpia’s casual, devil-may-care style contrasts beautifully with Corvus’ rigidity, economy and self-loathing. The reader finds real sympathy for each of them, which blurs the line between who is right and who is wrong. Merbeth shows herself to be adept with dialogue and character building with all of the Kaisers, and some of the funniest and most powerful moments happen when the family is trading jabs or bickering. It gives the whole story a warm, lived-in feeling. But this book is also full of action, and the pace shifts very naturally between intimate conversations and breakneck space adventure.

Though I found myself loving the different origin accounts of Scorpia and Corvus, I wanted them to collide sooner in the narrative. When their paths do converge, the main conflict really starts cranking. Perhaps that’s the best compliment that could be paid here: No matter what’s happening outside the hull of Fortuna, family is always strongest when everyone is together.

Family life can be tough. It’s even more difficult when your mother is an intergalactic smuggler with a frigid demeanor.

YA FictionYAFantasy

The Guinevere Deception

Review by Annie Metcalf

In the first book of a new series from Kiersten White (And I Darken), Guinevere arrives at Camelot to wed King Arthur, just as she does in the Arthurian stories of old. But this Guinevere is not a princess. She is an imposter, sent by a banished Merlin to protect Arthur from magical threats. Although she can recall Merlin training her in simple magic, Guinevere cannot remember any further back, and her true name is lost to her. Nevertheless, she busies herself warding the castle from attacks, which could come from those who resent Arthur’s ban on magic or from those who still follow the Dark Queen, who was defeated by Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, years ago.

As she learns more about Camelot and forges true friendships with some of its residents, Guinevere begins to feel a sense of community, despite her troubling memory lapses and her uncovering of disturbing new information about Merlin. A hunch about a mysterious masked warrior, a strange connection with Arthur’s nephew Mordred and a gradual exploration of the extent of her powers all lead Guinevere down the path to forming an identity of her own choosing, untethered from whatever her past life may have held.

The Guinevere Deception weaves together all the familiar characters of legend and lore—Arthur and his Knights, Merlin, Guinevere, Mordred and more—but adds a dash of unexpected revision that keeps the tale fresh. Its magic and intrigue are perfect for readers who revel in this realm of myth and fantasy. White seamlessly introduces nuanced and compelling female characters into the world of Camelot, while also maintaining the wondrous spirit of the original Arthurian legends, making The Guinevere Deception a truly enchanting read.

In the first book of a new series from Kiersten White (And I Darken), Guinevere arrives at Camelot to wed King Arthur, just as she does in the Arthurian stories of old. But this Guinevere is not a princess. She is an imposter, sent by…

Science Fiction & FantasyFiction

The Starless Sea

Review by Alice Cary

As graduate student Zachary Ezra Rawlins contemplates which book to choose in his university library, he muses that reading a novel “is like playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at that particular game.” That’s certainly the case when the author in question is Erin Morgenstern, who mesmerized readers with her breakout debut, The Night Circus, and now returns with her highly anticipated second novel, The Starless Sea, a grand fantasy about books, the power of literature and storytelling.

The mysterious book Zachary ends up choosing features him as a character and leads him on an epic quest, first to the Algonquin Hotel Annual Literary Masquerade in New York City and ultimately through a secret doorway to a subterranean realm where he finds pirates, an Owl King, fairy tales, a story sculptor and “an underground trove of books and stories beneath their feet.” Think Harry Potter for book lovers and grown-ups. (Zachary’s favorite drink is a sidecar, and he falls in love during his adventures.) There are literary references galore, as well as an undertone of video games. “Is that Zelda for Princess or Fitzgerald?” Zachary asks at one point. The response he receives: “Little bit of both.” 

Paralleling Susan Orlean’s The Library Book, a nonfiction ode to books, libraries and librarians, The Starless Sea is a fictional journey dedicated to stories and storytelling. Both are lively, inventive titles chock-full of book-centric quotes.

This hefty novel requires imaginary leaps and careful attention to stories and characters that wind their way in many different directions, but Morgenstern—now proving not once, but twice, what an adept literary juggler she is—manages to weave a multitude of strands together into one mighty, magical tale.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our interview with Erin Morgenstern for The Starless Sea.

Erin Morgenstern—proving once again what an adept literary juggler she is—weaves a multitude of stories together into one mighty, magical tale.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Throne of the Five Winds

Review by Ralph Harris

In S. C. Emmett’s entry to a new fantasy epic, The Throne of the Five Winds, a lady-in-waiting to the princess of a vanquished land plays a dangerous game of political intrigue.

When the Empire of Zhaon conquers Khir, Princess Mahara is betrothed to the crown prince of Zhaon. Yala, a lady-in-waiting must leave her home alongside Mahara and journey to the center of the rival country, where all six of the aging ruler’s sons are ruthlessly plotting to claim the throne. Emmett’s book requires incredible attention to every word on the page as both Yala and the reader are thrust into a foreign political battle of assassins, careful messages and strategically offered cups of tea. Conversations between characters stretch across pages; each interaction is spiked with schmoozing, scheming and scowling. Emmett even lingers over his characters’ accents—rather than forgetting them or breezing over them, Emmett describes their differences in syllabic detail. In The Throne of the Five Winds, characters’ reactions and facial tells are artfully crafted, conveying each aspect of social interaction with incredible detail and precision.

The political plot moves slowly, but peeling each layer of conversational detail will keep readers consistently interested. The sheer number of players on the board (two queens, six princes, a Khir princess, our main character Yala, a warlord-king, his primary attendant and a seemingly infinite number of political secondaries) results in a near-endless web of relationships. Each primary character has two or three relevant titles and politically important traits that influence the style of their interactions. (This meant I had a ridiculous amount of sticky notes exploding from my book, like a colorful papier-mâché hedgehog). The grand prize of becoming Emperor is a relatively simple goal, which at least made sorting through motivations a bit easier.

There is a serious learning curve through the first 100 pages (you really should see how many sticky notes I used), but the Zhaon empire and the kingdom of Khir are well worth exploring, despite the time investment required. The world is constructed well: Color is added to the world for context, never dumped on readers like an unfriendly reminder of history class from high school. Inserting colloquial names for plants, creatures and roles is a favorite trope of mine, and Emmett employs it liberally, if a mite too much (for example, a “dragonwing” is just a big dragonfly). The world feels real and expansive, complete with implied trade relations, a rich diversity of culture and five languages.

The Throne of the Five Winds will appeal to patient readers; the quick-witted banter of modern superhero movies is nowhere to be found within its pages. Instead of fencing with quick verbal stabs and sardonic ripostes, Yala and crew are brutally sharp social gunfighters, holding their draws, each of their statements spoken with lethal concision. Those without such patience are almost always vulnerable and open to attack from more skilled fighters. Moving through Emmett’s socio-political fantasy drama is quite an undertaking, but definitely one worth attempting.

In S. C. Emmett’s entry to a new fantasy epic, The Throne of the Five Winds, a lady-in-waiting to the princess of a vanquished land plays a dangerous game of political intrigue.

When the Empire of Zhaon conquers Khir, Princess Mahara is betrothed to the crown prince…

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Aurora Blazing

Review by Amanda Diehl

Jessie Mihalik returns to her science fiction romance series with Aurora Blazing, as a noblewoman with secrets plays cat-and-mouse with her family’s security advisor.

Bianca von Hasenberg is a woman with a lot to hide. Widowed under mysterious circumstances, Bianca fully leans into “mourning” her late husband, which grants her freedom from the strict Consortium courtly etiquette. Though she plays up the air-headed, materialistic royal role, Bianca has been cultivating a network of spies and complex digital connections for collecting intel. But her biggest secret is that she was her scientist husband’s guinea pig, and now has a modified mind and body that intercept communication signals from nearly everyone.

Security Director Ian Bishop is a no-nonsense man who is loyal to von Hasenberg family, though Bianca’s habit of sticking her nose into things where it doesn’t belong is often his biggest source of frustration. When Ferdinand, Bianca’s older brother, is kidnapped and Bianca is framed as a traitor, Ian is tasked with keeping her locked away. When she escapes, Ian chases Bianca across the galaxy as she searches for answers and Ian does his best to keep her out of harm’s way.

Sci-fi romance is a relatively small subgenre and Mihalik’s imaginative series about the bonds of family amid scheming power plays feels like a refreshing sip of water after a long drought. The romance is tense, as Bianca and Ian both prefer to ignore whatever feelings they share. And with an intergalactic conspiracy as a backdrop, there is no shortage of action to rival the sizzling banter between the main couple.

Bianca is an impressively strong heroine, given what she’s overcome both in childhood and marriage. The survivor she’s built herself to be is, well, totally badass. She doesn’t need a blaster or superb fighting skills to get out of a tough situation. Instead, Bianca relies on her many connections and useful knowledge to gain the upper hand. And for romance readers who prefer the strong, silent type, Ian Bishop ticks all of the boxes. His sense of honor and duty is everything to him, but when pesky things like love get in the way, Ian must finally address how far he’ll go for his employer and his mission. Aurora Blazing is a standout, memorable book that oozes crossover appeal.

Prefer action and adventure? One spaceship heist coming up! Find court intrigue and politics to be irresistible? Two ruling houses are at war, with a third desperately trying to remain neutral. Sucker for a happy ending? Well, it’s a romance, so there’s definitely that. Mihalik fills the void for every Star Wars fan who wished the franchise had more kissing.

A noblewoman with secrets plays cat-and-mouse with her family’s security advisor in the latest from Jessie Mihalik.
Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Bone Ships

Review by Laura Hubbard

As a preteen, I wanted to love movies like Pirates of the Caribbean. I loved tall tales of swashbuckling pirates and daring adventures on the high seas, but the movies didn’t live up to what I thought a sea adventure should or could be. Maybe it was the language, or maybe it was how painfully un-magical the movies were. Whatever the case, they just never clicked. But The Bone Ships, the first book in R.J. Barker’s Tide Child trilogy, is everything I wished those movies of the sea had been and much, much more. Simultaneously gritty and full of a sense of wonder, The Bone Ships is the perfect adventure for anyone who’s ever had dreams of the sea—or of dragons.

The endless war between the Hundred Isles and the Gaunt Islands was built on the bones of dragons. When those dragons disappeared, the island nations recycled what they could, each generation using the scavenged parts of the dragon-bone ships of the warriors who came before. The war went on, each generation’s ships smaller than the last. As their ships weakened and rotted, the war diminished to raids meant to steal ships and children. But the uneasy equilibrium will soon end: The first dragon in hundreds of years has been sighted. Lucky Meas and her ragtag crew of the condemned are determined to find it first and change the course of the war, but they aren’t the only ones desperate to find and claim the creature as their own.

One of the most interesting things about The Bone Ships is our perspective into its world. Joron Twiner, our point of view character, is no hero. He is cowardly and prideful. He’s incompetent and haunted by his past. It is clear even from the very first pages of The Bone Ships that if we are to have a traditional hero, it will be the woman who has taken Joron’s ship, Gilbryn “Lucky” Meas. Meas’ knack for driving her crew to success against all odds might feel cheap if she were our window into this world, as her ability to lead others is almost otherworldly. But because we see Meas through Joron’s eyes, we are only seeing Meas as her crew sees her: a great captain who causes remarkable changes in others, including Joron himself.

The world we see through Joron’s eyes is alien, from the little details (ships are referred to as “he” rather than “she”) to the big ones (normalized infant blood sacrifice). But as strange as these details sometimes are, there’s something about Barker’s style that makes them seem utterly natural. In many ways The Bone Ships reads not as a fantasy, but almost like a recent historical fiction, lending it an air of verisimilitude that many fantasy books lack. The narrator assumes that readers know the Hundred Isles as well as its characters do. That assumption can sometimes be confusing—the traditions, superstitions and even the language of the denizens of the Tide Child are as numerous as they are complicated—but this approach is also necessary. While a Tolkienesque explanation of the history of everything might have simplified the book, it would have been for the worse rather than for the better.

Appealing to the adventurer in all of us, The Bone Ships is an excellent book for any reader in search of a fantastical journey.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with R.J. Barker about The Bone Ships.

Simultaneously gritty and full of a sense of wonder, The Bone Ships is the perfect adventure for anyone who’s ever had dreams of the sea—or of dragons.

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