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All Science Fiction & Fantasy Coverage

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YA FictionYAScience Fiction

Is Earth worth saving?

Review by Jill Ratzan

If you could press a button to stop the upcoming destruction of the world, would you? Henry’s been abducted by aliens and offered this choice, and he has 144 days to decide. On one hand, the world as Henry sees it doesn’t particularly seem worth saving. He’s haunted by his boyfriend Jesse’s suicide and estranged from their mutual friend Audrey. A purely physical relationship with the class bully ultimately leaves him hollow. And at home, his mother has put her dreams on hold, his father hasn’t been in touch in years, his grandmother is slowly losing her mind to Alzheimer’s and his older brother’s girlfriend is pregnant. But then Henry meets Diego, a teen with secrets of his own. With Diego’s perspective and those of his teachers, family and friends, Henry starts to wonder if maybe he should press that button and save the world after all.

At first, We Are the Ants seems to be magical realism with a slightly silly premise and a theme of resilience in the face of tragedy. And it might be that, or it might be a meditation on the power of storytelling. Or an experiment in a blended style of realistic and fantastical fiction. Or all of these combined. Either way, it promises to be one of the most talked-about YA books of 2016.

 

Jill Ratzan matches readers with books in a small library in southeastern Pennsylvania.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you could press a button to stop the upcoming destruction of the world, would you? Henry’s been abducted by aliens and offered this choice, and he has 144 days to decide.
YA FictionYAHistorical FictionFantasy

Uncovering Regency London’s dark secrets

Review by Sarah Welch

At 18 years old, Lady Helen Wrexhall is poised and polished, if a bit too spirited. She’s ready to overcome her late mother’s traitorous legacy and make her debut presentation in the court of King George III. That is, until sinister Lord Carlston appears and introduces Helen to the darker side of Regency London and the demons that lurk in the shadows. Lady Helen discovers that she’s more like her mother than she’s ever known, and she must choose between the society life she’s been preparing for and another, more dangerous role she was born into.

By the bestselling author of the duology Eon and Eona, Alison Goodman’s The Dark Days Club kicks off a beautifully wrought new series whose lush setting, fiery heroine and gripping adventure are reminiscent of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy. Goodman’s writing brings Regency London to life in a tangible way, immersing readers in rich details of the fashion, manners and social politics of the day. And though Lady Helen is a natural fit for this world, she’s a fully three-dimensional heroine. Her relationships with family and friends and her joys and frustrations with her place in 1812 society will feel immediate to readers in 2016. The fantastical element of Lady Helen’s story is just as vivid, with high stakes and a truly frightening darkness that will surely become more intense as the series progresses.

The Dark Days Club is a must-read for fantasy fans and Regency fans alike and an exciting start to a series that will have followers clamoring for more.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At 18 years old, Lady Helen Wrexhall is poised and polished, if a bit too spirited. She’s ready to overcome her late mother’s traitorous legacy and make her debut presentation in the court of King George III. That is, until sinister Lord Carlston appears and introduces Helen to the darker side of Regency London and the demons that lurk in the shadows.
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionFantasy

All the Birds in the Sky

Review by Haley Herfurth

Outcasts alienated by their peers, Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead found each other in junior high, forming a tenuous friendship. Patricia was a budding witch and Laurence was a tech whiz, successfully developing a two-second time machine and a potentially sentient computer. But after a painful parting of ways, the two assumed they would never see each other again.

Reunited unexpectedly as adults living in San Francisco, the pair discover they both now use their talents for the same cause: working to save the planet, each in their own way. Patricia attended a hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted and now works with a group of magicians to secretly fix the world’s problems, while Laurence is an engineering genius who works with a group trying to avert global catastrophe by technological intervention. Despite their separate paths, Patricia and Laurence keep being pushed together. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them is determined to force them to work together to save the world.

Author Charlie Jane Anders, editor-in-chief of io9.com, seamlessly melds science fiction and fantasy in All the Birds in the Sky. Anders’ debut novel, Choir Boy, won the 2006 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Edmund White Award. In All the Birds in the Sky, Anders adeptly twines magic, surrealism, technological innovation and machinery into a quirky story that, at its base, is about searching for common ground in a world of differences.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Saving the world with science (and some magic) in All the Birds in the Sky.
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionScience Fiction

A new lease on life

Review by Arlene McKanic

It’s best to get the main conceit of Jessica Chiarella’s debut novel, And Again, out of the way: four people with terminal conditions win a lottery that entitles them to participate in what’s called the SUB program. This is a program where their bodies are cloned and when they reach the biological age of the participants—which happens after a few months—their memories are transplanted wholesale into the new bodies. Think of Jake in Avatar getting his consciousness uploaded into his Na'vi body, except for these people, the body is wholly theirs, made from their own cells. Yet, the new body, bereft of the dings, dents and scars that even healthy people accumulate, is not quite theirs at all. 

The transplants—Connie, Linda, Hannah and David—wake up to a world where sounds, smells, tastes and colors are almost unbearably intense, for their senses are as acute as those of young children. They have to be taught to coordinate their arms and legs, to walk, to write again. For some, the reprieve from mortality makes them humble; for others, it makes them cruel and reckless. The loved ones who expected them to die are as confounded as if they had indeed come back, whole and impossibly healthy, from the dead.

Chiarella doesn’t linger over the technical details of the SUB program, even though the reader is curious. These folks remember absolutely everything about their lives—you can’t even really call them past lives, since the transfer from the old body to the new clone seems to be as easy as putting on a new suit. What sort of gruesome research went into this medical procedure? As for the old, damaged bodies—is there nothing left of the person? Do the patients, even for a moment, have the ghastly feeling of being two places at once? It is actually to the author’s credit that she doesn’t answer these questions; they’d only gum up the narrative.

It’s Chiarella’s laser-like focus on her characters as they fight to pick up the threads of their old lives that makes And Again the unsettling, thought-provoking book that it is.

It’s best to get the main conceit of Jessica Chiarella’s debut novel, And Again, out of the way: four people with terminal conditions win a lottery that entitles them to participate in what’s called the SUB program. This is a program where their bodies are cloned and when they reach the biological age of the participants—which happens after a few months—their memories are transplanted wholesale into the new bodies.
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionFantasy

A vacant room just for you

Review by Adam Morgan

Time and space are as fluid as water in Keith Lee Morris’ labyrinthine third novel, his first since 2008’s brutal The Dart League King. This time, a family road trip goes awry in the small town of Good Night, Idaho thanks to a hotel that rivals The Shining’s, a book with which Travelers Rest will inevitably be compared, though there are more definitive answers here.

The Addison family—mother, father, son and alcoholic uncle—are driving from Seattle to South Carolina when a snowstorm forces them to look for lodging in Good Night. The eponymous hotel, Travelers Rest, was once a palatial second home for the town’s high society, but fell into disrepair when the local mines dried up decades ago. After checking into the hotel, the Addisons quickly become separated in ways that are hard to describe, thanks to the shifting nature of time, space, memory, and dream in Good Night. The town is a lot like that grand staircase in Hogwarts, always rearranging itself depending on who enters and what they want.

Tonio, the father, wanders outside in the snow and follows a strange woman in silver shoes. Julia, the mother, finds an oddly familiar room on the third floor with an open roof, where she’s content to lie down and dream. Robbie, the uncle fresh out of rehab, bolts for the bar across the street, where he can’t tell if it’s the booze or the town that’s playing tricks on him. And Dewey, Julia and Tonio’s 10-year-old son, searches for his family, glimpsing them from a distance from time to time, but never quite able to reach them.

If you feel lost after the first 100 pages (and you will), don’t worry. The story is worth your confusion. In fact, it requires it. Proustian in theme but not in form, Travelers Rest is the definition of dreamlike prose. Morris’ writing is clean and cold as snow. The pages drift by just as effortlessly, lulling you into a quiet cocoon that you realize, too late, is actually something much more sinister.

Time and space are as fluid as water in Keith Lee Morris’ labyrinthine third novel, his first since 2008’s brutal The Dart League King. This time, a family road trip goes awry in the small town of Good Night, Idaho thanks to a hotel that rivals The Shining’s, a book with which Travelers Rest will inevitably be compared, though there are more definitive answers here.
Science Fiction & FantasyMystery & SuspenseFictionSuspenseScience Fiction

A treasure hunt for truthers

Review by Cat Acree

Several years ago, after researching his true crime book The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, James Renner was diagnosed with PTSD. It’s not uncommon for journalists to suffer such effects after witnessing trauma for a story, and Renner’s 10 years of hunting serial killers and writing about unsolved murders caught up with him. Fiction provided an unexpected safe haven, and his genre-bending time-travel thriller, The Man from Primrose Lane (2012), was a crime he could finally solve. His latest thriller, The Great Forgetting, digs at a much larger mystery, one with more questions, no generic answers and therefore plenty of room for an imaginative author to play. The result is a mix of conspiracy theorist paranoia, alternate history and cross-country adventure.

The story begins with an epilogue—our first clue that nothing is as it should be—which provides several bizarre nuggets of information: Fourteen years after 9/11, the coroner who oversaw and organized the remains of Flight 93 returns to the crash site, where he finds a severed monkey’s paw, clasping a man’s watch that reads, “RIP, Tony Sanders. 1978 to 2012.” And on the monkey’s palm is tattooed a bright red swastika.

In 2015, Jack Felter has returned home to Franklin Mills, Ohio, to help care for his father, who suffers from dementia. Franklin Mills is a place Jack would like to forget—especially his former love interest Sam, who immediately enlists Jack’s help in finding her husband (once Jack’s best friend), Tony Sanders, who has been missing for three years. Tony’s trail leads Jack to an institutionalized teen named Cole, who promises to reveal Tony’s whereabouts if Jack listens to Cole’s story—and begins boiling his water to counteract the pacifying effects of Fluoride. Jack soon learns about the Great Forgetting, a vast conspiracy that conceals the true events of World War II, contradicting everything he knows about history, science, the government and even time itself.

The Great Forgetting explores humanity’s desperation to forget the worst things that happen to us and the worst things we do to each other. It never loses speed as it reveals large-scale histrionics and builds to a zealous reveal. However, in Renner’s attempt to exorcise our prejudices and transform history, he risks alienating his audience, as many readers may find themselves defensive of their living memory, holding tighter to their real history. Perhaps some things can’t be rewritten, even for fiction’s sake.

Several years ago, after researching his true crime book The Serial Killer’s Apprentice, James Renner was diagnosed with PTSD. It’s not uncommon for journalists to suffer such effects after witnessing trauma for a story, and Renner’s 10 years of hunting serial killers and writing about…
YA FictionYAScience Fiction

An innovative sci-fi love story

Review by Heather Seggel

Kady barely has time to register how awful her breakup with Ezra feels—these things still hurt, even in year 2575—when, later that same day, her home planet is attacked. Kady and Ezra fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, but they’re separated onto two different ships in the process. With the enemy on their tails, bad turns to worse for the survivors: A plague on one of the ships is leading to quarantines, and the artificial intelligence known as AIDAN is becoming increasingly difficult to trust. 

At more than 600 pages and presented as a dossier containing emails, ship schematics, private journals and the transcribed “thoughts” of AIDAN, Illuminae is a bit of a doorstopper, but one readers will be hard-pressed to set down after page one. Part of the fun is piecing together these sometimes funny, often scary fragments to discover the story within. Gory scenes of plague victims are especially chilling when juxtaposed against clinical tallies of the infected and dead. Many of the survivors have been conscripted into the military, and the subsequent male bonding and raunchy humor lighten the mood while also adding an element of realism.

Illuminae is a smart, sad, funny, philosophical, action-packed futuristic love story. It’s also part one of a planned trilogy, so start here and prepare to be impatient for the arrival of the next installment.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Kady barely has time to register how awful her breakup with Ezra feels—these things still hurt, even in year 2575—when, later that same day, her home planet is attacked. Kady and Ezra fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, but they’re separated onto two different ships in the process. With the enemy on their tails, bad turns to worse for the survivors: A plague on one of the ships is leading to quarantines, and the artificial intelligence known as AIDAN is becoming increasingly difficult to trust.
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionFantasy

Making a Hollywood film in space

Review by Matthew Jackson

In Radiance, Catherynne M. Valente crafts a lush, detailed alternate history of Hollywood and a complex re-imagining of our solar system . . . and that’s just the beginning. Against that landscape, full of secrets, scandals and sci-fi awe, Valente weaves a tale of fathers and daughters, stories and truths, love and loss that is as much about the act of telling a story as it is about its characters.

Severin Unck is the daughter of a legendary, passionate Hollywood filmmaker, but she rejects his lush, romantic fictions and becomes a documentarian. With her lover and her crew, Severin travels the human-colonized solar system, chronicling life on other planets—until she disappears during a shoot on Venus.

From there, the story branches out to include Severin’s father, her various surrogate mothers, her lover and a mysterious child who survived that final expedition. To add even greater depth, Valente opts to tell the story not through traditional prose, but through transcripts, diary entries, old gossip columns, remembrances and letters. 

It is striking that Valente—who is the author of several previous fantasy novels for adults and teens—managed to throw this many storytelling devices, themes and world-building quirks into a single novel and somehow make them all work, but what’s even more striking is how warm and human Radiance is. It feels cohesive and unified in its vision: the story of what a single life can mean.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our Q&A with Catherynne M. Valente.

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In Radiance, Catherynne M. Valente crafts a lush, detailed alternate history of Hollywood and a complex re-imagining of our solar system . . . and that’s just the beginning. Against that landscape, full of secrets, scandals and sci-fi awe, Valente weaves a tale of fathers and daughters, stories and truths, love and loss that is as much about the act of telling a story as it is about its characters.
Science Fiction & FantasyDebut Fiction

A high-stakes space drama

Review by Michael Burgin

Given the title of C.A. Higgins’ debut novel, Lightless, it’s fitting that so much of the tale’s enjoyment stems from how well and how long it keeps the reader in the dark.

Like any good author, Higgins has rigged the game from the beginning. There’s something about the very setup—three crew members traveling through space in a large spaceship—that might cause a claustrophobic, or monophobic, twitch in some readers. The mission of this “miracle of engineering” called Ananke and of her crew? Unknown. A mere three pages in, Althea, the ship’s engineer and novel’s protagonist, sets this particular tale in motion with two ominous words: “Someone’s boarded.”

From there, and for much of the novel, Lightless relies more on its bona fides as a suspense thriller than any overtly sci-fi-flavored action, large spaceship locale or no. Higgins never lets the ship’s population rise above five or so, and even as the population grows, she rarely presents the reader with more than three characters together at a time. The novel is mostly divided between time spent in the mind of a character and watching a particularly prolonged and thorough interrogation unspool. (As much as some might wish to connect Lightless with Alien or, even better, The Martian, “The Closer in space” is probably the truer pitch.)

It’s for these reasons, and despite a gradually unveiled, sprawling backdrop filled with off-world colonies and an oppressive, ever-watching and oft-suppressing System, that Lightless remains relentlessly intimate throughout. For her part, Higgins sustains the suspense so effectively, that the novel’s rather shocking conclusion doesn’t feel forced or contrived. Instead, it feels like a fitting, explosive release of a plot drawn tight and kept taut before the reader even opened the book.

Granted, Lightless pulls off a few tricks that will only work once. With a sequel, Supernova, scheduled for 2016, it will be interesting to see just how well Higgins handles the transition from claustrophobic thriller with a cast of, well, not many, to the chaotic, actor-filled stage the ending of Lightless at least implies awaits us.

Michael Burgin is the Movies Editor for Paste Magazine. He lives in Nashville.

 

Given the title of C.A. Higgins’ debut novel, Lightless, it’s fitting that so much of the tale’s enjoyment stems from how well and how long it keeps the reader in the dark.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

A brave new world for Jim Butcher

Review by Michael Burgin

Occasionally, Jim Butcher likes to write about things other than wizard PIs in a noir-tinged Windy City. His first departure from the 15-book (and counting) Dresden Files series was 2004’s Furies of Calderon, the first of six books in the Codex Alera series. Now comes The Aeronaut’s Windlass, the first entry in a new, steampunk-steeped, Napoleonic naval battle-flavored series called The Cinder Spires. True to the steampunk genre mandate, The Aeronaut’s Windlass has plenty of goggles (worn out of necessity, not mere fashion, natch), airships and Old World, aristocratic political structures, known as Spires.

The author wastes no time establishing and gathering his ensemble. By the end of Chapter 8, The Aeronaut’s Windlass has introduced us to Bridget, scion of a once-prominent noble house now on its last legs; her cat, Rowl; highborn Gwendolyn Lancaster and her fighter (“warriorborn”) cousin, Benedict; the grizzled Captain Grimm; and master etherealist Ferus and his assistant, Folly. Not long after that, this particular fellowship has been bound together and sent off to stop the mysterious force behind a very coordinated and deadly series of attacks on Spire Albion by its rival, Spire Aurora.

If much of the initial setup of the book seems rushed (and some of those names, cartoonish), well, they are. If anything, the opening chapters are a reminder of how tough seamless world building can be, especially when you don’t have a fully realized environment premade by, well, reality, as is the case with the modern-day Chicago of the Dresden Files. The initial presentation of Spire Albion relies heavily on a mashup of steampunk clichés and England-versus-France naval intrigue circa the Napoleonic Era, but thanks to the swiftly moving plot, these shortcomings aren’t anywhere near fatal.

With each page turned, the distractions lessen as the characters are fleshed out by actions and interactions. Butcher’s skill in presenting and resolving extended action scenes on multiple fronts also does its part in keeping the reader’s attention. By the end of The Aeronaut’s Windlass, the only question a reader is likely to have is the most important one for any series debut: What is going to happen next?

Michael Burgin writes about movies for Paste magazine. He lives in Nashville.

 

Jim Butcher's exciting new series is a steampunk-steeped, Napoleonic naval battle-flavored series called The Cinder Spires. True to the steampunk genre mandate, The Aeronaut’s Windlass has plenty of goggles (worn out of necessity, not mere fashion, natch), airships and Old World, aristocratic political structures.
YA FictionYAFantasy

A heist with deadly stakes

Review by Annie Metcalf

Leigh Bardugo’s new series, set in the same universe as her best-selling Grisha trilogy, kicks off with Six of Crows. In this gritty world, gangs battle for control of the streets in the bustling port city of Ketterdam. One of these gangs is the Dregs, led by Kaz Brekker, whose youth belies his cunning as a thief and viciousness as a leader. Because of this growing reputation, Kaz is offered a job: liberate a prisoner from the Ice Court, a legendary stronghold in the nation of Fjerda. It’s almost certainly a suicide mission, but the reward money, even split between six accomplices, is worth the risk. 

Six of Crows is narrated by the rotating perspectives of Kaz’s young crew, a relatively diverse group whose personalities are distinct and compelling. Bardugo reveals each character’s backstory in stages, which adds suspense in the early chapters before the action ramps up. The bonds between members of the gang, especially the romantic ones, are sufficiently convincing to carry readers through a few weaker moments. Beyond the romance, Six of Crows is undeniably exciting. Bardugo cultivates a taut sense of urgency that intensifies as the heist unfolds minute by minute, leading to an unexpected twist in the final moments.

While the adventure and romance are perfect for the provided age range, episodes of extreme violence makes this dark heist novel suitable for older teen readers.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Leigh Bardugo’s new series, set in the same universe as her best-selling Grisha trilogy, kicks off with Six of Crows. In this gritty world, gangs battle for control of the streets in the bustling port city of Ketterdam. One of these gangs is the Dregs, led by Kaz Brekker, whose youth belies his cunning as a thief and viciousness as a leader.

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionScience Fiction

A sci-fi sequel brings double the pleasure

Review by Michael Burgin

One of the great pleasures of science fiction is watching the mundane be transformed by a vigorous application of cutting-edge (to the general audience, at least) scientific theory. By such a standard, David Walton’s first book, Superposition, was a true joyride. Though the book was by no means the first quantum theory-infused piece of sci-fi, Walton’s bear-hug embrace of this particular field transformed the murder-mystery genre it otherwise inhabited. Whereas most authors are content to use some aspect of quantum theory as a jumping-off point for their stories—a spice giving a tale that sci-fi taste—Walton made the field and its implications the main ingredient. It worked. The energetic unspooling of quantum consequences made Superposition a page-turner in spite of its one-dimensional characters and occasionally implausible “real-world” sequences.

In Supersymmetry, Walton returns to the near-future world of Jacob Kelley and his family, this time focusing on his now-adult daughters, Alex and Sandra. Alex and Sandra are more than twins: They are actually two versions of the same person, an as-yet uncollapsed wave-form of two quantum potentialities left over by the events of the first book.

When it becomes clear that the varcolac, the other-dimensional intelligence that brought them about in the first place, is once again threatening their world, Alex and Sandra are forced to confront both it and their own fears. (Having two “yous” that could return to one at any moment brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “identity crisis.”)

With Supersymmetry, Walton shows that he has a firm grasp on what exactly made Superposition so enjoyable for readers. His latest is filled with multiple dimensions, Higgs singlets and a host of other quantum characteristics and applications. The stakes, as one expects, are higher, even as some of what made the varcolac so compelling—its immense otherness—is diminished a bit by some on-the-nose explanations of purpose and goal. Nonetheless, most readers will find that Supersymmetry’s pages turn just as fast as those of its predecessor.

In Supersymmetry, Walton returns to the near-future world of Jacob Kelley and his family, this time focusing on his now-adult daughters, Alex and Sandra. Alex and Sandra are more than twins: They are actually two versions of the same person, an as-yet uncollapsed wave-form of two quantum potentialities left over by the events of the first book.
YA FictionYAFantasy

A twist on the Fates

Review by Jill Ratzan

Chloe was born a teenager and will always be one. Like her sisters, the middle-aged Serena and the elderly Xinot, she exists only to spin, measure and cut the threads of human lives. Chloe and her sisters are the Fates of Greek mythology, living and working on an island far from human entanglements—until a desperate teenage girl, Aglaia, seeks shelter in the Fates’ home.

Aglaia’s village was destroyed, and she alone knows why. Soon Chloe and her sisters are driven to follow the refugee as she pursues a new life on the mainland. There, the Fates are tempted to intervene in human affairs for the sake of their friend—despite prophesies that their involvement will cause the weaving to come unwound and the sun to sink into the sea.

Chloe’s narrative voice is stunning, especially when she speaks of the dark power that she and her sisters channel, the mystery that fills and guides them. This is a story to savor and discuss, especially in multigenerational groups.

 

Jill Ratzan teaches research rudiments in central New Jersey. She learned most of what she knows about YA lit from her terrific grad students.

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Chloe was born a teenager and will always be one. Like her sisters, the middle-aged Serena and the elderly Xinot, she exists only to spin, measure and cut the threads of human lives. Chloe and her sisters are the Fates of Greek mythology, living and working on an island far from human entanglements—until a desperate teenage girl, Aglaia, seeks shelter in the Fates’ home.

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