Science Fiction & Fantasy Archives | Page 53 of 66 | BookPage

Time-travel and alternate realities have been a rich and unending source for fiction pretty much since the invention of the genre. But an ounce of temporal weirdness brings pounds and pounds of complications, convolutions and headaches along with the overall plot potential. Paradoxes pop up, as do disruptions of any attempt at linear storytelling. The confusion that can result on behalf of the reader—and sometimes even the writer—can capsize even the most promising tale. As a result, it’s rare to see a writer dive headlong into multiple streams of chronological mayhem and emerge with anything coherent, let alone riveting.

Yet with his time- and reality-bending saga, The Flight of the Silvers (the first book in The Silvers Saga), Daniel Price does just that. Price’s book starts with an intriguing premise, is propelled along by sustained action and enjoyable world building, and, by the book’s end, has maintained coherence and dramatic momentum despite the introduction of a dizzying array of paradox-inducing realities and abilities.

After a brief prologue, The Flight of the Silvers starts with the end of the world (complete with bangs and whimpers). A mysterious trio saves a select few (the “Silvers” of the title), who are soon brought together in a different version of the world they each just saw destroyed. The group includes somewhat estranged sisters Amanda and Hannah, wisecracking cartoonist Zack, failed prodigy Theo, insecure teen Mia and David, a socially inept genius. Beyond a healthy dose of post-Armageddon stress syndrome and the disorientation of being in a familiar yet unquestionably different reality, each Silver starts exhibiting a separate time-related ability. As they do so, they are beset by forces (some hostile, some not) intent on capturing, using or killing them.

Price deserves credit for creating immediately relatable characters whose motivations are understandable even when not so commendable. But he deserves out-and-out praise for doing so while constantly upping the temporal ante. The reader’s uncertainty concerning the rules of this new world may well mirror that felt by the protagonists, but the shared confusion never ruins the immersion. As a result, any hours spent reading The Flight of the Silvers will be time well spent.

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Historical Fiction

A polished, chilling debut

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Set initially in Russia during the reign of Empress Anna Ioanovna in the 1740s, J.M. Sidorova’s The Age of Ice turns on a single premise: Alexander Velitsyn, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, is born immune to cold. What’s more, all those emotions that inflame others—passion, rage, shame, etc.—cause him, instead, to generate cold to an equal intensity. (This causes problems.)

In this age of superhero saturation, this setup is an intriguing twist—a historical iteration of the “What would it be like to have a super power in the real world” tale. But it’s not the only impressive aspect of this polished debut novel. Though his effort to understand the cause and map the mechanics of his condition is a major aspect of the plot, it’s the interplay between Velitsyn and history that transforms The Age of Ice from interesting to engrossing. Ultimately, Sidorova’s novel feels like a small physiological fantasy embedded in a much larger piece of historical fiction. For all his uniqueness, Velitsyn is just another person swept along on the waves of history—be they caused by Napoleon or the Great Game between Russia and Great Britain. Like any good piece of historical fiction, The Age of Ice transforms its readers into eager students of the time being portrayed. Sidorova’s accounts of Joseph Billings’ search for the Northeast Passage, the Battle of Austerlitz and the Siege of Herat would fascinate even without Velitsyn’s mysterious, magical presence.

At times, Velitsyn’s tale evokes an almost palpable dread that feels Lovecraftian in tone—though perhaps that’s just a side effect of the Russian fatalism of Velitsyn himself. Nonetheless, no matter how dark the narrative foreshadowing, The Age of Ice is an invigorating debut. It may not spawn a three-film franchise, but this well-researched historical fantasy will have readers eagerly awaiting Sidorova’s next fictional foray.

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

A new fantasy series teeming with imagination

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

One can forgive publishing execs if all they saw was franchise potential in The Bone Season (the first in a projected seven-book series). After all, recent Oxford graduate Samantha Shannon’s debut features a young, resourceful female protagonist—19-year-old Paige Mahoney—who lives in a dystopian future rife with supernatural elements. And for much of the book, Paige is enslaved to an imposing non-human male, yielding a relationship that is both conflict-laden and conflicted. Evaluated just for its echoes of other successful book and movie franchises, The Bone Season looks like a melting pot of moneymaking ingredients.

But it wouldn’t be fair to judge The Bone Season just because it’s pitch-friendly. Shannon’s novel is an impressive feat of world-building, which rests on her inventive supernatural beings. These creatures’ complexity is more reminiscent of Sheri S. Tepper’s classic True Game series than of any contemporary teen-focused fantasy.

The Bone Season is set in a dystopian future that itself is the result of an alternate history that diverged dramatically from our own with an explosion of clairvoyant abilities in the Victorian era. The subsequent reaction against those exhibiting such “unnatural” traits has resulted in London (and several other cities) being controlled by a security force called Scion. As a result, life in 2059 London is a pretty dark place for most clairvoyants, though Paige Mahoney counts herself as an exception. A dreamwalker who works for one of the bosses of Scion London’s criminal underworld, Paige rejoices in her relative freedom and flouting of the authorities, who deem her tainted by her ability. Then she gets caught.

The rest of the book deals with Paige’s efforts to escape her captors, the powerful Rephaim. To do so, she must learn more about them, in particular her keeper, Warden. For readers, the challenge lies in ingesting a complex, multi-sourced flow of information—navigating the details of taxonomy, setting and plot with enough attention left over to bond with the characters and simply enjoy the story.

The most exciting thing about Shannon’s ambitious debut lies not in how closely it aligns with the works—and thus earning potential—of Collins, Meyer, Clare, et al., but in the near certainty that the author’s command over her world will only improve. And with that mastery, the series has the potential to become one that inspires others. The Bone Season is a delicious appetizer. Now we wait for the main course.

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

Through a portal to a dangerous world

Review by Amy Scribner

by Amy Scribner

The bouncy title of this epic first novel sets up expectations of a certain type of book—maybe one with a pink stiletto or a sparkly diamond ring on the cover. Think again. The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic is a medieval fairy tale with a deliciously dark twist: The heroine is a modern-day woman trapped in an alternate, magical world.

Nora Fischer’s dissertation is going nowhere fast—and her love life is in even worse shape—when she stumbles onto a portal to Semr, an archaic kingdom where magic is in the air and ideas about women’s roles are very different. Nora is enchanted (literally) by a woman named Ilissa, who quickly marries Nora off to her son to produce an heir. But her new family is not what it seems, and Nora flees to the protection of Aruendiel, a reclusive magician whose rough exterior hides a mysterious and painful past. Soon Nora has become Aruendiel’s apprentice, learning basic spells that come in handy when she and Ilissa meet again. Eventually, Nora will have to decide whether to make her way back home, or stay in a world she’s amazed to realize she has come to love.

Emily Croy Barker is the executive editor of The American Lawyer magazine, where she oversees coverage of things like antitrust mass actions in Europe and the population of minority lawyers at big law firms. One can only imagine the fun she had writing this soapy, snappy tale. I’d be a sucker for any book in which Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice played a prominent role (Nora translates that classic novel chapter by chapter for Aruendiel), but The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic stands on its own merits as a thoroughly enchanting read. While Nora and Aruendiel may be more Heathcliff and Catherine than Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, Barker has spun a clever, lush yarn that is uniquely its own.

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

A speak-and-spell fantasy

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

It’s easy to underestimate the challenges of crafting contemporary fantasy, especially when one compares the task with that of writing its older cousin, the traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy. But just because the author of a contemporary fantasy can skip some expository steps in character development and setting if the protagonist is an ex-Navy SEAL named Josh living in Boston instead of, say, a 12th-degree death-o-mancer named Magyar Trothan who lives in the land of Whimsicalia, that doesn’t mean taking the less fantastical road is easy. After all, anything that happens in the mostly real, present-day world is subject to the immediate scrutiny of countless experts—plenty of readers will be familiar with Boston or have a family member in the military, whereas no one other than the author will possess any firsthand knowledge on death-o-mancer training. (Granted, the Whimsicalian Wiki will be up a few days after the book is published.)

Nonetheless, most crafters of fantasy, traditional or contemporary, have one big hurdle in common: devising a system of “magic” that’s fresh, compelling and coherent.

With his latest book, Australian author Max Barry (Jennifer Government, Company) easily clears this often fatal hurdle with a premise (and system) guaranteed to appeal to readers: Words have power, and some words have a lot of power. In Lexicon, a global organization whose members refer to themselves as “the poets” employs psycho-linguistic tactics to control, well, pretty much anything or anyone. But like any other multinational concern, even super-secret groups have staffing needs. In the orphaned Emily Ruff, they find someone who may or may not be a powerful addition to their organization. Barry alternates the chapters covering her recruitment and training with tense action sequences involving a man named Wil and his mysterious captors (or protectors?). These are maddeningly opaque at first, though the blistering pace—more reminiscent of a Ludlum spy thriller than anything else—makes the difficulty in gaining one’s bearings tolerable.

By book’s end, Lexicon has revealed itself as a contemporary fantasy that’s three parts thriller and one part romance (somewhat diluted). In the process, Barry’s tale provides its reader with an intriguing, satisfying ride through a world where the phrase “has a way with words” refers to the author’s own world-building as much as to the characters who inhabit it.

Fantasy, Fiction

Fiction Fantasy

Again the magic

Review by Matthew Jackson

by Matthew Jackson

We readers expect magic when we pick up a Neil Gaiman novel. By now he’s built a reputation for his own unique brand of spellbinding fiction, but even among works like American Gods, Stardust and Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane stands as a landmark. Never before has Gaiman’s fiction felt this personal, this vibrant or this deeply intimate.

Gaiman’s hero is an unnamed narrator who returns to his childhood home as an adult and is flooded with memories of a farm at the end of the English country lane where he grew up. We relive those boyhood memories as he does, beginning with an odd tragedy that brought him to the doorstep of the Hempstock family. There he met 11-year-old Lettie, her mother and her ancient grandmother, who claims she was around when the moon was first made. There he finds a pond that Lettie insists is an ocean. And there he embarked on a strange, mesmerizing and often terrifying adventure that probes the often unreachable corners of human memory, nostalgia and wonder.

Never before has Gaiman’s fiction felt this personal.

At fewer than 200 pages, this is one of Gaiman’s shortest books, and yet The Ocean at the End of the Lane is overflowing with ambition. As it meanders through ever-thickening layers of magical intrigue—which wrap this book like bright green English moss—the novel becomes something more than a boyhood adventure story. It is a fable about the practicalities and inconsistencies of magic, about the often unreliable powers of memory and about how fear can often make us stronger. All this is imparted through a lightning-quick narrative filled with typically spellbinding Gaiman imagery, and told in unpretentious but endlessly evocative prose. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a character study trapped in a fairy tale, a coming-of-age story wrapped in the trappings of myth. It’s Gaiman at his bittersweet, hypnotic best, and it’s a can’t-miss book for this summer.

Matthew Jackson reviews from Texas.

Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Suspense

Science Fiction & Fantasy Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Time is on a killer’s side

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Get your running gear on—in The Shining Girls, you’ll be taken on a breathtaking, loopy trip through time.

South African novelist Lauren Beukes, who penned the award-winning sci-fi/fantasy Zoo City, returns with The Shining Girls, a creepy, supernatural thriller set in Chicago, where a dilapidated House (yes, capital “H”) containing a mysterious portal sends the book’s villain back and forth through time. Throughout the 20th century, he dispatches a series of women in brutal fashion, removing a small item from one victim here, depositing it with another there, then materializing back at the House to review his exploits.

A former victim seeks justice against a time-traveling serial killer in Lauren Beukes' new novel.

Kirby Mazrachi has survived horrific wounds as the only victim to escape—barely—one of Harper’s attacks, and she’s obsessed with tracking him down. She knows there’s something wacky about how he operates; impossibly, she remembers that he first visited her when she was 6 years old. An intern at the Chicago Sun-Times, Kirby has lots of archived news records at her disposal, and for help there’s Dan, the sports editor who’s falling in love with her. Otherwise, there doesn’t seem much to recommend this hunt, as Harper appears to hold all the cards.

Beukes, a talented writer, is blessed with a graceful yet spot-on prose style, often bordering on the sublime, and she knows how to tap into the tics and crooked depths of her main characters, especially a plenty-screwed-up Kirby and her druggy mom, Rachel, who are described with startling insight. And of course there’s the character of the House, which, depending on the year you enter it, runs from seductively inviting to a mangled wreck. For any who hold a key, however, it yields a doorway that conquers time.

Harper is another matter. Even though we have his evil grins and private murderous satisfactions at our disposal, it’s hard to get much of a look at what drives him. He’s drawn to a select group of women who “shine” for him in some way—with potential or just plain life—and he’s driven to dispose of them violently. Beyond that, we mainly witness his cruel, frenetic journeys.

Whipping back and forth in time gets a trifle confusing and is sometimes a letdown. Chapters skip jarringly among the years and characters, giving us little opportunity to absorb where we are. How much better this author’s talent would shine if she were to send us a more lasting, intelligent thrill.

Get your running gear on—in The Shining Girls, you’ll be taken on a breathtaking, loopy trip through time.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy

A fateful fantasy mashup

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Peter Clines’ 2010 debut novel, Ex-Heroes, had a simple, pitch-friendly premise: superheroes meet zombies! Too often, such catchy marketing angles are reductive, but in the case of Ex-Heroes, it was pretty much a dead-on summary of Clines’ double-decker “What if . . . ?” contemporary fantasy sandwich. (What if people with superpowers started to appear in our world? And what if that was almost immediately followed by the zombie apocalypse?)

Given the waxing popularity of superheroes in film, and zombie fever pretty much everywhere, there hasn’t been a more inevitable combo since Jim Butcher dipped detective noir into “wizard!” for his The Dresden Files series (the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup of genre mashup success stories).

Still, a simple premise with built-in popular appeal doesn’t mean easy to write. For his part, Clines had to create his own version of not one but two fantasy staples so well-worn the ruts in them are basically trenches. Wisely, the author kept it simple: Clines’ undead are pretty much “zombie classic”—slow-moving, cognitively challenged, “swarm ya” machines that are deadly thanks to sheer numbers and a bite-to-infection success ratio that can’t be beat. His heroes are also pretty standard fare—a “Batman” type (Stealth), a “Superman” (Mighty Dragon/St. George), a giant/robot (Cerberus), an energy manipulator (Zzzap), etc.

More importantly, with Ex-Heroes Clines faced the overarching challenge of his genre mashup—telling a compelling story that kept readers, many of whom are “experts” in the genres, interested and guessing. For the most part, Clines succeeded, providing what amounted to a gritty comic book series in novelized form.

With Ex-Patriots, Clines returns to the world of his superhero-flavored zombie apocalypse. The heroes of the Mount—the film studio turned undead-thwarting fortress—have weathered the brutal assault of a truly horrifying supervillain and his zombie hordes. But a return to “normal” in a zombie-ravaged world is still a danger-fraught existence, and as the community of the Mount returns to the daily routine of scavenging and surviving, contact is made with a top-secret branch of the U.S. military. Will this contact turn out to be a good development for the human population of the Mount and its superhuman protectors?

As any reader familiar with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comics knows, few “promising developments”—be they surviving humans or prospective safer locales—come without hidden peril, and Clines’ sequel is no different. For fans of either genre (be it heroic or zombie), determining the nature of the threat represented by these new players is half the fun of Ex-Patriots. (The continuing character arcs of Stealth, St. George and crew, the other.) Overall, Ex-Patriots continues the novelized comic series feel, minus the original comic series, of its predecessor. If the superheroes and zombies mix of Ex-Heroes was your cup of tea, sit down, crack open Ex-Patriots, and let Peter Clines pour you another cup.

Debut Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction

Fiction Fantasy Debut Fiction

A supernatural love story

Review by Michael Alec Rose

by Michael Alec Rose

Turn off the cell phone, shut down the computer and settle down in your comfiest chair. You’re in for the most exciting fantasy debut since Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell a decade ago. Helene Wecker must be a born writer; there is no other way to account for the quality of her prose, as phenomenal as any of the supernatural wonders she delivers in the glorious The Golem and the Jinni.

Through turnings of fate typical of the history of our immigrant nation, two uncanny beings from overseas wind up in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. One is a creature from Jewish folklore made out of clay—no, not a dreidel, but a golem, a monster animated by mystical secrets of rabbinic lore. The other is a jinni, belonging to that volatile race of spirits who ride the winds of the Arabian desert, until he was captured by human wizardry and confined to a copper flask for a thousand years.

The ensuing narrative is so intricately wrought that it resists the reviewer’s effort to bind it in anything like a copper flask . . . but I’ll try. An insane rabbi-sorcerer bestows upon his female golem Chava the demure and quick-witted nature of a Jane Austen heroine, and she comes to works in a kosher bakery on the Lower East Side. Meanwhile, the jinni Ahmad possesses all the wickedness and charm of a supercharged Don Juan whose irresistible power over human girls becomes fraught with terrible consequences.

At the heart of the novel burns the two creatures’ evolving friendship with each other, and the risks they take in order to grope towards an understanding and transcendence of their own dangerous natures. When released from human control, both the golem and the jinni tend inevitably towards the pitiless destruction of humanity. But the fateful encounter of Chava and Ahmad changes all that. Is it conceivable that two such beings could ever come to love each other?

Wecker’s imaginative coup of wedding Jewish to Arab mythology—and transporting all of it to lower Manhattan—is so brilliant that it ought to be considered at the next round of Middle East peace talks. The Golem and the Jinni is a surpassingly wonderful tale for our time.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read our interview with Helene Wecker for The Golem and the Jinni.

Fantasy, Fiction

Fiction Fantasy

A corrupted coexistence

Review by Ian Schwartz

by Ian Schwartz

When you talk of talented writers under 40, Benjamin Percy is a name that must come up. A list of his awards—mostly for visceral short stories that are as elegant and lilting as Irish ballads yet possess a raw violence beneath—would take up more space than this review allows.

His second novel is Red Moon, a fat, multilayered page-turner that has fans of Percy and lycanthropy alike gnashing their teeth in anticipation. Yes, it’s about werewolves, but it is also about coming of age, young love, racism, xenophobia, warfare’s moral complexities and the zeitgeist of 21st-century America. In other words, Percy went big.

In Red Moon’s alternative world, humans and werewolves—they prefer to be called Lycans, thank you—have coexisted forever. Living worldwide, but with a sovereign Lycan state—in the manner of Israel—Lycans are required by law to take Lupex to keep from changing with the full moon. The Lycan Republic is policed by American armed forces, which are increasingly looked upon as occupiers. American patrols are often targeted by insurgents, from full-on attacks to IEDs. Sound familiar?

In Percy’s alternative world, the decades-long peace between humans and werewolves has been broken.

When Lycan terrorists target American airliners, the innocent and guilty alike are rounded up, killed or disappear, and the lives of American teenagers Claire Forrester and Patrick Gamble change forever. Claire is a Lycan, while Patrick’s father serves with the Army in the Lycan Republic. Their complex existences eventually intersect, and both will play key roles in the violent dawning of a new world.

As a Percy character might say, when you let fly with a one-two punch combination, some blows may miss. Occasionally, the allegory is a bit heavy-handed, but parables aren’t known for their subtlety. The book’s white-knuckle excitement more than atones for a little emotional bias. At its spellbinding best, Red Moon is a cross between Stephen King and the Michael Chabon of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, two very different writers who both give plausible wings to absurdity. If you haven’t read Percy, get started.

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Science Fiction

Life underground

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Originally a self-published series of e-novellas, Hugh Howey’s Wool has generated almost as much press for what it is seen to represent as it has for its enthusiastic fan response. Some have proclaimed it yet another nail in the coffin of traditional publishing, while others have pointed to it as proof the post-apocalyptic genre still has some life in it. But the ultimate takeaway from any discussion of Howey’s dystopian novel, now published in print and audio versions as a full-length novel by Simon & Schuster, should be that Wool is a riveting read, thanks to memorable characters and a vividly rendered world, both of which linger with the reader long after the last page has been turned. Howey’s path to publication is proof that fascinating characters and evocative world-building can win over readers, no matter how hollowed out a genre has become or what format a book arrives to market in.

The world of Wool is first introduced to the reader through the eyes of Holston, the sheriff of a post-apocalyptic community that lives in an immense, self-sufficient silo. The rules of the community are strict, with most mentions of the outside taboo and any expressed desire to leave the silo resulting in the community’s version of capital punishment—a one-way trip out of the silo to clean the viewing lens of its external camera before succumbing to the toxic environment.

The second section focuses on the journey of the Silo’s mayor and deputy to recruit Holston’s replacement. The rest of Wool follows the adventures of Holston’s successor, a resourceful female engineer named Juliette (Jules) as she discovers that certain aspects of the community inside the silo that are as deadly as the outside is thought to be.

Saying more risks puncturing the tension that is a hallmark of the book. Suffice it to say, Wool reminds the reader how fulfilling a steady diet of small surprises, deftly delivered, can be. And even the most jaded post-apocalyptic enthusiast should enjoy how skillfully Howey confounds expectations and delays certainty.

Though the human interactions are well-wrought, the most consistently compelling relationship in Wool exists between the main characters and the silo itself. In some ways, it’s a mutualistic relationship between an inorganic behemoth and the humans that inhabit, maintain and are protected by it. Yet in its very premise, Wool suggests that even though it may be human nature to aspire to that which is greater than itself, the attempt to do so ravages as often as it preserves.

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

A dark tale of faerie mythology

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

In Dreams and Shadows, a boy and his djinn try to save a doomed child from the faerie court that stole and raised him. In doing so, they receive a lesson in the nature of the world and of the supernatural that one of them, at least, couldn’t begin to anticipate.

The debut novel of film critic and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill, Dreams and Shadows is the most existential, world-weary of faerie tales. Cargill’s myth-making is unrelentingly dark in tone, more Mignola (Hellboy) than Gaiman (American Gods, Coraline, etc.). In his world, silver linings are fool’s gold, and happy endings are more the stuff of fantasy than nixies, boggarts and their kin ever could be.

This tone is established from the beginning with a prologue so dark that, by the time 8-year-old Colby Stephens extracts a wish from a stranger to “show [him] everything supernatural,” the reader knows that nothing heartwarming this way comes. As the destinies of two children—Ewan, a human child, and Knocks, the changeling who takes his place—become intertwined with that of Colby and his djinn companion, portents pile up as quickly as the supernatural cast of characters expands.

Fortunately, a dark read doesn’t mean a bad one. Cargill’s world-building is methodical and consistent. The pace is brisk, the plotting assured. Though his take on the nature of faerie is not really new or inspired, it is deliberate and codified in a way that yields a satisfyingly focused vision of a fantasy staple. Though remarkably diverse in form and comportment, the fae of Dreams and Shadows share one trait: Each is a walking (or crawling or flying or swimming) embodiment of the moral from the fable “The Frog and the Scorpion”—for good or ill, each fae behaves as its nature demands. As for the supposed mystery and inscrutability of the fae? In this world, it stems less from innate complexity than from the stubbornness of our attempts to ascribe human motivations to their behaviors. All in all, it’s a persuasive vision of what makes faerie tick that in turn provides a convincing, fascinating backdrop for Cargill’s foray into contemporary fantasy.

As a result, Dreams and Shadows is a potent introduction to a world where the wondrous is rarely wonderful, the best intentions are guaranteed to roam farthest astray, and the reader is destined to keep turning the pages until the (somewhat) bitter end.

Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fiction Fantasy

An otherworldly romance

Review by Michael Burgin

by Michael Burgin

Karen Lord’s new book, The Best of All Possible Worlds, is a strange creature. On one hand, it’s unmistakably a piece of science fiction. Lord has crafted a rich, coherent, consistent universe filled with off-world colonies, alien races and the bureaucracies that exist to serve them. There are fantastic abilities; mysterious, long-absent progenitors; and a crisis brought on by attempted genocide. Yet, if a genre work can be said to leave a specific taste in one’s mouth when finished, then The Best of All Possible Worlds also includes the flavor of romance.

Most of the book takes place on Cygnus Beta, a “galactic hinterland for pioneers and refugees” on which Grace Delarua, a self-professed language enthusiast, works as the second assistant to the chief biotechnician. Enter the Sadiri, the latest refugee population to come to Cygnus Beta. Facing the prospect of extinction—most of the remaining Sadiri are male—the stoic, mentally advanced race has sent a contingent, led by Dllenahkh, to gauge the genetic compatibility of groups of Sadiri-related settlers on the planet.

As Delarua, Dllenahkh and their team embark on an intra-planet tour of various outposts, Lord places the budding, subtle relationship between the two protagonists against the disparate backdrops of the places they visit—a story arc reminiscent of a condensed travel itinerary for the USS Enterprise and crew.

Usually, in a conflation of genres, one reigns supreme—this is especially true with science fiction and romance, two of the showier genres. Nonetheless, in The Best of All Possible Worlds, the two coexist in a harmony that’s unrelentingly understated. The result is a unique experience that’s equal parts Jane Austen and Ray Bradbury. Lord’s latest may not be the best of all possible works of sci-fi or romance to come out this year—but it’s more than satisfying.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE
Read an interview with Karen Lord about The Best of All Possible Worlds.