Dark Deeds Delivers a Supremely Satisfying Space Heist
Joss Whedon’s Firefly did not invent the space opera caper subgenre, but it pretty much perfected the form, and a…
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The Wrong Stars Is a Space Opera with Personality
The Wrong Stars is space opera, but it’s all about the people. Rather than fill his series-starter with loads of…
Kill Creek Is the Horror Debut of 2017
The best horror will bite you. Scott Thomas understands this intimately. In Kill Creek, his debut novel, Thomas weaves together seemingly…
The Tethered Mage Is an Intense, Intensely Political Fantasy Debut
It is the mark of a fantasy writer worth her salt when the dialogue scenes are as intense as the…
Human Nature Is Scarier Than Mother Nature in Joe Hill’s Strange Weather
Over the past two decades, Joe Hill has established himself as a dark fiction powerhouse, a versatile master of the…
Blackwing Offers an Intense Blend of Epic Fantasy and Horror
Dark fantasy novels delight in pitting flawed heroes against menacing, unknowable gods, and plunging characters into situations they very well…
Quillifer Is the Most Fun You’ll Have Reading Epic Fantasy This Year
Across his career, Walter Jon Williams has put his own spin on space opera, cyberpunk, contemporary techno-thrillers, and new wave…
At the End of the World, Clade Celebrates Human Endurance
It’s the end of the world in Clade, but James Bradley’s unusually beautiful novel of climate collapse isn’t really about…
Gender Dynamics and the Apocalypse Collide in Owen and Stephen King’s Sleeping Beauties
More than any other genre, horror reflects reality, as what we fear changes along with the world around us. In…
A Murder Mystery Unfolds on a Generation Ship in The Man in the Tree
Setting defines science fiction, and nowhere is this more clear than in Sage Walker’s The Man in the Tree, a hard…
Which Dystopian Novel Are We Living In?
It’s on-trend for 2017: drawing comparisons between the fictional dystopias we read and the geopolitical situation around us—no sooner does…
5 SFF Confessional Novels That Really Need to Tell You Something
Sometimes, even fictional characters just need to get some things off their chests—and that’s where the confessional novel comes in.…
Reincarnation Blues Is a Joyful Cosmic Romance
There is a lot going on in Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues. It’s a love story, it’s about one soul seeking…
10 Books That Take Us into Deep, Dark Woods
There is a certain primal quality to forests—a sense that they’re entities unto themselves: ancient, maze-like constructions, ubiquitous as they…
Our 6 Favorite Freakish Fungi in Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Biology, especially on a smaller scale, is sometimes completely indistinguishable from horror. The real world has given us ravenous insects…
American Ghost Is a Metafictional Mystery Worth Solving
There’s a mystery at the heart of Paul Guernsey’s American Ghost, but it’s not necessarily the obvious one. While the story…
8 Books About the Horrors of Adolescence
Growing up is difficult enough. The body changes in odd ways; social dynamics rapidly shift, pulling former best friends in…
Meddling Kids Is Much More Than a Metafictional Mashup of Scooby-Doo and Buffy
The plot of Meddling Kids, Edgar Cantero’s second English-language novel after The Supernatural Enhancements, will definitely sound familiar—provided you watched…