The Brotherhood of the Wheel is a Mythic, Twisted Road Fantasy
The Brotherhood of the Wheel is a special kind of horror novel. It’s the kind of book you spend all night…
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Beat the Devil: 5 Fantasy Novels Featuring the Prince of Darkness
For as long as we can remember, stories have wrestled with the idea of the Devil, a personage embodying of all our worst aspects. In fiction,…
Snakewood Is Not Your Typical Grimdark Fantasy
Snakewood is not your typical grimdark fantasy. It includes many of the same heady notes—grizzled mercenaries, twisted tortures, world on the brink…
The Destructives Might Be the Most Mind-Boggling SF Novel You’ll Read this Year
The Destructives is one of those books in which things don’t so much transpire as unfold. It’s a multi-layered story that takes traditional science…
Lovecraft Country is a Timely, Terrifying, Hilarious Pulp Satire
In his Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft created a universe that is actively hostile, constantly threatened by a terrifying and unknowable “other” beyond…
5 Fantasy Novels to Satisfy Your Cynical Side
On the grimmer borders of the genre kingdom lies the realm of “dark fantasy,” a term that evokes morally gray heroes and a…
Throwback Thursday: Bridge of Birds Unbalances You in the Best Way
The first time I read Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds, I cried. I cried because the ending was that beautiful, because…
The Shards of Heaven Gives History a Wild Epic Fantasy Twist
The Shards of Heaven is breathtaking in scope. With the first volume of a planned series intertwining Roman history and myth with Judeo-Christian mythology,…
The Girl with Ghost Eyes is a Dizzying Debut Grounded in Human Emotion
M.H. Boroson’s debut novel The Girl with Ghost Eyes is a joy to read. Set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century Chinatown, Boroson’s tale blends…
Wake of Vultures Takes the Western on a Weird Dark Fantasy Ride
Lila Bowen’s new novel Wake of Vultures may be the weirdest thing I’ve read this year, a dizzying blend of western mythology, Deadwood grit,…
6 SF/F Books Challenging Gender Roles That Aren’t by Joanna Russ
The freedom granted to authors of science fiction and fantasy is kind of awesome: when a world is limited only by the…
Throwback Thursday: Wild Nights at the Budayeen in When Gravity Fails
In an unnamed Middle Eastern city lies a red light district known as the Budayeen. A place where someone can…
5 Sinister Boarding Schools to Give You the Back-to-School Creeps
Going back to school is rough for many kids—between the constant study grind, complex social politics, cramped hallways, and intense extracurriculars, school…
The Death House is Disquieting, Atmospheric Sci-Fi
When I finished Sarah Pinborough‘s new novel The Death House, I had to take a moment to collect my thoughts. Not because…
Throwback Thursday: Heading to Radio Bay With M. John Harrison’s Light
For readers, there’s nothing quite like finding a unicorn, one those ridiculously rare, perfect-specimen books that knock you flat. The problem…