A Wandering Metaphysical Mystery: Karen Lord’s Unraveling
Unraveling, the new novel from World Fantasy Award nominee Karen Lord, is on one level a mystery: a serial killer,…
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Magic for Liars Is a Wizarding Whodunit Fueled by Feels
It’s unclear if anyone has ever attended a wizarding school without witnessing at least one gruesome murder before graduation. It…
Shannara’s End Approaches in The Stiehl Assassin
Now arrives The Stiehl Assassin, the third and penultimate volume in the series’ timeline. Like its predecessors, it feels suitably…
Last Tango in Cyberspace: Sociological Cyberpunk
Last Tango in Cyberspace, the second novel from journalist Steven Kotler, is proof that an excess of style isn’t always…
The Fight Comes Home for Mercy Thompson in Storm Cursed
In an urban fantasy series as long-lived as Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson—which began with Moon Called in 2006, and recently reached…
A Brightness Long Ago Is a Fantasy Epic About the Shaping of History
I have a few of what I call “rainy day authors,” those writers whose works I savor; their books are…
In Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky Shows Us How You Top Super-Intelligent Spiders in Space
Though Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, reads like a brilliant standalone hard sci-fi masterpiece, given the reception it received—the Arthur…
Tad Williams’ Empire of Grass Is a Melancholy Fantasy Epic
When Tad Williams first announced plans for a new trilogy returning to Osten Ard—the setting of his landmark Memory, Sorrow,…
Westside Is a Genre-Bending Visit to a Magical Jazz-Age New York
They built the wall in 1914, and down the middle of Broadway in Manhattan. Twenty-seven-year-old Gilda Carr is a native…
Middlegame Is a Coming-of-Age Story to End the World
Middlegame, the genre-blending new novel from prolific, bestselling, and much-awarded author Seanan McGuire, pivots on the realization of a long-running…
Sequel Storm of Locusts Is Even Better Than the Hugo-Nominated Trail of Lightning
In concrete action, Rebecca Roanhorse’s Storm of Locusts begins similarly to its Hugo- and Nebula-nominated predecessor Trail of Lighting: with a knock…
See the Apocalypse Through the Eyes of A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World
In the Talking Heads song “(Nothing but) Flowers” David Byrne playfully laments a world overtaken by nature: “This used to…
In the Darkly Humorous All My Colors, a Jerk Rewrites a Novel Only He Can Remember
Todd Milstead is a jerk. His friends barely tolerate him (and only because he supplies them with free food and…
Fantasy Worldbuilding Meets Chinatown in Titanshade
Genre mashups are the lifeblood of sci-fi and fantasy, and one of the most enduring examples of the form is…
Reality Is an Impossible Game: Emma Newman’s Atlas Alone
Reviewing a novel four books deep into a series is always a little tricky, even if—as with Emma Newman’s Planetfall…
The Municipalists Creates a Convincing Blueprint for the City of the Future
It’s protagonist, Henry, is a public official and a municipal fanboy, believing in the inherent power and safety of the city…
Sam Sykes’ Seven Blades in Black: Magical, Memorable, and Soaked in Blood
I was left with several distinct impressions upon turning the final page of Sam Sykes’s latest series starter, the 700-page Seven…
Hugo-Winner Suzanne Palmer’s Finder Is a Ridiculously Fun Science Fiction Adventure
Finder, the debut novel from Suzanne Palmer (winner of a 2018 Hugo Award for the novelette “The Secret Lives of…
A Vein of Sci-Fi Horror Runs Deep in The Luminous Dead
Gyre Price is a young, desperate, reckless, and a liar—and talented enough that those qualities don’t matter. Not on this…
As The Expanse Nears its End, Tiamat’s Wrath Only Raises the Stakes
Across the eight previous books in James S.A. Corey’s space opera epic The Expanse, we’ve seen humanity evolve from contentious tribes…