In debut author Mayo’s insightful reimagining of Cinderella, a “wicked stepsister” gets the chance to step into the spotlight. After pretty, perfect Beatrice wins the heart of Prince Duncan with help from a fairy godmother, her stepsisters, Florentia and Theodosia (“Theo”) Balfour, and their mother are all painted as wicked and abusive—not entirely falsely. As the family slides further into debt and misfortune, Lady Balfour arranges a marriage between Theo and the aging and deeply unpleasant Duke of Snowbell. Determined to get out of the arrangement, Theo summons Beatrice’s fairy godmother, Cecily of the Ash Fairies, who agrees to help, but only if Theo first proves she’s a good person by completing three tasks for her. With the aid of Cecily’s familiars, including the handsome fox shifter Kasra, Theo ventures into the fairy realm, risking life and limb, and in the process discovers what she’s really made of. Mayo explores themes of self-image and self-worth, toxic femininity, false narratives, and the different paths to happily ever after. Her characters are flawed, fractious, and unreliable, but Theo’s quest to seize control of her destiny and break free of her mother allows her to grow into a sympathetic heroine. With touches of humor and romance to keep things lively, this complex retelling delights. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

J. Michael Straczynski, close friend of Ellison (1934–2018) and the executor of his estate, honors his commitment to publish the brilliant third and final Dangerous Visions anthology, a stellar assembly of impressive talent which fulfills the series’ mandate to present “cutting-edge stories that spoke to our humanity in all its flaws, faults, and glories.” These 32 tales come from both big names—including James S.A. Corey and David Brin—and relative unknowns. Standouts include Stephen Robinett’s chilling “Assignment No. 1,” an all-too-plausible exploration of how elder care might be handled in the future. In Cecil Castellucci’s “After Taste,” an interstellar foodie’s visit to another species to assess their cuisine lands her in an unexpected dilemma that will remind readers of an emotionally complex Twilight Zone episode. Dan Simmons’s gut-wrenching “The Final Pogrom” opens with the line, “The IBM, Honeywell, and other advanced computers were immensely useful in the final roundup of the Jews,” before detailing how technological advances can continue to be harnessed in support of humanity’s worst aspects. The tales are bookended by Straczynski’s essays describing his relationship with Ellison and the process of selecting what has been included in this volume, which was initially scheduled to appear in 1974. The result is a must-read for genre fans. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Jacka follows An Inheritance of Magic with this dense, pulse-pounding fantasy adventure. Twentysomething Londoner Stephen Oakwood has moved out of his aunt’s house and now lives with strangers, eking out his rent payments by working odd jobs collecting Wells, or stores of magical essence, for anyone who’ll pay. In the meantime, he continues his search for his missing father, an investigation that puts him on the radar of the Winged, a cult that claims to hold the secret to his father’s whereabouts. Becoming involved with the Winged, however, puts him in danger from other prospective members who feel threatened by his presence and desperately want to join the cult themselves. The action never relents and the magic system remains intricately detailed, occasionally overwhelmingly so. Stephen inches closer to discovering his father’s whereabouts, but his journey is cut off by an abrupt cliffhanger that will leave readers more frustrated than excited for the next installment. Still, series fans will enjoy the return to this magical world. Agent: Sophie Hicks, Sophie Hicks Agency. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Kwan’s unfulfilling fantasy debut remixes Chinese legends about dragons and the red threads of fate. Sai, 25, struggles to run the failing teahouse left by his late father while also tending to his ailing mother. His unusual gift of being able to see the red threads of fate, which link true lovers together, allows him to earn some income on the side by working as a matchmaker, though he is mostly seen as a charlatan. Sai’s own thread is gray and unraveling, and he’s afraid to discover where it might lead. When a doctor claims to have a miracle cure for Sai’s mother made of blue dragon scales, Sai is skeptical that dragons could be real, but he’s also desperate. To his surprise, the treatment works, and his mother makes an extraordinary recovery. Then the emperor gets wind of this miracle cure and orders Sai to track down the dragon. On this seemingly impossible quest, Sai discovers that the dragon legends are true—and that his fate is inextricably tied to them. The premise has promise, but faulty execution, from uneven pacing to flat characterization, sells the story short. Given the current boom of dragon books, readers will be better served elsewhere. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich, and Bourret. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Taking the form of a disturbing, high-stakes choose-your-own-adventure novel, Arjam’s captivating debut explores loneliness and desolation. Vicken intends to ride the Montreal subway to the end of the line, where, at the Saint Lawrence River, he plans to die by drowning. When he arrives at his stop, however, he finds himself unable to exit: the station has turned into an enormous, incomprehensible, unmappable maze of hallways and caverns. Reminiscent of Susanna Clark’s Piranesi, and with nods to Borges’s “Library of Babel,” it’s a surreal setting rendered all the more horrifying by the mysteries lurking beneath the empty halls. Readers ostensibly control Vicken’s choices as he navigates this harrowing labyrinth, flipping to different pages depending on what action they want him to take, but as the novel unfolds, one is left with the feeling that free will is an illusion. Equally haunting and heartbreaking, this complex meditation on belonging announces an exciting new voice in experimental horror. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Leede (Maeve Fly) masterfully eases readers into a taut horror plot in her standout sophomore outing, which works both as an nail-biting apocalyptic tale and as an empathetic look at the impact of being raised in a harshly restrictive environment. Sophie and her twin, Noah, grew up in Wisconsin, raised by devout Catholics who frightened the children when they were only five by telling them that “God, Jesus, demons, and the Devil are always watching [and] they all know our every thought.” Their parents’ chance discovery that Noah has a magazine with a cover photo of two men kissing, leads to his being banished to “a spiritual sanctuary for families afflicted with challenged children,” and Sophie blames herself for not protecting him. As Sophie matures, she finds herself mocked by schoolmates for her sexual naivete. Meanwhile, a deadly virus that drastically increases the libidos of those infected spreads to the Midwest from the Northeast, and after Sophie gets dramatic proof that it has reached her small town, she must embark on a desperate flight for survival. Leede does a fantastic job putting readers in the head of her wonderfully flawed and recognizably human lead. Add in plenty of page-turning suspense, and this proves hard to put down. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

A trio of witch sisters star in Sivinski’s charming if slightly overstuffed historical fantasy debut. Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley happily run the Crescent Moon teahouse in 1870s Chicago—until the Council of Witches pays them a visit and assigns them a complicated mission: help three unfulfilled witches learn their Tasks, or true callings, before those witches die. Failure to uncover these witches’ Tasks will bring negative consequences, including the Council shutting down the teahouse. As the sisters set out on this daunting quest, they discover that someone has cursed them, intending to tear them apart and prevent them from using their magic as seers. Now the sisters must juggle breaking that curse and helping the witches figure out their Tasks. There’s a lot going on, but the story often meanders as Sivinski unfolds the sisters’ various adventures. Still, the fierce love between the protagonists rings true, and the rich, cozy setting will make readers wish they had their own warm cup of tea. This satisfies. Agent: Adria Goetz, KT Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Originally self-published in 2023, Wang’s overly ambitious standalone fantasy (after The Sword of Kaigen) addresses two weighty social problems: a wealthy, advanced culture feeding off a disadvantaged one, and talented women being kept subservient by a male elite. When a desperate tribe tries to outrace the deadly Blight and find safety in the city of Tiran, only a skilled hunter, Thomil, and his young niece, Carra, survive. Ten years later, as an underclass janitor, Thomil is surprised to be named the lab assistant of Sciona, a talented magical scholar and the only woman to have tested into the ranks of Tiran’s ruling and mostly hostile mages. Working together, Thomil and Sciona gradually learn the city’s unholy secret: Tiranese achievements depend on slaughtering the Kwen, Thomil’s people, in a land called the Otherrealm, for magical energy. Wang slows her plot by minutely delineating this world’s scientific magic system and endows her characters with jarring 21st-century adolescent lingo. The bittersweet ending only partially justifies Sciona’s quest to change her society and Thomil’s rage at its selfishness. Impatient sword-and-sorcery fantasy fans will struggle. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

August debuts with a thought-provoking postapocalyptic space opera about being alone in the universe. By the time humans developed the tech for space exploration, every planet they discovered was eerily deserted, but without evidence of violence or catastrophe. Now archivist Scout travels the desolate universe with her brother, Kieran, and their cat, Pumpkin, looking for data caches left behind by lost civilizations and hoping for clues as to what happened. On one such mission, Scout and crew discover a message that gives a name to the world-ending entity: Endri. It’s the best intel they’ve found and the closest they’ve come to being able to save their own people from meeting a similar fate, but a greedy, for-profit corporation eager to steal the information before they can get it in the right hands. The stakes should feel high as they race from one destination to the next, but August keeps things fairly mellow with a tight focus on the characters’ internal lives, frequent flashbacks, and excerpts from Scout’s entry logs about the dead civilizations she’s found so far. Readers who like their space operas on the cozy side will find this hits the spot. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Cosmic horror is alive and well in this eerie collection of what Bram Stoker Award winner Lansdale (Moon Lake) considers to be his eight best Lovecraftian tales, each with different settings and styles and often pulling from other authors’ oeuvres as well. “Dread Island” riffs on Mark Twain, opening with the line “this here story is as true as that other story that was written down about me and Jim,” and going on to tell of how Huck Finn risks his life to save Tom Sawyer from a mysterious evil. Lansdale’s mimicry extends to Edgar Allan Poe as well; “The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning” is a new C. Auguste Dupin exploit, in which the sleuth looks into eyewitness accounts of oddly colored lightning. A third highlight, “The Tall Grass,” evokes Algernon Blackwood, as a businessman traveling in the West has an unsettling experience when his train stops after midnight in the middle of a patch of unusually tall prairie grass that “shifted in the moonlight like waves of gold-green seawater pulled by the tide-making forces of the moon.” Lansdale fans and Lovecraft devotees alike will be impressed. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink