Jenny Greenteeth, a millennia-old monster, serves as the offbeat narrator of this sinister, Arthuriana-infused fantasy debut from O’Neill. After Parson Asa Braddock attempts to drown human witch Temperance Crump in the lake where Jenny lives near the small English village of Chipping Appleby, Jenny and Temperance vow to fight back against his cruel ways. Then they learn that Braddock is actually possessed by a malevolent magical force known as the Erl King. On the advice of salesman goblin Brackus Marsh, Temperance seeks out Gwyn ap Nudd, king of the fae, who sends Jenny, Temperance, and Brackus on a three-part quest to banish the Erl King. The trio’s sweet, unlikely friendship is forged and tested during months of travel and danger. Readers led by the marketing blurb to expect a cozy vibe may be surprised by the frequently sad and violent plot, but Jenny’s unique perspective and the bond among the adventurers add some much needed levity. This will be a hit with fans of classic quest fantasies. Agent: Sam Edenborough, Greyhound Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

Moorman (The Magic All Around) delivers a heartwarming story of love, loss, and time travel. In a bout of grief and depression, 35-year-old widow Josephine Reynolds wishes she had never been born—a wish that changes the course of history. After her sister, Katherine, suggests a fresh start, Josephine buys Carter Mansion, her great-grandmother Alma’s home in Nashville’s historic district, aiming to restore it. She tracks down the house’s original front door and key at a local salvage yard—and, after installing and stepping through the door, finds herself transported back to 1927. As Josephine is swept into the Jazz Age, she meets and bonds with Alma and finds love with a handsome man named Danny. But Josephine soon realizes her careless wish has altered the timeline, and unless she can change history by stopping a police raid on Alma’s speakeasy, her existence in the future will be erased. Josephine’s low-heat romance with Danny takes center stage for much of the light and entertaining narrative, which comes full circle in a predictable yet cozy ending. Despite a slow and somewhat superficial plot, readers will be captivated by Moorman’s lovely descriptions of the 1920s. It’s sweet and comforting reading. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

For the sensitive and eerie 10th standalone portal fantasy in the Hugo Award–winning Wayward Children series (after Mislaid in Parts Half-Known), bestseller McGuire expands the backstory of Russian orphan Nadya Sokolov. Nadya was born with a stump for a right arm and raised by the state until she was adopted by American missionaries and taken to Denver. Though she’s quite capable with only one hand, her adoptive parents still insist on buying her a prosthetic arm to make her “whole,” which only increases her feelings of alienation. When she falls through a watery doorway into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake, an aquatic world whose people live in partnership with giant turtles, Nadya is happy to find a new home, family, and sense of belonging. But Belyyreka has many dangers, and she’ll have to fight to maintain her life there. The setting is evocative and mysterious, and McGuire makes Nadya’s attempts to find her place in the world stirring while touching upon disability rights issues and quietly condemning parents who see children (adoptive or otherwise) as status symbols rather than people. Newcomers are sure to be sucked in, and though longtime readers of the series already know how Nadya’s story ends, they’ll enjoy seeing where it began. This is another gem from McGuire. Agent: Diana Fox, Fox Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

World Fantasy Award winner Shawl (Kinning) strings together a deeply philosophical but often puzzling series of interconnected stories about a corporate government’s attempts to set up an interstellar penal colony. Throughout, Shawl leans heavily into the grisly stakes of their worldbuilding. “In Colors Everywhere,” for example, explores the visceral body horror and sexual coercion involved in populating a new planet and the questions about reproductive freedom that come with it. Both “Over a Long Time Ago” and “The Mighty Phin” delve into the complications of existing as a disembodied consciousness on a ship database for over a century, while “Deep End” carries this scenario through to its most terrifying conclusion as one such consciousness is downloaded into a cloned and possibly radiation-poisoned body subject to uncontrollable pain. Shawl’s themes are clear and powerful, but the literal events of her nonlinear plots often prove difficult to understand, especially as readers must track characters that inhabit various forms, whether their own body, the duplicated body of their dead exes, or a simulation. While the uninitiated will struggle to follow what’s happening, Shawl’s devoted fans will find much to ponder in this unsettling vision of the horrors of interstellar settler colonialism. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

This riveting slow-burn thriller from Cooke (A Haunting in the Arctic) connects the sins of the past with the horrors of the present in modern-day Scotland. When Clem gets word that her 19-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the burn ward after a trip to the Orkney Islands goes awry, she rushes to Erin’s bedside with granddaughter Freya in tow. When Erin wakes and begins speaking in vague but horrifying terms about an incident involving a fire; the death of her boyfriend, Arlo; and the disappearance of her best friend, Senna, the police suspect that Erin might not have simply been a bystander in those events. Clem ventures to the island to investigate along with her estranged ex-husband, Quinn. They uncover a grisly truth connected to something called the Book of Witching and an execution centuries prior that may still be claiming the lives of innocents. Cooke does a nimble job of jumping between the present and 16th-century Scotland, providing lush description and snappy dialogue that brings the story to vivid, brutal life on the way to an ending that masterfully ties the many threads together. The result is certain to satisfy fans of supernatural thrillers. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Playing fast and loose with both Greek myth and ancient history, Webb debuts with a chaotic and disappointing feminist coming-of-power story, the first in her Dark Pantheon Trilogy. Teenage Danae, the outspoken second daughter of a Naxos fisherman, resents her village’s blind acceptance of the cruel 12-god Olympian pantheon that demands human sacrifice. Then her sister, Alea, is mysteriously abducted by the gods, impregnated, and returned to the village, where she is shunned by her fellow mortals and driven to suicide. This spurs Danae onto a vengeful odyssey of violent adventures, each marked by a mystical experience in which she gradually takes possession of her prophesied unearthly powers to free humanity from the gods. Despite Webb’s heroic efforts to broaden Danae’s shallow growing-up tale to epic proportions, there’s a YA feeling to this. Off-key invocations of mythological figures and places often fail to resonate, and the girl power themes feel shoehorned in, failing to engage with actual history. Considering the glut of Greek mythological retellings, readers will be better served elsewhere. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Cleverly blending science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Hanks (Swashbucklers) uses a video game format to probe the nature of humanity in all its glory and gore. The story kicks off when a mysterious and foreboding tower suddenly materializes in the air over central England, and a diverse group of 13 strangers are zapped up to its doorway. Among them are Alden, a disillusioned teacher; Nia, an underappreciated game designer; Dirk, an arrogant American Instagram influencer; an unnamed priest; and a father, Earl, and his precocious teenage daughter, Rakie. Though the group fear the tower and sense that it is somehow sentient, they follow the instruction to ascend, which is written in glowing letters above the door. The priest believes it’s the Rapture, but upon taking some gold from a treasure chest on the first floor, he is ripped apart by scythes. The remaining 12 realize they are in a video game designed to “test [them] on what’s important” and must survive various levels within the tower—including a torture chamber, a huge drilling machine, and an upside down room—as they work their way to the top. Hanks punctuates each level with displays of the best and worst human qualities: fear, logic, betrayal, sympathy, sacrifice. The pages fly by through all the humor, social commentary, and suspense. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

O’Neill (When We Lost Our Heads) conjures a haunting fantasy set in the war-torn country of Elysia. Sofia, the 14-year-old daughter of renowned writer Clara Bottom, is tasked with smuggling her mother’s latest manuscript out of the capital as enemy forces invade. But when the evacuation train mysteriously halts in a forest, Sofia loses the manuscript and must navigate a war-ravaged landscape in search of it. As she struggles to blend in as a peasant to avoid unwanted attention, she befriends a talking goose and encounters survivors of a brutal occupation. All the while, Sofia grapples with whether to prioritize her own survival or the artistic legacy her mother has entrusted to her. O’Neill masterfully blends moments of whimsy with the grim realities of war, exploring themes of art, loyalty, and the complexities of mother-daughter relationships. The lush prose and fantastical elements draw readers into a magical and heartbreaking world. Like the best fairy tales, the result feels both timeless and painfully relevant. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Hilton (Death Pact) takes on a classic trope—people involved with a horrible deed in their adolescence are threatened by something possibly supernatural as adults—in this middling horror novel. In 1988, teenager Andy Miller belongs to a group of five friends in northwestern England, one of whom, Carl Butler, has a sadistic streak. Two girls from their school—Melanie Bishop and her adoptive sister Poppy—encounter the group torturing frogs at a pond before going on their way—only to be viciously attacked. Andy and his pals were the last to see the sisters before someone bludgeoned them, killing Melanie and leaving Poppy with serious brain injuries. They suspect the assailant was Ian Nixon, an older boy reputed to be slow-witted, whom they’d seen nearby with a claw hammer, and report him to the police, leading to Ian’s arrest and suicide while in custody. Thirty-five years later, Carl is beaten to death, possibly by the legendary local monster Ginny Greenteeth. Whatever it was that killed Carl, it’s coming for the other four friends next. The final reveals are shocking but not particularly satisfying and Hilton isn’t successful at creating a spooky atmosphere. There’s little to make this stand out. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Kuroki (the Black Diamond series) launches a historical romantasy series with this addictive, high-concept epic that travels from the modern day to 1870s Japan. Isla Mackenzie heads from Scotland to Kagoshima, Japan, to research what became of her great-great-great-grandfather, Hisakichi Kuroki, whose story has been lost to time. While searching through shrine grounds on a stormy night in the city, she’s unexpectedly transported to 1877, the last days of the samurai. She soon meets samurai Keiichirō Maeda, and a doomed romance blossoms. Isla knows all too well that the samurai do not survive the bloody Satsuma Rebellion after their leader Saigō Takamori is killed. Now she must choose: return to her own time, stay with Keiichirō and die alongside him—or try to change the course of history. Isla’s foreknowledge keeps the stakes of the love story sky-high against the vivid, wonderfully detailed backdrop of feudal Japan. Readers won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough. Agent: Jason Yarn, Jason Yarn Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink