This was my second time reading this novella collection, and I have to say: it absolutely lived up to every wonderful memory of my first read. There were many small flourishes and touches that passed me by the first time, and it was a joy and a pleasure to notice and appreciate them this go around. … More Los Nefilim by T. Frohock
Marina and Sergey have crafted a unique and strange experience in Vita Nostra, one requiring effort and attention from the reader to unravel. While it is a book set in a magic school, it is dissimilar to most everything else I’ve encountered in the magic school subgenre. The students sit under constant threat of severe retribution should they fail to perform – up to and including the deaths of their loved ones. They are assigned strange and esoteric mental exercises, forced to run until they can’t any more, forced to prostitute themselves. It is a book without chapters, without clear plot or goals. … More Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
This is not a comfortable book. It is brutal. It is often gory. It is violent, torturous, and painful. It is not palatable. And yet, A Lush and Seething Hell is perhaps one of the most polished and seamless books I have read. As Chuck Wendig put it in the foreword, “his magic tricks remain pure fucking magic. These murder ballads are ones we have not heard before.” I cannot find it in myself to disagree with him. When I review a book, I tend to pick it apart to see what makes it tick. Then, I reduce it down into a format that will give a reader a good idea as to the tone and content of the book while also allowing some of my own biases and voice to come through. I fail to pick this book apart. I fail to see the specific gears that make it tick, though I can certainly see the hands turning and hear the bells chiming. … More A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs
RJ Barker’s world in The Bone Ships is a rich, vibrant tapestry. The reader is immersed from the start, drowned in the sheer audacity of the writing. Each sentence had a lot of love poured into it, and it comes across clear as a clarion. The prose is dense with strong slice-of-life elements and creates a sense of “otherness” without crossing over into inaccessible. The use of vernacular is masterful, neither too extreme nor too campy, contributing to the je ne sais quoi that pervades the novel as a whole. The world is strange, disturbing, and filled with dangers the characters must navigate at every step… yet which is entirely normal to them in context. … More The Bone Ships by RJ Barker
The Imaginary Corpse by Tyler Hayes is hands-down the most imaginative, fresh, and kind book I’ve read this year. It is absolutely unlike anything else I’ve read, combining the innocence and creativity of a middle grade novel with the darkness and trauma of adult fantasy. At a glance, that makes it tempting to label this book as YA or middle grade, but upon reading it, that’s clearly not the case. It deals with loss of innocence, growing up, trauma, PTSD, identity, and abuse in a way that is both genuinely kind and genuinely heartbreaking. … More The Imaginary Corpse by Tyler Hayes
Tamsyn Muir’s debut novel reaches out and grabs you in its skeletal fist from the very first page and doesn’t let go. Gideon The Ninth is witty, irreverent, and fresh as hell. It’s fucking delightful. It’s not all glitz, glam, and bones though – this is a book with a big ol’ heart hiding underneath the aviator glasses, laugh-aloud banter, and, of course, the mountain of corpses. This is a tight, polished narrative with twists and turns that were hinted at heavily in retrospect, yet take the reader completely by surprise as they unfold. … More Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My heart broke for the team of the Merian, even as it was flooded with optimism and hope for humanity. Becky Chambers is a master of delivering sadness and devastation right alongside a true and genuine love for humanity, and that is something that illuminates everything she’s written. … More To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
I didn’t go in to this book expecting to find happiness. I came in knowing this was a dystopian novel. I knew this would be a soul-crushing and painful depiction of an all-too-possible future. However, somewhere between the first page and the last, I was lulled into a sense of complacency, and I was caught off guard by what a damn punch to the gut this book ultimately ended up being. … More The Warehouse by Rob Hart
In Egan’s version of the future, society has developed technology which allows one to create a precise one-for-one digital Copy of themselves. This Copy is identical in every way to the original person, and is often used by the rich and wealthy as a way to obtain partial immortality following death. Those of the upper middle class may be able to afford a scan on their deathbed… but may not be able to afford to actually be simulated due to the price of computing power and server time, or may have to “live” with extremely slow processing speeds. … More Permutation City by Greg Egan
Red, White, and Royal Blue will put your emotions through the wringer and bring you back out on the other side as a fundamentally better human being. I’m usually not a fan of contemporary fiction, but this one hit me right in the heart. I loved it to bits. Truly, I just wanted to take Alex and Henry, smoosh their faces together, and tell them that they need to kiss right this minute and acknowledge that they truly are queer as a maypole and desperately, desperately in love with one another. … More Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Black Forest Basilisks 