News Rebecca Yarros

Rebecca Yarros’ Third Empyrean Novel Has a Title and Release Date

The dragons return in 2025

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 28, 2024

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The wait isn’t over—not quite yet. But the many, many fans of Rebecca Yarros’ bestselling, beloved-by-TikTok Empyrean series can at least mark their calendars (or get their preorders on), because the third book in the series now has a title and a release date. Onyx Storm will be in readers’ hands on January 21, 2025.

Yarros made the announcement in a video aired on Good Morning America, in which she said that while she can’t tell fans much about the book yet, “There will be politics, new adventures, old enemies and of course, dragons.”

The hugely popular series began last year with Fourth Wing, which follows the story of Violet Sorrengail as her life takes an unexpected path to the Basgiath War College, where she has to survive vicious competition—and romantic entanglements. Iron Flame came out only months later and immediately joined Fourth Wing on bestseller lists. The series is expected to ultimately include five volumes. Yarros is also returning to her romance (as opposed to romantasy)-novel roots; it was announced in the fall that she’s writing two romance novels for Amazon’s Montlake imprint.

Fourth Wing was picked up for series adaptation by Amazon MGM Studios last year; Yarros is an executive producer on the adaptation, which doesn’t yet have a showrunner or cast. [end-mark]

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News Hell’s Hundred

Soho Press Launches New Horror Imprint Called Hell’s Hundred

The imprint’s first titles will hit shelves in summer of 2024.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on February 7, 2024

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Independent publisher Soho Press is launching a new horror imprint called Hell’s Hundred. This is Soho Press’ first new imprint since the launching of Soho Teen in 2012—according to an article in Publisher’s Weekly, the decision came after the Soho team received a selection of horror submissions that they were interested in, which didn’t match up with what their current imprints represent.

The name of the imprint, according to a Soho Press statement, is inspired by “the once bleak, now chic New York City neighborhood of SoHo—formerly known as ‘hell’s hundred acres’ for its grim industrial facades and deadly fires—Hell’s Hundred provides fertile ground for new nightmares to take root.”

The first two Hell’s Hundred books—youthjuice by E.K. Sathue and Blood Like Mine by Stuart Neville—come out in June 2024 and August 2024 respectively. Neville’s other books (Blood Like Mine is his tenth for Soho), which are noir mysteries with supernatural elements, will also move over to the Hell’s Hundred imprint.

Soho promises that Hell’s Hundred will appeal to all. “Both die-hard horror lovers and the horror-curious will find much to savor here,” a statement from the publisher states. “From grisly and macabre to darkly humorous, Hell’s Hundred publishes evocative horror fiction by true genre aficionados, revealing profound truths about the most horrifying aspects of the human experience with perfect doses of terror.”

You can see Hell’s Hundred’s catalog here. [end-mark]

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Book Recommendations Jo Walton Reads

Jo Walton’s Reading List: January 2024

Only eight books this month, but all of them were good.

By Jo Walton

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Published on February 5, 2024

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January started at home in Montreal, having a lovely time with friends visiting for New Year. Then there was a busy week in Chicago, and I flew from there to Florence on the tenth. So a truly excellent start to 2024, really. Everything I was reading this month was very long, which made me feel as if I’d been reading all the same things forever—normally I’ll be finishing something fairly regularly, but January I didn’t finish anything at all until the 22nd! I read only eight books, but some of them were enormous, and all of them were good.

Middlemarch, George Eliot (1871)
Re-read, for book club. It’s funny, really—this is a wonderful book, and a generous book, and one that is full of marvellous three-dimensional characters about whom I care a great deal, and yet all I want to do is take them out of their narrow world and give them another world where they can have more opportunities to be their best selves. And yet it is a book about how most of us do not do anything that visibly changes the world and yet we do have a powerful and lasting effect on it—that’s the theme, and no wonder I wrote a piece last time I read it pondering on how Eliot had a science-fictional sensibility. It’s clear-sighted and has a wide vision and it’s probably my favourite novel written in the nineteenth century. It’s a really fun read. And I want Dorothea to be a Steerswoman and Rosamund to live in the Culture.

Bartlett’s Poems for Occasions, edited by Geoffrey O’Brien (2007)
A large anthology of poetry organized by theme, containing a huge mix of poetry from all over the world and all through time, but with a concentration on things originally written in English in the last few centuries. I felt this mostly had good choices, and I loved the Chinese poems in almost every section. This is so long, and so full of poems, and I’ve been reading it for so long that it’s hard to assess. If you want a large comprehensive poetry anthology that will last you a while, then this is a pretty good one.

Furious Heaven, Kate Elliott (2023)
Sequel to Unconquerable Sun and it continues to be Alexander the Great in space. For me half the fun is seeing how she does the Alexander parallels and how she’s going to do different things, and the other half is liking the actual science-fictional worldbuilding. These things are not unrelated, as the worldbuilding is making the Alexander parallels work, but it’s interesting in its own right. This book is very long, and the prequel was not short, and I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time in this world recently. But now there’s rather a long wait until the third book, Lady Chaos, is going to answer my questions. The thing I most want to know is whether she’s going to go on into the Funeral Games period, because it could be really, really interesting if she does. But there’s a long way to go before we get there. Meanwhile this is excellent.

Margot at War: Love and Betrayal in Downing Street, 1912-1916, Anne de Courcy (2014)
I love Anne de Courcy, and she brings so much to biography. She was constantly quoting other people about the major world events happening around her protagonists and giving other angles on them, from letters and diaries of people you wouldn’t ordinarily hear from in a book like this, like a girl on holiday in Cowes the week WWI broke out, and the Fabian Beatrice Webb. Margot Asquith was married to the prime minister during the first half of World War I, and he was having a chaste but obsessive affair with his daughter’s friend Venetia Stanley, writing her multiple letters every day. De Courcy brings clear-eyed scrutiny to the whole situation and all the people involved, and a level of detail that almost feels like knowing them all personally. It’s a world that doesn’t exist anymore, and good riddance too, but it’s a fascinating place to visit like this.

I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), Alexander Manzoni(1827)
Hilarious historical romp originally written in Italian. I read it as part of the Harvard Shelf. This book has larger-than-life characters, evil villains, repentant villains, the Black Death, True Love, a saintly friar, a wicked nun, a saint, bread riots, narrow escapes, a virtuous maiden, a cowardly curate, a heroic weaver, beautiful descriptions of the Italian countryside, etc. You aren’t supposed to take it too seriously, and indeed it is delightful but not in the least deep. It’s long, but it keeps moving at a good clip, except on a couple of occasions where it literally stops to show you its research—the actual documents and proclamations of the day!

The Monkey and Other Stories, Miklos Banffy (1947, trans. 2021)
Excellent collection of short stories by Hungarian writer Banffy, translated by Thomas Sneddon. To my surprise some of them (and some of the best of them) were historical short fiction, while others were more like the novels of his I’ve read, set in Europe (mostly Hungary) in the first half of the twentieth century. Almost all of them are good stories and memorable. I just keep being more and more impressed with Banffy the more I read.

Demon Daughter, Lois McMaster Bujold (2024)
Another Penric and Desdemona novella! I can’t exactly say this is a story where nothing bad happens, but it’s close. You probably don’t want to read it without having read the other eleven Pen and Des stories, but it might stand alone reasonably well, Bujold is good at that. I can’t imagine anyone else taking something horrific like demonic possession and making it so domesticated. I don’t think I can say anything about it without spoilers. Well, I loved reading this, I’ll read any other ones as soon as they pop up. (It was also nice to read something short that I could get through fast, as I am still in the middle of some very long books.)

The Only Purple House in Town, Ann Aguirre (2023)
So, this is a feel-good romance set in a universe where witches came out a few years ago and shapeshifters and fae are also around, but it’s basically this world. I’m not usually keen on urban fantasy because I find the worldbuilding annoying, but this was sufficiently well done that it worked for me. It helped that the love interest is a were-hawk, and that was really well done in terms of who he is and how that works. Aguirre is one of those writers who writes sentences that make me want to read the next sentence and chapters that make me want to read the next chapter, so I gobbled this up.

This is almost a gothic, because a girl inherits a house, but it’s much heavier on the friend group than on the weird, which is odd when there are actual paranormal people around. There’s a woman called Iris whose family are psychic vampires but she doesn’t seem to have any abilities, and she inherits a house from her great aunt and lives there with a diverse and assorted group of people (lots of representation, none of it feeling token) who become found family, and of course her powers eventually develop too. It’s a very warm and cuddly book, in which there’s never a moment’s doubt as to what will happen but you can’t put it down anyway. [end-mark]

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So here are some suggestions for books that grab you. I’m trying to suggest a wide range of things, so that there might be some you haven’t read before—sometimes we want to re-read and comfort read, but sometimes we want new things that are sure to hold our attention.

Children’s Books and YA

First, for those of you with kids wanting distracting books and those of you who, like me, happily read books for all ages just the way I did as a kid:

Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars and the sequel, Okay for Now. These are not genre, they’re historical novels about kids in the US in the 1950s going to school and growing up. The first one has great stuff about Shakespeare, and the second about Audubon. They’re just great. Huge thanks to Suzanna Hersey, whose tastes are incredibly congruent with mine, for recommending these to me.

Ella Minnow Pea, a fascinating Ruritanian dystopian comedy by Mark Dunn. This is about an imaginary island off the coast of the US which reveres Nevin Nollop, the man who wrote the sentence “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog,” and when letters start falling off the memorial, they decide to do without the letters. This book is very funny and very clever too. Thanks to Gretchen McCulloch for reading this aloud to me on Discord, which was a great feat of pronunciation!

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, and after that, the rest of Rainbow Rowell. Eleanor & Park is about two geeky teenagers getting to know each other, and their differently difficult families, and it’s just perfect, and it has that “can’t put it down” quality. All her books are like that.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, a book about women pilots and spies in WW2 that does some incredibly clever POV stuff and is very powerful, but which also once caused me to miss my stop on the bus because I wasn’t paying attention to where I was.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. (You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?) It’s fantasy, and it really does have a very compelling voice. I once picked it up to look up something for the re-read I was doing and accidentally read four chapters. And it has the advantage of being long and having a sequel, so once you are head-down into it, it will last you a long time.

Nina Kiriki Hoffman—almost everything she has written, but start with A Red Heart of Memories because it’s especially grabby right up front. She’s writing Zenna Henderson-esque novels set in the real US but with families who have magic, which isn’t a genre that I often like, but she really makes it work.

Ira Levin’s The Boys From Brazil, and again, pretty much all of Ira Levin. His work has that compelling quality. The Boys From Brazil is about cloning Hitler, and it’s really a compulsive read.

Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series. This may not be grabby for everyone because of the style, which really works for me but not universally. If you try the sample chapters and you’re not grabbed, wait to read it another time. But if you are, these books are incredibly absorbing and all-consuming in addition to being great, and I highly recommend them.

Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire: Get past the first intro chapter and you will get so completely sucked in to the problems of these worlds that you’ll forget all about the real one. This is one of the very few books we’ve done for book club that absolutely everyone loved. No wonder it’s nominated for all the awards.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the book that could always reliably take me to Middle-earth until I’d memorized the whole thing—so that if you start a sentence, I can finish it. I can now only read it slowly. But if you haven’t already read it to death, this is the perfect time to read or re-read it.

C.J. Cherryh’s Chanur books, beginning with Pride of Chanur—do not read out of order. Aliens and space stations par excellence, and again, utterly all-consuming.

Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice and all the subsequent books in the Vorkosigan series. If you haven’t read them, this is your lucky day. They may look like MilSF, and they are, but they are also so much more: they are about family and home and integrity and reproduction. I’ve written about them a lot, they’ve won a ton of awards, they are very good, and also very, very, very readable.

John Barnes’s A Million Open Doors and indeed, lots of Barnes. He does not write happy feel-good books, though AMOD is the closest he comes, but he has that spellbinding voice that means you want to keep on reading. I once re-read this on a very, very bad day, and it absolutely succeeded in removing me from myself. Not a comfort read, but it definitely worked.

Rosemary Kirstein’s The Steerswoman and sequels—available inexpensively as ebooks. I’ve written about these, too, they’re about people trying to understand the world they live in using scientific methods, and they’re wonderful friendship-centered, science-centered, and grabby.

Octavia Butler’s Clay’s Ark (and indeed most of her fiction, but I’d avoid the Parable books right now). Excellent SF, though somewhat pessimistic, impossible to put down.

My husband Emmet suggested Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker books. I first encountered them as radio plays, and while I certainly find the books delightfully readable, I’ve never thought of them as must-read grabby. But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe they are and I never noticed because they’re so short I’d have read them in one sitting anyway.

He also suggested Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Ethshar books, starting with With a Single Spell, which almost made it into my “books where nothing bad happens” piece except that bad things happen on page one. Light, light fantasy, clever, and very readable in that good way. His Dragon Weather series also has that same thing.

Mainstream and Other Genres

Jennifer Crusie writes genre romance, and she has that gift of the grab—I’d recommend starting with Welcome to Temptation, which connects to Faking It, which is my favourite of her books. But you can feel safe with anything of hers to suck you in and pull you along.

Nevil Shute. Unfortunately I have no unread Nevil Shute, it’s all re-reads for me. But there’s something about his prose and his way of telling a story that really pulls me into it. If you haven’t read any, start with A Town Like Alice or Pied Piper. If you have read some, find the ones you’re lucky enough not to have read yet. Shute wrote some borderline SF, too.

Donna Leon’s Brunetti series—start with the second one, Death in a Strange Country, because that’s where they start to be really great. I have the latest one unread and I am saving it.

Peter Dickinson also wrote mysteries, and they’re all grabby in just the right way. Probably the best one to start with is A Perfect Gallows about an actor and a play being put on during WW2, or Hindsight, which also is about a wartime crime being investigated a long time afterwards.

Noel Streatfeild—did you know her adult backlist are available very inexpensively as ebooks? I bought and read them all last year and I thought I was doing really well reading only one a month, but now I wish I’d saved one. However, they are there for others, and definitely things I read in one bite.

Robert Graves’s I, Claudius and the sequel, Claudius the God: written in first person, utterly absorbing accounts of shenanigans in Ancient Rome.

Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy and also everything else she ever wrote, but especially this one. Historical novels about Ancient Greece; this one is about Alexander the Great and it’s set in Persia.

Autobiographies

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini—I’ve written about this, too, I couldn’t put it down.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: engaging in exactly the way I mean when I say grabby.

Moab Is My Washpot by Stephen Fry, which I idly started reading one day, couldn’t stop, and bought the second volume the second I’d finished it.

Non-fiction

So people don’t often talk about unputdownable non-fiction… I don’t know why, because there is some, and non-fiction can sometimes work when stories do not.

Don Kulik’s A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea is one I read recently that I absolutely could not stop reading. Incredibly absorbing. I bought it because I was mildly interested and then found myself riveted.

Kate Harris’s Lands of Lost Borders: This is a travel memoir about cycling the Silk Road, but it’s so well written and so full of thoughts and places, and so open and honest, that I couldn’t put this down either.

Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts is another travel book, this one about a trip young Paddy made in 1933, walking to Constantinople. It’s funny and charming and full of incident, and an absolute joy to read.

Graphic Novels

Not my thing, but Ada Palmer recommends Kurt Busiek’s Astro City for its unputdownability. Grace Seybold says she devoured Ryan North’s Squirrel Girl as soon as it came out. Vicki Rosenzweig and a bunch of other friends all recommend Ursula Vernon’s Digger as not only very readable and also gentle and fun.

And I’d welcome more suggestions!

Originally published in April 2020.

The post Finding the Books That Grab You appeared first on Reactor.

Today, Tor Books announced that Stormlight Archive’s fifth book, Wind and Truth, will be available on December 6, 2024. That’s a little less than a year away, but you can pre-order it now.

Here’s the synopsis of Wind and Truth that came along with the announcement:

Dalinar Kholin has challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions, and the Knights Radiant and the nations of Roshar have a mere 10 days to prepare for the worst. The fate of the entire world—and the Cosmere at large—hangs in the balance.

We don’t know much more about the fifth installment, including what the cover will look like. Rest assured, however, that you can now schedule your re-read of the series to time with the release of book number five, which will be the climax of the first arc of Sanderson’s planned ten-book series.

Pre-order Wind and Truth or order the first four books at the retailer of your choice at the link here.

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I love a list except when I don’t. A good list is personal and knows it. A bad list is one of those clickbaity rankings of superhero movies, or Star Wars movies, or other things that it should frankly be illegal to rank at this moment in time. A great list breaks the rules—like Leah Schnelbach’s list ranking all the superhero origin movies they could remember. What did I just say? I said no more superhero ranking lists. But this one is what a good list should be, what it can be: Personal, clearly subjective, unexpected, and fun.

I used to have to make a ranked list every year—my top ten movies, and then ten more for good measure (and because ten is never enough). I agonized over this list. I spent hours and days and weeks trying to cram in viewings of all the movies I had not yet seen in a given year. (It is, to put it lightly, challenging making a complete movie ranking list in a small town that doesn’t get many independent films until months after their big-city releases.) Now I bask in the simplicity of our Reviewers’ Choice lists, which do not require ranking and can be as personal and loose as we wish.

But I also like other lists. Personal, subjective, unexpected, fun lists. So here are several lists made up of books I read this year. They were made using a small number of simple rules: Not everything I read is on one of these lists, but every book I read this year, regardless of publication date, could be included. Each book can appear only once. Each list can have a maximum of five books on it. And sometimes, a list is just one thing.

Three Excellent Series Books

• The Witch of Maracoor, Gregory Maguire (2023)

• Blade of Dream, Daniel Abraham (2023)

• Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo (2023)

The Witch of Maracoor ends a series that is not going to go down easy for every lover of Maguire’s Wicked—but the thing is, you should try it, you should let it unsettle you, you should see what happens to Rain. Do it for Elphie, do it for Rain, do it for all the girls burdened by hope and ancestry and loss and discovery. Blade of Dream is the middle book of Abraham’s masterful Kithamar trilogy, but you could probably read it first, and in fact I wish I could have the experience of reading each of the books in this not-yet-complete trilogy first. If only! As for Nghi Vo, every single book of hers is worth your time, and this entry into the Singing Hills cycle was particularly elegant and affecting at once. I hope this series never ends.

Five Books I Should Have Read a Long Time Ago

• Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, John Darnielle (2008)

• The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern (2011)

• The Revolution of Every Day, Cari Luna (2013)

• The Folded Clock, Heidi Julavits (2015)

• Dear Mr. You, Mary-Louise Parker (2015)

A wonderful thing about books that will become important to you is that you can read them whenever. When they come out, sure, but fifteen or forty years later is fine, too. That said, I still feel a ridiculous urge to apologize to the authors of books I should have read a million years ago. Sorry, Erin Morgenstern; your book is everything everyone told it would be, and I wish I’d had it in my brain this whole time! Sorry, John Darnielle; I know you’re a genius but I just kept wondering if I wanted to read about Black Sabbath, when the answer was clearly, “Yes, when Darnielle is writing about them!” Sorry, Cari Luna, who is also an excellent writing instructor; I should have read this book the minute it came out, because it’s just great and also it’s my old neighborhood through new eyes! Sorry, Heidi Julavits, I should have listened to my friend David about this genius book! And sorry, Mary-Louise Parker; I was being a dick and had doubts about a book by an actor, but this book made me cry more than once, and made me think even more times! Please write another one.

Let’s All Read More Books About Art

• Monsters, Claire Dederer (2023)

• Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, Jane Smiley (2005)

• Appropriate: A Provocation, Paisley Rekdal (2021)

• Thin Skin, Jenn Shapland (2023)

If I were to recommend one single nonfiction book from this year, it would be Monsters, which I have talked about on and off in this column since I started it. It is just that good. If you had told me some years ago that I would love a Jane Smiley nonfiction book about the novel, I would have been confused, because I have never otherwise read Jane Smiley. But this deep dive is an absolute treat for thinking about form and style and what makes a book a novel. And this Paisley Rekdal book? Sharp, thoughtful, difficult, considering, full of questions, full of every bit of nuance missing from a million online discussions.

I also have to mention Jenn Shapland’s Thin Skin, which is not just about art, but it is about living, and making art, and writing and trying to exist in a world that would often like us to stop thinking about the weird feelings it causes. I will follow Shapland to any topic; I learned that with her first book, My Autobiographies of Carson McCullers, which was ostensibly about an author I had never read but was, in fact, about so much more. This kind of expansive nonfiction makes me feel like the world is bigger every time I read it.

One Book From Which I Learned Something I Did Not Know That I Did Not Know

• The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel (2020)

I did not fully understand the term “Ponzi scheme,” despite reading it in the news approximately seven thousand times, until I read this book. It is a very, very, very good book, but for some reason I wanted to note this thing that I did not expect to learn from it. You just never know what you’ll take away from a great book, is all.

Two Books by One Criminally Under-read Author

• Trouble the Saints, Alaya Dawn Johnson (2020)

• The Library of Broken Worlds, Alaya Dawn Johnson (2023)

Trouble the Saints won the World Fantasy Award, yet I feel as if it also, quietly and frustratingly, faded from view too quickly. The Library of Broken Worlds is this year’s City of the Uncommon Thief for me—a young adult novel that crosses genre boundaries, reading-age boundaries, boundaries of how you can tell stories about teenagers, stories about stories, stories about impossible places and the lies our parents taught us and the difficulty of bringing truth to light. Among other things. This book needs more champions. I hope it will find the readers who will need it, and who will love it.

(Some of) The Most Excellent Books I Read This Year That Came Out Last Year

• The Spear Cuts Through Water,  Simon Jimenez (2022)

• Wolfish, Christiane M. Andrews (2022)

• The Visitors, Jessi Jezewska Stevens (2022)

• Body Work, Melissa Febos (2022)

• Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, Kate Beaton (2022)

These five books are impossible to pithily cover in a paragraph because they have nothing to do with one another except that they came out in the same year. The Spear Cuts Through Water is, I think, the great overlooked novel of 2022, the one that should have been everywhere, but it’s really long and somewhat challenging and you have to trust the person who says, as they shove it into your hands, “You really, really have to read this.” I still feel that this book could rewrite what fantasy is, as a genre, if only we would let it.

Wolfish is a beautiful middle-grade novel that exists so fully in the natural world that I can’t think of it without thinking of textures: fur, dirt, worms, stone, mud, sheep. The Visitors is a book so fascinating and unexpected that I think I need to read it again. Body Work is necessary reading for writers, a craft book about the personal that reminded me how joyous it is to learn. And Ducks just broke me. Never underestimate Kate Beaton. Never.

One Absolute What the FUCK? Book

• The Engagement, Chloe Hooper (2012)

How is this book not a movie? How is this book even a book? How did Chloe Hooper write the breathtaking nonfiction work The Tall Man and then this unnerving psychological thriller? No, it’s not speculative. No, I don’t care. I need someone to read it. I need to talk about it. It’s under my skin and it itches.

Two Beloved Poetry Collections

• Tanya, Brenda Shaughnessy (2023)

• I Do Everything I’m Told, Megan Fernandes (2023)

Here’s the thing about poetry, No, two things: I don’t read enough of it, and I am incoherent about it when I do. But I first read Brenda Shaughnessy over twenty years ago, and lately I have grown determined to read all the books of hers that I missed between Interior with Sudden Joy and now. Tanya is, like all her work, beautiful, and lingering. And as for Megan Fernandes, there is no chronicler of modern living quite like her. She can be sharp, she can be clever, she can be wise and desperate and funny and there is nothing she’s afraid to write about.

Five Brilliant Debut Novels (And One Story Collection)

• I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, M. Crane (2023)

• Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh (2023)

• Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, Molly McGhee (2023)

• The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (2023)

• Drinking From Graveyard Wells, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (2023)

This was, in fact, the hardest list to keep to five books, but I made the rules and I’m going to stick to them. Here you have unexpected and uneasy dystopias, brainwashed soldiers, desperate debtors, unchosen ones, and a child with two shadows; you have books published as SFF, books published as literary fiction, and one short story collection from a university press that simply needs to get the attention of a big-publisher book. I started my year with Exoskeletons and ended it with Some Desperate Glory and Jonathan Abernathy; in between I was knocked sideways by Bright Doors and Graveyard Wells. I specify this timeframe because while I think you should read all of these books, I also think you should give them breathing room. Read one, and let it settle. Let it sink. Let it percolate and grow into your mind.

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What lists would—could—you make from your year in reading?

Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Bluesky.

The post Rethinking the End of Year Book List appeared first on Reactor.

Anthologies

Magic Has No Borders edited by Samira Ahmed, Sona Charaipotra

Fourteen YA authors come together for an incredible anthology centered on South Asian folklore and cultural traditions. From fantasy to science fiction, warriors to gods, lovers to enemies, and everything in between, it has a little bit of everything. Naz Kutub’s “The Hawk’s Reason”, Preeti Chhibber’s “Unraveled”, and Nafiza Azad’s “Mirch, Masala, and Magic” were my personal favorites. Each story is accompanied by a piece of original, beautiful art.

Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror Delight edited by Shelly Page & Alex Brown

YA horror goes queer in this anthology from thirteen new and established authors. Set over the course of one night—Halloween, of course—BIPOC queer teens experience a wild night. I loved all the stories but especially “Rocky Road with Caramel Drizzle” by Kosoko Jackson, “Leyla Mendoza and the Last House on the Lane” by Maya Gittelman, and “Knickknack” by Ryan Douglass.

Horror

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea

Laure will do whatever it takes to get to center stage in the Parisian ballet. Even if it means descending into the Catacombs to make a deal with a monster. She gets what she wants, but the cost is higher than she anticipated. Laure’s actions transform her in horrifying ways. If nothing else, this book is at the top for having one of the best titles of the year.

Infested: An MTV Fear Novel by Angel Luis Colón

Manny is dragged halfway across the country by his stepdad to renovate a rundown apartment building in the Bronx. The building is infested with cockroaches…and something worse…something malevolent and undead. This is a terrifying tale of ghosts, cockroaches, and gentrification.

She Is a Haunting by Trang Tranh Tran

Jade needs money from her father in order to be able to afford to go to college, so she strikes a bargain to go to Vietnam and help him renovate an abandoned French colonial mansion. The house is not what it seems, and death permeates the walls. Jade tries to keep her little sister safe, but the horrors of colonialism and imperialism ripple from past to present.

What Stalks Among Us by Sarah Hollowell

Never take the backroads and never enter a corn maze. High school seniors Sadie and Logan break those rules while on a road trip and immediately regret it. Once in the corn maze, they’re trapped, but they’re not alone. Seemingly infinite versions of themselves are also stuck in the maze, and so far none of them have made it out alive.

Fantasy

Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker (Blood Debts #1)

Twins Clem and Cris Dupart are the youngest generation in an old, magical New Orleans family. Cris must come to terms with the consequences of her power while Clem must learn to channel his gifts from anger to action. After their mother is cursed nearly to death, they uncover a toxic conspiracy going all the way to the top of the region’s most politically connected magic families.

Of Light and Shadow by Tanaz Bhathena

Roshan, raised by a ruthless bandit, has taken over as leader of the Shadow Clan outlaws. They kidnap Prince Navin, the black sheep of the royal family, to blackmail the queen into stopping the oppression of the poor. Navin comes to terms with the system he benefits from and the harm it causes others, and as his mind changes, a romance blooms.

Spell Bound by F. T. Lukens

I’m a sucker for Lukens’ novels, and this may be the best one yet. Rook is desperate to become a magician, even though he has no talent for magic. He maneuvers his way into a job working for outcast magician Antonia and meets the fussy but adorable Sun, the assistant to Antonia’s rival Fable. Chaos and romance ensues, with some social commentary in there to keep everything grounded.

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

The only girl in the architecture department at Llyr University, Effy shocks everyone by earning a job to redesign the rundown Hiraeth Manor, owned by the family of a famous author, Myrddin. Also on premises is Preston, a literature student who wants to prove Myrddin was a liar. The author’s monstrous fairy tales may end up being more real than either of them expected.

Historical Fantasy

My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron

London, 1885. Gabriel is back in London after being run out of town over a queer scandal involving him and his friend Henry Jekyll. Gabriel meets Hyde, a boy who reminds him of Henry but with a darkness about him. Queerphobia and racism from the outside world push Hyde, Gabriel, and Henry into a twisted relationship.

That Self-Same Metal by Brittany N. Williams (Forge & Fracture Saga #1)

London, 1605. Siblings Joan and James work in William Shakespeare’s acting troupe, him on stage and her choreographing stage fighting. Secretly, they can channel the power of the Orisha, which she uses to manipulate metal. Fairies attack London, and Joan must protect her family and friends while pushing her power to its limits.

Wrath Becomes Her by Aden Polydoros

Lithuania, 1943. A daughter is killed by the Nazis, and in response her father creates Vera, a golem. With the dead girl’s memories and the help of the boy she loved, Vera is sent out into the world to get revenge on behalf of her maker. Vera was built for violence, but maybe there is more to life than wrath.

Gods & Demons

Damned If You Do by Alex Brown

Cordelia is already juggling a crush on her bestie Veronica, trying to pass her classes, and tech week for the latest school play, when demons crash the party. Two demons, one of whom is her school guidance counselor, are vying for her soul. They’ll do whatever it takes to convince her to do their bidding, even bringing her jerk of a dad back to life.

Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon (The Ouroboros #1)

Gem Echols, a nonbinary Indigenous teen living in rural Georgia, discovers they’re the reincarnation of an interdimensional god of magic and balance. The rest of the pantheon loathe Gem for not only killing several of them but dragging the survivors out of their homeworld and into ours. They must find their missing god-killing knife before the other gods do and use it to sentence Gem to a final, painful death.

A Song of Salvation by Alechia Dow

Although officially a standalone, this book functions as the third in a series where alien colonizers conquer Earth and a bunch of queer Black teens, alien and human alike, fight back. In this, Zaira, the reincarnation of a god of creation, is on a collision course with the alien invaders. Helping her are a charming gremlin of a podcaster and social outcast spaceship pilot. Romance, drama, and space opera make for a thrilling adventure.

Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou

The gods abandoned Io’s world generations ago, but the power of the Moirae still runs through her blood. She and her two sisters have the ability to manipulate and sever the threads of fate. Now an investigator eking out a living in the drowning city of Alante, Io is thrust into a mystery where women are forcibly turned into murderous wraiths. What do her sisters have to do with it? Everything, as Io soon discovers.

The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa

Mar, a nonbinary transmasc pirate, loses their family to a demon. Keeping their fire and ice magic a secret, they join a new crew dedicated to helping rebels defeat Spanish colonizers. When another demon, Demi, offers Mar the opportunity to save their father’s soul, the two of them and the cute son of the pirate captain, Bas, work together. Queerness and anti-colonial sentiment collide in the Caribbean in the 1820s.

Science Fiction

If I See You Again Tomorrow by Robbie Couch

It’s Palm Springs but teens in Chicago. Clark has spent the last 300 some odd days repeating the same Monday over and over again. Until he meets Beau, cute, fun, compelling Beau. The two set off on a grand adventure across the city. Will Clark be able to break out of his time loop and will Beau be the one to help him do it?

Monstersona by Chloe Spencer

On homecoming night, monsters attack. Riley isn’t too thrilled at being dragged from Portland to middle-of-nowhere Maine after her parents divorce, even less so when she has to make her way back to Oregon without being killed by the terrifying creations of mad scientists. Complicating matters is having to road trip through an apocalyptic wasteland with a very cute girl that Riley can’t help but fall for.

Promises Stronger Than Darkness by Charlie Jane Anders (Unstoppable #3)

The final book in the Unstoppable series offers action and answers. Tina is lost to the person she was cloned from, Captain Thaoh Argentian. Elza, Tina’s girlfriend, and Rachel, Tina’s best friend, reluctantly team up with Thaoh to save the world one last time.

Ghost Stories

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline

Winifred’s father runs the crematory at a Toronto cemetery that’s about to go out of business. That sucks for a lot of reasons, not least of which she’d lose access to Phil, the ghost of a 15-year-old boy who died of a drug overdose. Winifred and Phil have a bond that not even death can tear asunder.

Harvest House by Cynthia Leititch Smith

This novel uses light gothic influences to explore Indigeneity and generational trauma. Here, Hughie tries to push back on his community hosting a haunted house full of racist iconography. Meanwhile, the spirit of a Native woman who died tragically is haunting locals and trying to tell someone what really happened to her that fateful night.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White

Violet-eyed trans boy Silas lives in London in 1883. Mediums like him can communicate with spirits, and his mother demands he get married and become a dutiful Speaker wife. As punishment, he’s sent to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School, but instead of learning how to become an obedient girl, he and the school ghosts try to find justice for all the school’s dead girls.

Series Openers & Sequels

The Everlasting Road by Wab Kinew (Walking in Two Worlds #2)

In this sequel, Anishinaabe teen Bugz is reeling from the grief of losing her brother, Waawaate, to cancer. That pain has pushed her away from her Uighur boyfriend, Feng, and deeper into the virtual reality Floraverse with a bot she created that is inspired by her brother. She loses control over the bot and it wreaks havoc on the Floraverse. Meanwhile Waawaate’s spirit journeys down the Gaagigewekinaa, the Everlasting Road, to the next stage of death.

Lion’s Legacy by L. C. Rosen (Tennessee Russo #1)

One of my favorite things about this book is the main character’s name: Tennessee Russo. It’s so deliciously off kilter. After a humiliating breakup, Tennessee takes a vacation with his archaeologist father, who he hasn’t seen in several years. The chance to discover the Rings of the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of queer Greek warriors, is too tempting to pass up.

Painted Devils by Margaret Owen (Little Thieves #2)

Junior Prefect Emeric Conrad is surprised to find that former thief Vanja Schmidt has somehow become the leader of a cult. Although her followers believe she’s the Scarlet Maiden, another woman claiming to be the revered figure arrives and claims Emeric as her virgin sacrifice. It’s up to Emeric to figure out who this other Scarlet Maiden really is and to Vanja to find a replacement sacrifice just in case.

The Siren, the Song, and the Spy by Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea #2)

The main characters of The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea take the backseat in the sequel. The vast cast of characters and POVs all tell the story of an empire, its colonies, and those resisting oppression. It’s a powerful story about colonization and decolonization and the high costs of both.

Under the Radar

Daughters of Oduma by Moses Ose Utomi

Dirt maybe sixteen, but that makes her practically an elder in her community. Now retired from fighting, she spends her days training the next generation of the sisters of the Mud Fam in the elite sport of Bowing. After a crisis, Dirt must once again step into the Bowing ring and compete to save her family.

Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues by H. S. Valley

I will never stop thinking about or recommending this book. Tim and Elliott have never gotten along, but a school project to take care of an egg pulls them together. It’s a lovely, warm, emotional story about a Māori teen attending a magical boarding school and reluctantly yet inexorably falling in love with his nemesis.

Alex Brown is a Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, librarianship, and Black history. Find them on twitter (@QueenOfRats), bluesky (@bookjockeyalex), instagram (@bookjockeyalex), and their blog (bookjockeyalex.com).

The post Notable Young Adult Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror of 2023 appeared first on Reactor.

Nigerians in Space by Deji Bryce Olukotun (The Unnamed Press, 2014)

This genre-bender is more thriller than science fiction, but it’s just surreal enough to count. It does such a good job of taking an SF premise—a Nigerian scientist steals a piece of the moon and witnesses a murder, then, years later, his son invents a new technology inspired by the moon—and using that as a launching pad (pun intended) to talk about colonialism, brain drain, and who has access to science and technology.

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard (JABberwocky Literary Agency, 2017)

Aliette de Bodard can do no wrong, as far as I’m concerned. This novella is the third in her Universe of Xuya series where Asia won the space race and the galaxy runs on Vietnamese and Chinese culture and traditions. You get a teleporting citadel, a time-traveling engineer, a mind-ship who longs for her mother’s love, and because it’s de Bodard, a queer romance at the heart of it all.

Space Unicorn Blues by T.J. Berry (Angry Robot, 2018)

The first book in a funny but bizarre duology blends fantasy and science fiction in an intriguing way. Faster-than-light travel is powered by unicorn horns, and Gary Cobalt, half-unicorn and half-human, wants to save what’s left of his. Technically the magical creatures are actually aliens, and the spaceship Gary plans to escape on is semi-sentient. And even better, just about everyone is queer.

A Spark of White Fire by Sangu Mandanna (Sky Pony, 2018)

Ready for a young adult retelling of the Mahābhārata set in space? An epic space opera with all the teen melodrama, messy romances, petty gods, and court intrigue you could want. Esmae enters a competition to win a sentient spaceship as a way to help her brother win back the crown of Kali after it was taken from him by their usurping uncle. Frankly, I’m surprised no streamer has adapted this into a TV show yet, it’s that wild.

Tarnished Are the Stars by Rosiee Thor (Scholastic Press, 2019)

You cannot convince me that in the future, space will be populated by mostly cisallohets. You just can’t. So let’s add in one more YA for my fellow queers. Ana has a clockwork heart. Nathaniel has a chip on his shoulder. Ana, who calls herself the Technician, uses black market tech to help the oppressed. Nathaniel, whose father is the one doing the oppressing, needs to capture her to earn his trust. There’s so little YA SF nowadays, and even less YA space opera, so we must celebrate the few traditional publishing has allowed us to have.

Alex Brown is a Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, librarianship, and Black history. Find them on twitter (@QueenOfRats), bluesky (@bookjockeyalex), instagram (@bookjockeyalex), and their blog (bookjockeyalex.com).

The post Backlist Bonanza: 5 Underrated Books Set in Space appeared first on Reactor.

While our end-of-year lists are focused on standalone essays and articles, we’re also incredibly proud of our lineup of regular columns (including two new series, Dissecting The Dark Descent and our Elantris Reread), along with the amazing array of fiction recommendations and discussion provided by our many wonderful contributors. This was a banner year for Tor.com—we started things off with Space Opera Week, celebrated our 15^th Anniversary all summer long, and at one point, experienced a full-on Tingle Takeover (and yes, it was life-changing).

There’s so much more to come in 2024—for now we hope that you enjoy the selections below, and since these are just some of our favorite book-centric essays from the last twelve months or so—we couldn’t possibly include everything we love—please feel free to tell us about the articles, columns, and discussions that have stuck with you this year!

Taking Inspiration from Beloved Fantasy Series…

“The Long Defeat”: Reading Tolkien in the Time of Climate Change by Alyssa Hull

Climate change was already occurring during the years when Tolkien lived and wrote. Though he may not have been aware of a growing knowledge of global warming, I think his work is directly applicable to all of us who face the current onslaught of frightening headlines about climate disasters and think, like Frodo, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.”

What Makes A Knight: The Continuing Influence of Alanna of Trebond by Esme Symes-Smith

I was genderqueer but I didn’t have the words to explain myself yet (and wouldn’t for almost twenty more years), but I did have a role-model: Alanna of Trebond, Tamora Pierce’s first Lady Knight. The Song of the Lioness Quartet follows Alanna from an aspiring page to a fully qualified knight, as well as her journey from a girl pretending to be a boy called Alan, to being confidently and exactly Alanna.

Sazed Is a Reminder That Everything You Create Matters by Ratika Deshpande

We can never have enough new perspectives, enough art, enough stories. Sazed and the Keepers were always searching; they knew that they didn’t know everything. And they didn’t just preserve what had already happened in the past, but also what was going on around them […] In a way, the Keeper’s work will never be done, because as long as there are people living, there will be stories to preserve.

Exploring Issues of Family and Identity

Mother and the Wolf: Maternal Power in Fairy Tales by Julie Phillips

To venture into the forest is a hero’s deed. To take up one’s feelings of maternal depression and weave them into a story, as Le Guin did, is a hero’s deed. I believe that there is more than one matrix into which mothers must descend. One is for the artist, who follows her muse into the core, where the language is hot and the images smolder. Another is for the mother who must reckon with her volcanic emotions: anger, resentment, despair, too much love. Entwined, they become a hero’s tale about the most basic work of being human, nurturing one’s soul.

Mirror, Mirror in the Ward by Ava Reid

There are no mirrors in a psych ward. Broken glass can too easily be fashioned into a weapon—as the fairy tales will warn you. Despite this, I still saw myself reflected back. […]

A book is a portal, much like Alice’s mirror. But unlike a mirror, which reflects only physical reality, a book builds its own symbolic world around you. It can be the shelter of a grand castle. It can be the promise of adventure at the prow of a ship. It can be the mystery of a gloom-cloaked forest. As Ursula K. Le Guin said, a book is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. There has always been a castle, a ship, a forest. So I began to trust this world within the pages—slowly, shakily, but irrevocably.

Parenting an Idea in Saga by Natalie Zutter

That’s what makes Saga endure so well: Like Hazel, it grows into something new with every break and return, and its place within our comics universe—and its readers’ own personal universes—shifts. Having celebrated its ten-year anniversary a year ago, it hasn’t abandoned its opening line (This is how an idea becomes real), but rather has embraced how it’s not as simple as releasing an idea into the ether; you have to nurture it, even when you feel that you can’t possibly do so, to ensure its survival. And, most crucially, you have to let go of your expectations for what ideas your idea wants to create.

Food, Family, and Colonialism in Trang Thanh Tran’s She Is a Haunting by Wen-yi Lee

Meals have been a stage for Asian families in books across genres, from the plentiful dinners in Fonda Lee’s Green Bone saga to the likes of Crying in H Mart and The Vegetarian. There’s that stereotype about Asian parents: emotionally unavailable, communicating only through bowls of cut fruit and your favourite snacks magically stocked in the fridge, et cetera, et cetera. Even as the secrets threaten to crack the family apart, there’s a father in the kitchen, peeling prawns for dinner, obsessing over the flavours, the ingredients. The things he can navigate so much more easily than a daughter. Even when the supernatural warns you against it, food is family and homeland, and the hunger for that can overpower all else. In this house, you eat connection

Literary Criticism and Textual Analysis

Tracing the Affinities Between Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi and C.S Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew by Iona Glen

Clarke also professes an “old longing” to find Lewis’ Wardrobe, the portal that first leads the Pevensie children into Narnia. Yet it is The Magician’s Nephew, Narnia’s origin story, that has perhaps the most profound influence upon Piranesi. The affinities between the two books illuminate the major themes of both, particularly their interest in the ethics of scholarship and different ways of knowing. Piranesi’s reworking of Lewis reveals just how profoundly our childhood reading can shape us, providing us with our first Other Worlds to explore.

Reading Naomi Novik’s Scholomance Series as a Response to Ursula K. Le Guin by Elyse Martin

This is at the heart of Novik’s imaginative future; this is her response to Le Guin’s call to action. We live in a world like that of the Scholomance series, where certain societies are safe because they have built their success on the sacrifice of others: the vulnerable, the colonized, the weak. But this is a very shaky foundation. The greed upon which society grows will ultimately consume it, particularly if, as in The Golden Enclaves, the powerful only agree to find a new way forward when it becomes “a matter of immediate self-preservation”.

Are We the Baddies? Magic and Normativity in The Locked Tomb Series by Kristen Patterson

 Muir has created a universe in which we root for necromancers—and their cavaliers!—as naturally as we’d root for any other protagonist. Now in book three, she’s complicated that dynamic, pushing the world of necromancy away to the distance where it starts to look less familiar. At that point, we’re forced to reevaluate and ask, “Why necromancers? Why the kind of magic that bleeds and oozes?” It’s an invitation to think more deeply about the overall themes of the Locked Tomb books—about bodies, death, grief, and the boundaries we draw and then sometimes erase between ourselves and others.

Wrestling With the Current Cultural Moment

The Problem With Small Town Witch Romances by Jenny Hamilton

While some of the books under discussion here do include BIPOC characters (and even BIPOC love interests), the idyllic quaintness they’re reaching for depends on the erasure of America’s centuries-long persecution of Black and brown communities. It’s a conundrum you can see authors struggling with: The towns must be old if they are to be picturesque; but they can’t be old without having also been implicated in this country’s violent history; but the violent histories can’t be talked about because they bring down the vibe. The compromise (white) authors tend to strike is simply to pretend that American history didn’t happen, or at least didn’t happen in this place to these people.

Why Do We Still Love Robots in Fiction When They’re Taking Our Jobs IRL? by Samit Basu

For writers and artists, the threat of the industries we work in being thrown into (deeper) chaos because some corporate person decides to cost-cut/IP-hoard/Replace Annoying Humans is already very real. Which is why it was interesting for me, over the last few years, to on the one hand become increasingly irritated by the advance of the AI takeover, turn down various projects where tech people wanted me to help train AI to replace human authors—and on the other hand, keep working on a novel where two of the three main characters were robots, and also people whose feelings, rights and welfare I cared deeply about because I loved them. Which brought me to the question—why do we still love robots/AI in fiction when we increasingly don’t in real life?

Mid-Apocalyptic Fiction: Writing Against a Climate Catharsis by Theodore McCombs

The mid-apocalyptic climate stories also enforce on an emotional level what the science tells us: that we are intimately accountable to the world that comes after us. Apocalypses let us off the hook: What’s the point of trying if the Earth is doomed? How can this clean bus program or that wetland conservation project—not to mention one ordinary person’s decisions—matter at all, against those stakes? But climate change will not erase the slate; any future world will remember, in a ruthlessly embodied and practical way, in its scars, decisions we make and don’t make over the next few decades.

Staring Into the Void…

The Land Beyond Spacetime: Dinosaurs and Cosmic Horror by Fletcher Wortmann

The second thing that children learn about dinosaurs is that now, in the present day, all the dinosaurs are gone. I wonder: prior to the dinosaur boom in popular culture in the 1980s and ’90s, how many children under the age of five knew the definition of the word “extinction?” And we aren’t talking about the extinction of a single species, not just the sad likelihood that someday soon there might not be any more snow leopards or sea turtles: we’re talking about planetary extinction, an event that obliterated every living animal bigger than a guinea pig, not because of hunting or pollution but preordained by the random trajectories of chunks of rock tumbling through a vast, indifferent cosmos.

Every Space Story Is a Horror Story by Emily Hughes

The thing about the void is, that void doesn’t hate you. The void doesn’t know or care that you exist, nor would it know or care if you stopped existing. The void just kind of goes on voiding, infinitely. This is, when you get right down to it, the basic premise of cosmic horror: space is unknown, unknowable, indifferent, and exists on a scale that’s incomprehensible to humans. Its mere existence is enough to instill spontaneous ego death. And every story that takes place there is inextricably linked to that enormous absence.

Art in Defiance of the Endless Cosmic Nothing by Chuck Tingle

People often ask me—in a variety of different ways—how they too can become a successful writer. The truth is, I have no idea what journey will work for you. What I can speak on, however, is the journey that works for me.

With this in mind, I’ll offer up the simplest distillation of my own creative process: love is the most powerful artistic fuel there is, and I’m not afraid to use it.

Allow Me To Make a Gentle Plea For More Space Horror by Kali Wallace

Horror can serve a lot of purposes in storytelling, aside from the obvious one of scaring our pants off for fun. It’s also a way to explore fears and anxieties, critique traditions and societies, and examine prejudices and assumptions. But one thing that makes horror especially powerful in space-based science fiction is this: it is one of the best ways we have to make personal, intimate, and immediate things which might otherwise feel too big, too strange, or too remote for intense emotional impact.

New Ways of Looking at the Classics

John Milton the Space Poet: Early Traces of Science Fiction in Paradise Lost by A.J. Rocca

At times, Paradise Lost even seems to border on something like space opera: the angel Raphael hints at the existence of other worlds and extraterrestrial life, and Satan’s journey through the void to reach Earth is nothing less than an interstellar space flight. Milton was sometimes able to anticipate science fiction because of his engagement with the astronomy of his day, especially the new Copernican astronomy which laid the foundation for so much of SF’s interstellar fabulations. While I won’t go so far as to say that Milton himself was an SF writer, I do think we should at least acknowledge him as some kind of literary precursor: a space poet.

Little Worms: Mary Shelley and the Noodle that Created Science Fiction by GennaRose Nethercott

When ancient Etruscans served up the world’s very first bowl of pasta, they had no idea that humans would still be dining on the dish nearly twenty-three hundred years later. Nor could they have known that their simple meal would one day lead to the birth of one of history’s most feared and beloved monsters. In fact, a single humble noodle would go on to change the course of all of English literature.

Mark as Read

Molly Templeton’s Mark as Read column, now in its third year, gives readers a place to talk about the things that connect us (and occasionally frustrate us) as lovers of books. Over the last twelve months, the column has ruminated on the concept of reading dealbreakers and other ways reading can be weird or hard or personal, pushed back against the idea that readers are “consumers of books,” and found a new way to think about the books we’re not reading… yet. All that, and Molly still has time to ask the tough questions, like “Where Are the Lady Gandalfs?” and “What Does a Dragon Look Like?” You can find the full list of columns (and the conversations they’ve inspired) at the series page, here.

***

That’s all for now, but keep an eye out for the second half of our 2023 highlights coming up in the new year, where we’ll be talking all about old and new movies, TV series, and other pop culture favorites. In the meantime, if you’re feeling nostalgic, you can always check out our “Some of the Best…” article round-ups from previous years: 2022’s Fiction Articles list and Film, TV & Pop Culture list; 2021; 2020; 2019; 2018; and 2017. Happy reading!

The post Some of Tor.com’s Best Articles About Fiction, Reading, and Writing in 2023 appeared first on Reactor.

To give you an idea how old those are: the Earl Stieler whose name adorns them retired in 1991. I am not sure if the handsets still work, as I’ve not had the opportunity to test the system. However, when held to the ear, they produce eerie whispering sounds, as if from a realm of despairing and lost souls. Perhaps I will round up an orphaned, friendless voluntold and see what happens when two handsets are used simultaneously. The results cannot help but be educational!

A quirk of old-timey phones and phone-like devices is that they gave no hint as to who might be calling. It could be your beloved granny. It could be Satan. The only way to find out was to listen. Even then, one could not be sure the caller was who they claimed to be…

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954-55)

Although the main plot centers around an accessory-based stratagem to confound would-be world-conqueror Sauron, significant subplots center on Middle-earth’s answer to telephones. The Elf-made palantírs permitted communication as well as surveillance over vast distances. In a sense, they fill a niche much like today’s smartphones. They could be a mixed blessing.

There were several problems with the palantírs. They might lead their users to focus on unimportant matters and ignore important events. More sinisterly, Sauron has a palantír. Anyone gazing into a palantír risks encountering Sauron’s corrupting gaze looking back at them.

People using palantírs tend to be ignorant of the dangers or foolishly confident that they can avoid them. This includes Sauron. Sauron doesn’t have to worry about being corrupted by contact with Sauron (or alternatively, can never escape said corruption), but he is just as vulnerable as other users to misinterpreting what he sees on the palantír, with significant implications for the plot.

Sam, This is You by Murray Leinster (Galaxy Maxazine, 1955)

Batesville and Rappahannock Telephone Company linesman Sam Yoder is surprised to receive a call on a line he knows is dead. Sam is even more surprised to hear his own voice on the other end of the line. The tale the other Sam spins is bizarre, but one that promises big benefits to linesman Sam.

The other Sam is calling from ten days into Sam’s future. Armed with what Sam-future tells him, Sam-now can make both of them rich. Knowing as he does how things will play out, Sam-future judiciously conceals certain details from his past self. After all, why worry the poor sap over calamities about which he will learn soon enough?

Modern readers should be aware that Leinster was of his time in his depiction of women characters. Which is to say, often misogynist.

Many characters armed with foreknowledge of the next ten days might be foolishly tempted into intervening in national or international affairs. Sam, on the other hand, keeps his eye on the ball. There were no doubt any number of disasters going on the background that a quick call the authorities could have mitigated. Sam ignores them all. Sam focuses on applications that will make him money and will not invite awkward questions.

“When You Hear the Tone” by Thomas N. Scortia (Galaxy Magazine, 1971)

Having spent eighty years honing his capacity for antisocial irritability, Mark Fleiker is a bitter, lonely old man. Repeated phone calls from a stranger are not welcome. Repeated phone calls from an unfamiliar woman whose conversation makes it clear she is in a different year entirely should be especially unwelcome.

And yet, having spent his entire life alone, companionship now seems a welcome possibility to Mark…provided he can circumvent the decades separating Mark from the mysterious woman on whom he is now fixated.

The title is, of course, a reference to what is now no doubt a long-vanished service in which the phone company could provide the time. Small children desiring to be shouted at by irate parents could easily call this service a dozen times an hour. Ask me how I know.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (1990)

Doomsday is ordained, or so the best (and worse) authorities assert. The demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale having become fond of Earth, they would prefer the planet and all on it not perish. Therefore, the pair proceed to bollox up the grand plan to bring an end to it all.

At one point, Crowley avoids an uncomfortable conversation with high-ranked demon Hastur by tricking his demonic overseer into a convenient answering machine. It’s a trap that should contain Hastur forever…or until an unlucky telemarketer calls Crowley’s number.

Roughly 95% of all the phone calls I get are from scammers, telemarketers, and their ilk. It is very annoying that a once-useful technology is now only a medium for vexation. Nevertheless, it would probably be wrong to commodify the arrangement Crowley creates with Hastur and the answering machine. But I bet one could make a ton of money selling such a service….

“The Black Phone” by Joe Hill (20th Century Ghosts, 2004)

Kidnapped by the Grabber, Finney is imprisoned in a basement. The basement contains an old phone… but the line is dead and Finney cannot use it to call for help. Or rather, Finney cannot call the mundane authorities.

The Grabber has kidnapped and killed previous victims. Through the black phone, the shades can share what they learned about the Grabber with Finney. If Finney is lucky, and cunning, this might be enough to save him.

Is Finney a reference to famed author Jack Finney? And is anyone else compelled, as I am, to start humming a certain Wobblies-related tune when they see Joe Hill’s name?

***

I considered and discarded a dozen possibilities before settling on these five. There are therefore lots of appropriate stories that were not mentioned above, since I do not have the space to mention every possibility! Feel free to make the case for your favourite stories. Comments are below.

In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.

The post Five Stories Featuring Spooky Phones and Supernatural Communication Devices appeared first on Reactor.

Exxoneration by Richard Rohmer (1974)

In the far distant year of 1980, America moves to annex Canada. The goal: to solve US energy shortages with Canadian resources. Given the vast American military-industrial complex and the miniscule Canadian armed forces, immediate surrender seems the only reasonable course of action.

Following the American surrender, Canada grapples with another challenge: enhancing Canadian security through the acquisition of Exxon. Will this corporate bid be as successful as our defense of Canadian sovereignty? Or will Canada finally face abject failure?

However you imagine Canada might defeat the American invading forces, I assure you the method used in the novel is far more implausible.

Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1981)

Sir George Reedy, Deputy Minister for Internal Development and Urban Affairs, Dominion of Canada, travels south to Los Angeles. Todos Santos is a single vast building, the first successful arcology. Is Todos Santos the model that future urban development in Canada should use?

As it happens, while the inhabitants of the panopticon/gated community are content with their domicile, relations between Todos Santos and the rest of Los Angeles are not so much strained as actively hostile. Will the community survive escalating conflict or will the arcology soon be a smoldering memory?

Informed readers will note the “Sir.” This is not, as I assumed in 1981, because the authors were unaware of the Nickle Resolution. They assumed Canada would revert to a nation of obsequious forelock-tuggers. As it turned out, that was just Conrad Black.

Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell (2022)

Faced with rising carbon dioxide levels and consequent climate change, Canadians did what Canadians do best: ignored the problem until it was too late, then embraced desperate coping mechanisms. Vancouver Island being particularly vulnerable, the Federal government abandoned the island to focus on more viable regions, while British Columbia’s provincial government effectively evaporated.

Throughout the 21st century, a dwindling population of Vancouver Islanders struggle to come to terms with the legacy of 20th century folly. Soaring temperatures, wildfires, and rapidly shifting ecologies mean that old methods of survival are obsolete. Nevertheless, the Islanders prevail.

Whether or not this beautifully written novel is sad or not depends on reader focus. What’s more important: that so much needless misery is visited on the world, or that despite end-Permian-level calamity, civilization survives and humanity does not quite go extinct?

Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice (2023)

The Anishinaabe of Shki-dnakiiwin never asked Canada to annex their lands, attempt to erase their culture, or to forcibly relocate them to the far north. The villagers miss some amenities lost when the power went out and civilization collapsed…but the Anishinaabe do not miss the overbearing settler government.

More than a decade of hunting and fishing has depleted wildlife near Shki-dnakiiwin. Migration to their former homeland near the Great Lakes could be the solution…depending on conditions in the once heavily populated south. A small band of volunteers are sent as scouts into regions long silent. They face wilderness, radiation, and armed invaders foraging north. Not everyone will be coming home.

While the novel is not at all sentimental about Canada, the author is clearly aware that the erasure of advanced technology (thanks to a Carrington event, pandemics, and what happens to nuclear reactors left untended) has profound costs. Living in the woods may sound like fun, but staying in one place will deplete the ecosystem and minor ailments become fatal.

The Everlasting Road by Wab Kinew (2023)

Anishinaabe teen Bagonegiizhigok ​“Bugz” Holiday vanquished her Clan:LESS online rivals. Victory is hollow. Cancer claimed her brother Waawaate.  Grief has distracted her from reclaiming her position in the MMORPG Floraverse.

Her brother is lost to her forever, but Bugz can at least create a simulated Waawaate in the Floraverse. Not only is the software able to emulate Bug’s memories of her brother, it can learn from experience. How long will it take the AI to become an active menace to Bugz’s enemies and to Bugz herself? Not long at all!

Wab Kinew is the 25th premier of Manitoba. He is the only sitting provincial premier to have won an Aurora award. In fact, he appears to be the only premier, in office or out, living or dead, to have won the Aurora Award, period. I too wonder what the heck is wrong with all the other premiers. What are they spending their time doing?

***

To think of Canada is to be marvelously inspired. Thus, the above represent only a very small sample of the vast assortment of poutine-flavored, maple syrup-infused futures envisioned by SF authors. If you’ve favorites of your own (perhaps featuring telepathic war moose), feel free to name them in comments below.

In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.

The post Five Books That Imagine the Future of Canada appeared first on Reactor.

Other technologies are not as considerate. We can only make an educated guess as to when clothing was adopted by comparing head and body lice, which became reproductively isolated from each other when humans started wearing clothes: 70,000 years ago, plus or minus about 40,000 years.

Sometimes, we can only infer the existence of certain technologies. For example, the oldest remains of a boat are those of the Pesse canoe, which only date back to circa 8040–7510 BCE, which is practically contemporary. However, humans reached Australia tens of millennia before the Pesse canoe was carved. There was no route from Eurasia to Australia, even when ocean levels were at their ice age lowest, that did not require crossing water. Therefore, the people who first reached Australia had boats or rafts or some similar technology.

Recently, as detailed in “Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago,” scientists reported evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago. (The title is a spoiler, sorry.) This implies that wooden structures predate anatomically modern humans. By how much is unclear. It is just good luck that we found the evidence.

The fact that much of human and pre-human history is poorly known, and much of it lost entirely, is a tremendous advantage to writers. As long as they are careful to stay within the borders of what’s known—no dinosaur-hunting cavemen or vice versa—they are free to paint vivid portrayals of what probably wasn’t but might have been. Consider the five works that follow.

The Quest for Fire by J.-H. Rosny (1911)

One hundred thousand years ago, Eurasia hosted several hominin species, species with varying degrees of intelligence and technological sophistication. The Oulhamr, for example, could use fire but could not build it from scratch (shavings, fire drill, or flint).

This technological gap causes a crisis when the tribe’s fire is extinguished. Naoh, Nam, and Gaw are dispatched to find a new source of fire, a quest that provides them with ample opportunity to encounter the other human species with which they share the continent. They find that few of the others are friendly.

Rosny’s fanciful speculations were not limited by the consensus model of human prehistory that was prevalent a century ago. Science marches on. Oddly enough, many of Rosny’s imaginary human species have parallels in hominin species discovered since the novel was published. This is not the way that fictional depictions of the distant past usually work.

Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard (1951)

Expert spear-maker Hawk chafes under the tribal law that forbids a man in his position from hunting with the other men of his tribe. Hawk’s skills are too valuable to risk. Frustrated, Hawk invents a device that he believes will transform hunting. But his invention kills a hunter. Hawk is exiled from the tribe. He is accompanied by fellow exile and future mate Willow.

The pair manage to survive thanks to a flurry of Hawk inventions. In short order, Hawk invents the atlatl, light throwing spears, fletching, the bow and arrow, and the poisoned arrow, all of which come as a terrible (generally final) surprise to the animals and hostile humans who encounter Hawk and Willow. As for the pair’s former tribe? Alas, they do not prosper.

The above makes it sound like Willow does not do much. In fact, she plays a crucial role in domesticating dogs. She also invents waterproof baskets, which allow safer food storage. The book makes it clear that she is just as vital to the pair’s survival as Hawk. It’s also clear that Hawk will never deign to acknowledge this.

The Many-Colored Land by Julian May (1981)

Théo Guderian’s discovery of a natural time portal reaching six million years into the past presents the future’s misfits with a way to escape. The one-way trip to the past delivers malcontents to a place far outside the Galactic Milieu’s oppressively utopian reach. What happens to them? The Galactic Milieu will never know, as all human relics of such a distant past will have left no trace.

To the exiles’ tremendous surprise, Earth six million years ago is home to advanced civilization, courtesy of alien refugees. Humans are welcome…as servants, slaves, and involuntary brood mares. Humans who fled six million years into the past to escape a benevolent government are hardly the sort to endure involuntary servitude. Thus, the question is not “will humans rebel?” but what form their rebellion will take.

One cannot help but be astonished by the Galactic Milieu’s acquiescence in the exile project. Sure, there’s some evidence suggesting that history is immutable but as William Tenn’s story “Brooklyn Project” demonstrates, it can be hard to notice how history has changed when one is part of that history.

The Steel of Raithskar by Vicki Ann Heydron and Randall Garrett (1981)

In this, the first of the Gandalara sword and sorcery fantasy series, terminally ill Richard Carillo’s mind is somehow transplanted into the brain-dead body of warrior Markasset. Markasset’s fellow Gandalarans are human-like but not Homo sapiens. Likewise, the relationship of Gandalara to the Earth that Richard knew is obscure.

Richard has scarcely arrived when he discovers that his host’s father has been framed for a serious crime, with Markasset his likely accomplice. Preferring to avoid punishment for a crime he did not commit, Richard sets out to solve the crime. Whether he will survive his quest is unclear.

The series has a tragic backstory. It is credited to spouses Heydron and Garrett. However, early in the writing process Garrett was incapacitated by illness and spent the remainder of his life hospitalized (in a coma, according to some reports). Heydron therefore was forced to accomplish solo what was intended as a joint project.

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel (1980)

Orphaned by calamity, Cro-Magnon child Ayla encounters a Neanderthal clan.  Despite the long-standing enmity between the Clan and the Others, the Neanderthals take pity on the child and adopt Ayla, raising her as one of their own. Or at least trying to.

Despite being closely related, the two species differ in physiology and behavior… not to mention psychic gifts of a sort not preserved by the fossil record. Ayla cannot access genetic memory, and thus must learn everything from scratch. However, because of this same lack, she is far more innovative than the extraordinarily conservative Clan. A clash is inevitable.

The imagined Neanderthal ability to access race memory isn’t all that different from the imagined Bene Gesserit ability to access forebearer memories. Auel is far more pessimistic than Herbert about the consequences of such an ability. That said, tensions are heightened because Ayla is unusually creative even for a human. Characters like Ayla and Hawk make one wonder why we didn’t have spacecraft by 10,000 BC.

***

This is, of course, a very small sample of the prehistoric tales that have been written. If you know of noteworthy efforts not mentioned above, please mention them in comments below.

In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.

The post Five Books With Highly Imaginative Takes on Prehistoric Existence appeared first on Reactor.

Published in 2021 by Tor Books, The House in the Cerulean Sea was a bestseller and an Alex Award winner. Here’s the synopsis:

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Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he’s given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.

The Grim Oak edition is illustrated by David Curtis, and signed by both Curtis and Klune. The jacket is foiled and embossed, and there are nine full-color interior illustrations—and, of course, a sewn-in ribbon for keeping your place.

Pre-orders begin at 2pm EST/11 am PST today; learn more here.

The post An Illustrated Edition of The House in the Cerulean Sea Is Coming from Grim Oak Press appeared first on Reactor.

Outcasts, Outlaws, & Rebels

Wish of the Wicked by Danielle Paige (Wish of the Wicked #1)
Bloomsbury YA; November 7, 2023

Sixteen-year-old Farrow is the only Entente left after Queen Magrit had them and the Three Fates eliminated in a desperate bid to live forever. When luck lands Farrow with a job in the palace, she decides revenge is worth risking everything for. Cinderella’s fairy godmother is no jolly old white lady but a badass Black girl with a chip on her shoulder the size of Mount Everest.

Kingdom of Without by Andrea Tang
Simon & Schuster BYR; November 28, 2023

In this Beijing-set cyberpunk novel, Zhong Ning’er is a thief who steals more than she can handle. Ning’er works for the Red Yaksha, a Robin Hood figure, when she gets pulled into a conspiracy to launch a revolution. With cyborgs and climate crises plaguing her country, hope is not something Ning’er is used to, but maybe it’s time that changes.

Gods & Monsters

Vengeance of the Pirate Queen by Tricia Levenseller
Feiwel & Friends; November 7, 2023

Set in the world of Tricia Levenseller’s Daughter of the Pirate King duology, this standalone features Sorinda, a teenage assassin working for said daughter, Alosa. Sorinda is sent out to captain a ship on a rescue mission. Her journey doesn’t go as expected, what with being saddled with an annoying yet handsome helmsman, attracting the unwanted attention of the King of the Undersea, and dealing with shipwrecks and sea monsters.

Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon (The Ouroboros #1)
Wednesday Books; November 28, 2023

Gem, a nonbinary Seminole teenager, longs to escape their boring, restrictive life and be with Enzo, their trans Indigenous bestie in Brooklyn. With the arrival of Willa Mae, a trans girl and Alaska Native, Gem discovers they’re actually a reincarnated god. When the Goddess of Death tries to kill them, Gem must remember their old life or die trying.

Magic With a Twist

Our Cursed Love by Julie Abe
Wednesday Books; December 12, 2023

Remy is convinced she and Cam are destined to be together…if only he knew it too. During a trip to Japan, the two teens visit a mysterious apothecary where they buy magical potions to reveal their soulmates. But when Cam suddenly forgets who Remy is, Remy may lose him forever. She has until the clock strikes twelve on New Years’ Eve to help him remember her or they’ll both forget who each other are.

Lucero by Maya Motayne (A Forgery of Magic #3)
Balzer & Bray; December 26, 2023

The god Sombra has returned and in his wake chaos has spread across Castallan. Even at only partially powered up, Sombra is a terrifying force. Finn and Alfie must work together to stop the god from acquiring the stone relics of his body, which will grant him his full powers, and destroy them. But their magic is just as chaotic now as everything else. Nothing is as it should be, and if Sombra gets his way, it never will be again.

Court Intrigue

The Crimson Fortress by Akshaya Raman (The Ivory Key Duology #2)
Clarion Books; November 14, 2023

Royal siblings Vira, Ronak, Kaleb, and Riya were forced to unite to find the Ivory Key, but now that they have it things have gone from bad to worse. To untangle the key’s cypher, the siblings must split up once more. Everything each of them wants seems farther away than ever, and the fate of the country of Ashoka is at stake.

The Ruined by Renée Ahdieh (The Beautiful #4)
G.P. Putnam’s Sons BYR; December 5, 2023

The Summer Court of the Sylvan Vale and the Winter Court of the Sylvan Wyld are on the brink of war. Celine may be under her mother’s protection in the Vale, but she doesn’t know who to trust or what path to take. Bastien, while working to reclaim his family’s Wyld throne, discovers some painful truths Celine may not be willing to hear. The intense conclusion to Renée Ahdieh’s quartet.

Alex Brown is a Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, librarianship, and Black history. Find them on twitter (@QueenOfRats), bluesky (@bookjockeyalex), instagram (@bookjockeyalex), and their blog (bookjockeyalex.com).

The post Most Anticipated Young Adult SFF/H for November & December 2023 appeared first on Reactor.

I don’t need them. I suspect I don’t need to tell most of you how thoroughly I don’t need them; I think it’s a safe guess that many of the readers of Tor.com have solid TBRs, well-used library cards, and plenty of reading material. “Need” feels like a fraught word, lately, too: I don’t need a book the way people need to be able to sleep safely in their beds.

But I buy them anyway.

I nab them from eBay (a long-sought, extremely out of print copy of Quest for the Golden Hare); pre-order them from my local bookstore (Nina MacLaughlin’s Winter Solstice: An Essay); pick them up at Powell’s because I can’t resist a steal (a British edition of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando); stop and look in local little free libraries even though I should be putting books in to these little boxes, not taking them out.

And then I don’t read them. I put them in nice piles on the to-be-read shelf and think that perhaps I need to spend a weekend cleaning that shelf off, and soon.

What I am doing is thinking about them. Appreciating them, you might say. Thinking about why I was so excited about Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger and yet it’s still in the middle of the dining table because I don’t want to shelve it but I don’t want to start it either. Thinking about Saint Death’s Daughter and how it’s such a pretty brick of a book and I can’t wait to get lost in it. Just, you know… later.

Is it meaningful, though, to just appreciate a book when you could be reading it?

Sometimes, the not-reading is just a matter of needing a little push. Of needing someone—a friend, a trusted reader, an admired author, a book group—to mention a book in passing, to yell online about how much it thrilled them or shook up their ideas about what SFF could be and do. Sometimes you just need a sequel to come out so you know you can get the full satisfaction of a series all at once. All these books look so good; how am I supposed to prioritize? Can’t someone just tell me which one I’m going to love best?

(Except that all too often, if someone does tell me what to read next, I ignore them. Some of us are contrary like that.)

What I do instead of reading is ridiculous: Put Riverdale on in the background, and open a jigsaw puzzle app on my phone. Thirtysomething actors playing teenagers deliver unconvincing comic-book slang while I push around little chopped-up images of doughnuts. It is not an enlightening process. I don’t get anything out of it, except that it tires out the little squirrel in my brain that wants to organize things. (Remember the X-Files vampire thwarted by sunflower seeds? That’s my brain, except with piles of stuff that need to be organized.)

Are you not reading fantasies? Not reading mysteries? Are you, like me, not reading the new Elizabeth Hand novel because you obviously have to read The Haunting of Hill House first? (You can tell me I don’t have to, but I do.) Who else is not yet reading Nettle and Bone despite really, really looking forward to it? Are you looking longingly toward the books you got from a favorite store, a book subscription, an impulse purchase, and yet still not picking them up? I’m right there with you.

Part of why this is on my mind is that, as frequently happens, I heard a few friends and online acquaintances online bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t “keep up.” They were behind. They needed to designate a special time—a month, a week, an era—to reading older books, books that didn’t just come out and have that sheen of attention-grabbing newness to them.

I understand this. I do. I have new books to read, upcoming books I want to read, old books to read, and only one lifetime. But I wish we didn’t feel like we have to “keep up.” No one can read every book that comes out, or even every book that comes out in a single genre. (Unless you really want to split genre hairs, in which case good luck and godspeed.)

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Can there be comfort in the things you’re not reading? Can they be books that are just waiting for you to find their moment? Stories you need, just not yet, like snacks you put in your pocket for later, stored up for when you really, really need them? I’m pretty convinced this is the case. Haven’t you ever picked up a book months, years, decades after it came out and found it was exactly what you needed to read just then? Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox was this for me, some years after it came out. I feel like I never shut up about Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, but that’s because it knocked me sideways when I read it in the late 2000s. Sometimes I purposefully save books until the spotlight has moved on. The experience can feel a little more private, a little more personal, that way. Sometimes.

And what’s more, I think there’s an often-ignored value in the act of appreciating even the things we’re not reading. What else is a most-anticipated list but a list of books a writer or a publication appreciates, wants to read but—in most cases—hasn’t yet read, or maybe even hasn’t seen in the flesh (in the page?) just yet? Wanting has power. Enthusiasm, curiosity, anticipation, desire—those things matter, too. You can talk about books without reading them. You can care about books without reading them. You can support your beloved authors, if that is a thing you worry about doing, without yet having read all their books. All that looking-foward and wanting? Listen: It counts for something. You’re still thinking about those books. I think about what I’m going to write next all the time, and it makes the writing come more easily. If we’re thinking about what we want to read next, it probably also makes neat little pathways in our brains that affect the experience of reading. Like clearing out all the cobwebs before walking a new path through the woods.

I’m not reading so many things right now: Legends & Lattes, Big Fiction, He Who Drowned the World, Meet Me in the Bathroom, Foundryside, The Winged Histories. But if I reframe it just a little bit, then I’m not reading these books yet. I’m thinking about them. I’m clearing space in my little squirrel brain for them to settle in when the time comes. The books are just waiting for me to pick a moment. To let it get quiet inside my head, for the squirrel to get sleepy, and for my reading brain to wake back up.

What is it that’s calling to you, but you’re just not in a place to answer? What are you not reading yet? And what are you anticipating about it?

Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.

The post To All the Books I’m Not Reading… Yet appeared first on Reactor.

The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon (Syracuse University Press, 2019)

In this haunting novel, Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem asks what would happen if all the Palestinians vanished from Israel. Although set in the 21st century, the story echoes the history of the city where it’s set—Jaffa, where thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1948. We see the Israeli perspective as they try to figure out what happened, but also that of the vanished Palestinians through the correspondence left behind. The journey Azem takes the reader on is literal, as we walk through a land devoid of many of the people that called it home, and metaphorical, as our Israeli protagonist begins to question everything they think they know.

Palestine +100 edited by Basma Ghalayini (Comma Press, 2019)

Twelve Palestinian authors tackle the question of what their homeland might look like in 2048, a century after the first Nakba, with a speculative angle. From drones to virtual reality, the Olympics to superheroes, the apocalypse to parallel universes, this anthology takes the reader on a journey across the speculative genre and through time. 2048 is not that far away, but only by reckoning with the past can we craft a new future.

Trees for the Absentees by Ahlam Bsharat, translated by Sue Copeland (Neem Tree Press, 2019)

Young adult novellas are a rare breed in publishing, despite the obvious need (if you don’t read YA you may not know how dominated the age range is with books that are 350+ pages, particularly in speculative genres). This is a lovely story about a college student living in occupied Palestine. Philistia splits her time between studying at Al-Quds Open University and working at an ancient hammam (a Turkish bath) in Nablus. Her father is imprisoned in an Israeli jail while her grandmother shares stories of how she used to prepare the bodies of the dead for burial. As she traverses between the “real” world and fantasy, Philistia confronts her life living in a colonized land.

Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr, translated by Marcia Lynx Qualey (Interlink, 2020)

Twin sisters Shams and Qamar, are orphaned at a young age after their parents help destroy a curse plaguing their village in northern Palestine. While Shams chooses a quiet life at home, Qamar sets off on a vast, incredible journey from the Middle East to North Africa, from the Mediterranean to Asia. Along the way she not only experiences remarkable events but tells fantastical tales as well. A beautiful, feminist exploration of folklore.

Squire by Sara Alfageeh & Nadia Shammas (Quill Tree Books, 2022)

This is the first graphic novel I’ve featured in this column, and I’m starting off strong. Aiza desperately wants to be a Knight, an honor that would confer upon her fame, fortune, and—crucially for someone in a colonized country—citizenship. With the Bayt-Sajji Empire on the verge of war, Aiza has a chance at knighthood, but first she must become a Squire. This YA fantasy is a gorgeously illustrated story about the complications of navigating life in an empire as an oppressed person just trying to survive.

Alex Brown is a Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, librarianship, and Black history. Find them on twitter (@QueenOfRats), bluesky (@bookjockeyalex), instagram (@bookjockeyalex), and their blog (bookjockeyalex.com).

The post Backlist Bonanza: 5 Underrated Books About Journeys appeared first on Reactor.

In an interview with People, Roth chose her words carefully about the film adaptation, which ended with the third book being split into two parts. The first movie, Allegiant (pictured above) didn’t fare well, so Lionsgate opted not to make the final installment.

“I mean, breaking things in two was all the rage at the time. That was why that decision was made,” Roth told People. “But at that point, I think I always felt peace about it just because I knew the movies were taking a different track than the books, and if you change the lead up, you change the ending. So I kind of felt like at that point … I feel like that third movie, I don’t know — there’s a lot we could talk about with it. But it’s its own thing.”

Roth was more forthcoming about the ending of the third book. I’m going to leave some space here in case you don’t want spoilers.

A little bit more space so you can shut your eyes if you don’t want to read!

…and here! In Allegiant, Roth kills off the protagonist, Kris. Fans were far from happy when they read that, and the online backlash against Roth was substantial.

“I listened to the series again on audiobook recently, and this was the first time I had re-experienced any of the books pretty much since Allegiant came out, because for a while it just reminded me of the internet, intense stress,” Roth said. “I’m obviously a lot older, and I think reading Allegiant again I understand better why there was such a strong reaction to this, just because of having that time and perspective. It’s interesting to reflect.”

She added: “I’ll be like, ‘What if that person had lived? What if a completely different plot point had happened or a different perspective?’ But I don’t think about it that often.”

Roth has written several books since the Divergent series, of course, including 2022’s Poster Girl.

If you want to read more of  Roth’s reflections, check out her full interview at People.

The post Divergent Series Author Veronica Roth Reflects On Her Series’ Controversial Ending appeared first on Reactor.

While Romero worked in many genre, he returned to zombie stories again and again. One of his projects, an epic novel about the zombie apocalypse that was unfinished at the time of his death, but now completed and shaped by author Daniel Kraus. The Living Dead, will be available from Tor Books on August 4th. As part of San Diego Comic-Con At Home, film scholar and journalist Richard Newby spoke with Kraus and Romero’s partner, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, about the novel and Romero’s legacy.

You can watch the full panel, or head below for highlights from the conversation.

First, by way of introduction, Daniel Kraus is the author of Rotters, The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, and, with Guillermo del Toro, Trollhunters and The Shape of Water. He was selected by the Romero Estate to complete The Living Dead, George A. Romero’s final work of zombie fiction. Suzanne Desrocher-Romero is the founder and President of The George A. Romero Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports indie filmmakers, and which recently partnered with The University of Pittsburgh to form the George A. Romero Horror Studies Center. Richard Newby has written for The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times, among others, and authored this amazing exploration of Night of the Living Dead.

RN: How did you get in the headspace of George Romero?

DK: It’s weird, it felt more like a standard collaboration than you would expect. Segments of the manuscript came at different stages. There was the original chunk that George had written, and then when I was a couple hundred pages into the work we turned up another hundred pages that George had written earlier—sort of a “dry run” for the book….we also found a missing short story that was told from the point of view of a zombie which was really valuable to get a sense of the zombie rules…[I] studied what George loved so I could be inspired by what he was inspired by. His favorite film was (Powell & Pressburger’s) Tales of Hoffman, and I was able to use that film as a scaffolding to build—that opera, Tales of Hoffman, is a three-act structure—I was able to use that as a model for the book’s three-act structure, and as a thematic guide for each act. So I treated it like I was working on an unfinished Rembrandt.

RN: Romero has quite a large fanbase—and I’m included in that! What do you think fans will be really excited about in this new novel, other than the fact that it’s a new novel co-written by George Romero?

DK: There will be sharp and poignant commentary on American society, that I don’t think has ever been more cutting than it is right now. A lot about the haves vs. the have-nots. The book involves a pandemic situation that we can get out of, but only if we work together. Some of the more granular surprises in the book…for instance learning how important zombie animals are! I did a lot of research into George ideas and deleted scenes, and it showed me how interested he was in exploring the idea of zombie animals.

SD-R: I sat down and read it, and it was an emotional experience for me. I had read sections of it before, and the main character or one of the main characters, Luis—I used to call George “Luis” when he was being difficult or negative, because George, he was a “half-empty” kinda guy. But deep down he was all about “full.” He often looked at life with a pessimistic view, and this book reflects that. I have to say, it was emotional I cried, I was touched by the characters, I felt that Dan was the best person to write this book.

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The Living Dead

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RN: There’s a comforting presence to George’s voice, and in spite of his pessimism a humanity, I think really carries through in this novel. In terms of his filmography—I just did a re-watch of all of his films, and while he’s best known for his zombie films, Martin, and Knightriders in particular I find a really touching film that was outside the horror box for him.  Did any of that impact the writing of this book at all?

DK: I think one of the reasons I appealed to George’s manager Chris Roe as a co-author was that he knew me as a student of George’s, and not just a student of his zombie films, I mean a student, period. I grew up on his movies, and I loved all of them. I don’t think he ever made a bad movie. To get an idea of who he was as a creator and a thinker I had to look at everything he did, the breadth of it. There are Easter egg-type nods to all of his work in the novel, not just his zombie work. Some of them are really subtle, and only a superfan will know! I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to look beyond the obvious six movies when it came to writing this book.

RN: What about your favorite Romero film moments?

SD-R: That’s a loaded question!

DK: There are a couple that jump to mind There’s a great moment in Dawn, Fran and Flyboy in bed together, it’s after they’ve cleaned the mall of zombies, and they’re living high on the hog—they have everything they want, and yet they’re sitting in bed, not looking at each other, and there’s this slow zoom-out, and it shows you that even after you think you’ve won everything, you still could have nothing. There’s something very nasty about that comment on the American Dream. And then, one of my favorite images of all time, is the very last image from his very last film, Survival of the Dead—a really underrated movie—it’s two white men on a hill, both dead, both with guns that don’t have any more bullets, still just firing empty chambers at each other, still pulling triggers, even after everything worth fighting for is gone, they’re still fighting. That last image gives me chills, and I know George wanted to make a lot more movies, but if you had to end on an image that sums up so much of what he made movies about, that one is so potent.

SD-R: I totally agree. I also think the ending of Night, still is so powerful, the sense of despair. And as a filmmaker, you do your first film, and it’s a home run! How does that happen? But he made a classic film and it changed the horror world. Suddenly humans were the monsters. And another thing you get a sense of, every film has its own look, its own world. He would always complain that people wanted him to do Dawn again, but he insisted that every film was going to be different, it would have a footprint, but it would be different .

RN: Your choice of characters in the book—one of the leads is a Black woman, and there’s also a Muslim girl, and I think, for me personally my entryway into Romero was Ben in Night of the Living Dead, and I think that’s the film of his that I’ve seen the most, the one that I think about the most, just because of its social significance. In choosing your characters was that something you were conscious of when you were writing it? Were you creating a world that reflected our own with the lead characters?

DK: Absolutely. Like you, I saw Night of the Living Dead—at five or six years old?—and then just continually as a kid. I lived in Iowa, and I didn’t know any Black people. But my hero was Ben, and it can’t be overemphasized how important representation is, to more people than me, obviously, but to me too in the sense that it wasn’t He-Man, it wasn’t Batman: my hero was Ben. No last name, Ben. So, yes, some of that, George had planned for the book, but in the third section of the book—fifteen years after the zombie apocalypse there’s an attempt to recreate society. And even in the abstract I think that could only be possible if we up-end the world as it now, so the only utopia that seems possible is one led by people of every color and creed and orientation. And in the beginning of the book the world is as it is now, but as certain characters come together there’s this potential of a better world. And I think that’s what George was coming to, beginning with Duane Jones playing Ben, all the way through the films: all paths were leading to how this book finishes up, I think.

S D-R: You know, he’d say “It’s 1968! Why are people still having trouble with this!” and now it’s 2020, and we’re still having trouble with this! His point of view was that we should have sorted it all out, already. And we haven’t. And that’s why he had such a pessimistic point of view, cause he kept thinking, “We’re not getting it!” And in his writing he’d hammer it, that we needed to stick together, and yet we couldn’t do that….diversity is where we live. Diversity is our world. And yet we somehow have trouble with it.

RN: What do you think he’d think of the popularity of zombies today?

SDR: He’d say “Ehh!” [Shrugs] …[W]e were on our terrace having a barbecue, and we were interrupted because he had to do a phone interview from Czechoslovakia. They were doing a zombie walk there, and there were about 13,000 people and he could hear them on the phone. It was just 15 minutes of 13,000 zombies and people excited about speaking to George on speaker, in the square. It’s surreal! It was surreal to him, but kinda cool? But he’d would never admit it.

DK: I think his filmography might be the greatest example in film history of the idea that horror can matter. Horror can be shocking, grotesque, in a way that can wake people up to the world around them in a way that I don’t know other genres can do quite as…startlingly. George was the prime mover of that.

RN: I think we can see George Romero’s legacy and influence in many forms. And with this novel, he’s continuing to give us stories and give us insight.

DK: This book does sort of close the loop he began with Night of the Living Dead.

The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus will be out August 4th  from Tor Books!

The post Celebrate George Romero’s Legacy and His Epic Novel The Living Dead appeared first on Reactor.

Mervyn Peake’s The Gormenghast Trilogy: Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959)

Life in 2020 may be a bit dour, but not as dour as poor Titus Groan’s existence. Born into an aristocratic family with a lineage seemingly focused on breeding for eccentricity, Titus is raised in sprawling Castle Gormenghast, a grand gothic edifice as imposing as it is poorly maintained. The questionably sane inhabitants of Gormenghast sleepwalk though lives obsessed with tradition and rank. Titus, therefore, has a childhood that is both claustrophobic and soul-crushing. The arrangement has the tradition of centuries behind it, and little reason to expect that it will continue as it was. As events prove, it is as delicate as spun sugar. It only takes one manipulative villain to send Castle Gormenghast’s fragile society towards what is almost certainly a merciful collapse, and propel Titus towards escape into an unfamiliar world.

***

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid (1975), The Golden Apple (1975), and Leviathan (1975)

Inspired by a never-ending flood of paranoiac letters dispatched to the pair’s employer (Playboy), Shea and Wilson wrote a novel in which all conspiracies, even the contradictory ones, were true. It begins conventionally enough. New York Detectives Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon investigate the bombing of a left-wing magazine; they’re also searching for missing editor Joe Malik. What would, in a better world, have been a simple case of domestic terrorism drags the two cops, plus the rest of the series’ vast cast, into a bewildering occult maze of plots on which the very fate of the world may depend. The trilogy is, to quote an old review of mine, “if drugs, sex, the occult, polyester, Studio 54, post-Watergate America, and the Playboy letters page were to have a monstrous baby.”

(Once again, I have rediscovered that there was a lavish stage version of the Illuminatus! Trilogy. I am, yet again, boggled)

***

M.A. Foster’s The Book of the Ler: The Warriors of Dawn (1975), The Gameplayers of Zan (1977), The Day of the Klesh (1979)

Unlike the previous two examples, the Ler books are linked not by an ongoing plot but by a shared setting. Also, unusually, they were written out of internal chronological order. The genetically engineered Ler are a second human species, intriguingly different from baseline humans, but not at all the superhumans that researchers had intended. Although all three of the novels have their strong points, the gem is Gameplayers, chronologically the earliest, and the one that explores Ler society in most detail. The Ler, confined to a reservation in an overcrowded 26^th century Earth, chafe against the restrictions required if they are to coexist with their far more numerous cousins. Cheap spaceflight is still a pipe dream, so accommodating the humans is a must for the Ler. All this is placed in jeopardy when a Ler woman gets caught robbing a museum, raising questions that the Ler would much prefer not to have been asked…

***

Patricia A. McKillip’s Riddle-Master Trilogy: The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), and Harpist in the Wind (1979)

Prince Morgon of Hed is a curiosity: a prince with ambitions above his station. The small and poor principality of Hed would be best served by a prince who’s willing to help out on the farm and haggle in the market. Would-be scholars like Morgon aren’t at all a good fit…but there he is, the prince. Morgon’s intellectual prowess wins him a spectre’s crown (which he keeps under his bed) and—quite unexpectedly—the hand of Raederle, second-fairest woman in the land.

It also drags Morgon and his loved ones into a grim struggle against a conspiracy of shapeshifters allied with the grand villain Ghisteslwchlohm. Sitting back and doing nothing means death. Survival means Morgon and Raederle must accept transformation beyond recognition. An enticing tale made even more remarkable by McKillip’s luminous prose.

***

Tanith Lee’s The Secret Books of Paradys: The Book of the Damned (1988), The Book of the Beast (1988), The Book of the Dead (1991), and The Book of the Mad (1993)

Paradys is far across the Uchronic seas from our own city of Paris. Paradys is that world’s City of Lights: It’s cultured, cosmopolitan, and decadent, but it’s not a paradise (as its name might suggest). It is an ancient city filled with answers to questions no sensible person should ever ask. Some inhabitants are monsters who deserve whatever hard fates come their way, but most are unfortunates in a society run for the benefit of the debauched and wellborn. Sometimes they can only escape into madness or death. Which is to say, no matter how grim things seem to you now, your sufferings are probably lighter than those afflicting Jehane, Oberand, Hilde, and the other characters in these books.

***

Looking at my selections, I note that they tend toward the dour and challenging. I’ll have to come up with another essay, to serve as a unicorn chaser. In the meantime, please share any book-related thoughts and suggestions in the comments…

In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is currently a finalist for the 2020 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award and is surprisingly flammable.

The post Five More Massive Works of SFF to Add to Your Must-Read Pile appeared first on Reactor.

A few decades, over a dozen countries, and several continents into this journey, worshiping at the Church of Bourdain (who made me and many, many others believe that traveling across this beautiful planet was not only possible, but required), and I’m still chasing that feeling of sitting in a bar overlooking a never-before-seen view, the smells of the kitchen wafting over me along with the soft buzz of languages I don’t understand. It’s that shot of simultaneous contentment and exhilaration that comes from new soil beneath my feet, fascinating unexplored architecture, the ebb and flow of conversation in the local dialect. In the air and in a word: culture.

The second lesson my parents taught me, again more by accident than anything else, was that books are constructed of the same magic that travel is imbued with.

Travel is culture and if books transport us to fantastical new worlds, then by definition fiction, and fantasy in particular, is culture. The sharing of cultures we’ve encountered, seen through a unique view, or created whole-cloth. Recreating that feeling of sitting in the bar in a new land—one I’ve experienced in nearly every country I’ve visited and is pure magic in every sense—is difficult on the page, but it’s there, friends. An old favorite of mine is Robert Jordan (I know, I know, you either LOVE Mr. Rigney or he’s not your cuppa, but I’m in the former camp) who created such scenes by the dozen like when Rand and Mat sing for their supper at inns and taverns or when Nynaeve, Elayne, Egeanin, and Thom share a meal in Arad Domon where sursa (chopsticks) are used in place of a fork. The hostess whispers that she’s left forks beneath their napkins and it was such a nice touch because I’ve found myself in just such a situation (though I am decent with chopsticks these days). He showed how even something as simple as a glass of water was vastly informed by a character’s culture, whether they were a wetlander or an Aiel. Some of my other favorites in recent years have been The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, Jaran by Kate Elliot and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon.

Fonda Lee’s The Green Bone Saga is a gritty trilogy that draws inspiration from Japan, Hong Kong, and other various cultures found sprinkled amongst the archipelagos and islands of Southeast Asia with its history of wars against imperial powers, isolationism, and deeply rooted traditions. Lee creates a world that feels at once modern and fantastical. It is fully lived in with all of its complexities and contradictions, and populated with intriguing characters that show us their world through their eyes: from the way would-be street toughs look up to Green Bones (men and women who use jade to give them magical abilities) to the way we see clan leaders both exploit and protect shopkeepers within their territory. Boat Day, a festival meant to bribe the Typhoon God with feasting and pageantry, is another great example where not only do we see the beliefs and religions of the people. Lee uses the scene to set the stage for an early encounter that will significantly up the stake in the budding clan war to come.

Lee’s talent for conveying culture and meaning through names is on display throughout the series, like the opening scene in the Twice Lucky, a bar where we’re introduced to her world through the evocative scene of scratchy, low opera music in the background, smoke in the air, and the pungent smell of fish stew and fried squid balls filling the room. It’s exactly the sort of scene anyone who has been to a new city will recognize… walking down a side street and the smell of something delicious or musical chords you’ve never heard before beckon you on, ever deeper into this new magical place. Speaking of magic, the jade magic which allows only certain individuals to harness the power of jade (and is also poisonous) adds depth to the Godfather-esque storylines that will pull you in from that first scene in the bar. Here’s the secret, dear reader, the setting, the story, it’s ALL magic.

In Jaran, Kate Elliot creates a fully realized, migrational society that echoes back to the Khanates of Asia and Eurasia, but with some unique twists that borrow from other societies that allow her to create a Khanate in which women, not men, hold the true political authority. From the jump, we realize we’re in for a treat as we are introduced to a future Earth under subjugation by an inscrutable alien empire known as the Chapalii, and follow the representative of humanity’s heir as she flees her responsibility (one she never wanted) seeking shelter in a backwater planet only to discover the empire has emissaries hidden away in places that it shouldn’t. This ‘primitive’ (to our protagonist, Tess) Rhui civilization holds deep secrets that pull her ever deeper into the Khanateespite setting up a heart pounding mystery, the reason I kept turning the page was to find out how these people lived, what they thought, what they fought for, and how Tess (as both woman and outsider) was going to fit within their very structured society where gender defined what is allowed and what is prohibited. Tess bends these rules, becoming one of the lone female Riders (one of the elite warriors who protect their own lands while seeking to conquer their rivals) and giving the reader a glimpse into all facets of Rhui life. Culture through character is truly Queen (or Khan).

Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree shows us an entire world built from various, fragmentary societies, some more fleshed out than others, but all very different, each based on their culture’s views of one specific type of magical creature: the dragon. We get to see Asian dragons side by side with European dragons which, I admit as a lover of all things dragon, would have hooked me on its own. That Shannon also creates societies with disparate perspectives on religion, foreigners, sexuality, and other cultural elements—all developed from their perspectives on dragons—drew me in deeper. Imagine an early Catholic-like society with a living saviour who believes they alone hold the knowledge of how the world was saved once before from demons (or were they dragons?) and how it will be saved again. Or take an isolationist Japan where contact with any outsider could be punishable by death, and the would-be Dragonrider accidentally saves an outsider’s life and must pray she can escape notice before she loses everything. Threaded through these nations is a hidden group of assassins and spies reminiscent of the real-world, historical Nizari Isma’ili leader, Rashid ad-Din Sinan or the Old Man of the Mountain (look him up–he’s also the inspiration for the Assassin’s Creed series) who has eyes and ears everywhere. Each of these societies has pieces of the truth about what happened the last time the world was threatened by demons (dragons). While these truths form the bedrock of their culture, it’s often obscured beneath layers of dogma that have grown up around it over time. Shannon leaves the reader wondering if these clashing cultures will be able to set aside their differences and sew those threads of truth into the whole cloth. This culture clash forms the background of a winding, twisting plot that unfolds over hundreds of pages. Fantasy lovers, eat your heart out.

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The Sin in the Steel

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My upcoming debut, The Sin in the Steel, shows us the world I created through the eyes of Sambuciña ‘Buc’ Alhurra, a compellingly chaotic heroine who is part Sherlock Holmes, part young Indiana Jones and ALL herself. Buc shares a sisterhood with Arya Stark and Lila Bard of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic. The first private investigator in her world, Buc’s too smart for her own good, with a razor-sharp blade hidden up her sleeve and an even sharper tongue. We get to tag along as she bests pirate queens, mages, and uncharted seas to solve a mystery. Her world is an exciting conglomeration of the Mediterranean basin—think Venice, Cordoba under the Umayyad Empire—with distinct flairs of cultures we’d find in the Caribbean and the South China Sea.

Anthony Bourdain said travel “…leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body.” I think good books do too. I’ve already got Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia on the top of my to be read pile. Jazz age Mexico where the Mayan god of death sends a woman on an impossible journey? Yes, please.

What are some of your favorite places, in books or real life?

Ryan Van Loan is a debut Fantasy author who served six years as a Sergeant in the United States Army Infantry (PA National Guard) where he served on the front lines of Afghanistan. His forthcoming novel, The Sin in the Steel was purchased by Tor Books publication as a series.

The post The Magic of Travel and Exploring Fantasy Cultures appeared first on Reactor.

Bethel is a land governed by a strict, fundamentalist religion. The Prophet rules the people and his Apostles enforce his will. The citizens in this rigid, harsh society worship a brutal god, one of fire and punishments and retribution. Anyone who acts against the will of the state or in defiance of tradition are declared witches and blasphemers and burned at the stake. Before she was even born, a dark skinned man from the Outskirts of Bethel, was executed by the Prophet. Her mother, young, pregnant, and desperate for vengeance, fled into the Darkwood and made a deal that cost her everything.

Seventeen years later Immanuelle, the daughter of the witch and the blasphemer, carries the burden of her parents’ sins. Rejected by most of the Bethelens and unable to live up to her family’s expectations, she feels lost. But a frightening incident in the Darkwood changes everything. A deadly curse takes hold and Bethel is wracked by plagues…and Immanuelle is the key to everything. With her dead mother’s secret journal guiding her and the Prophet’s handsome heir at her side, she will face the worst of humanity and battle the darkest magic.

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The Year of the Witching

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The Year of the Witching

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For a dark fantasy like The Year of the Witching, setting is just as important as character and plot. Locations make manifest the existential horrors the characters experience. It’s a good thing, then, that Alexis Henderson is so damn good at it. The Darkwood haunts Immanuelle like a monster lurking in the shadows, and the scenes where she explores it are as creepy as any good horror story. Bethel, too, is just as vivid. Rotten with puritanical ideology and patriarchal prejudice, it unsettles as much as the Darkwood. Bethel’s religion is built on the belief in the Father, a god of fire and brimstone. His cathedral is an expanse of cold stone and sharp glass. In the Outskirts, they still worship the Mother, the goddess of witchcraft and the moon, and Henderson contrasts their church as one made of warm wood and earth. It’s impressive work that reels you in.

Much has been made of the story’s feminism, but little on its intersectionality. Immanuelle is not looked down on by her community solely because she is a woman or is genetically kin to the dark skinned people of the Outskirts; she is looked down upon because she is both. She exists at the intersection of dual oppressions, one based on gender the other on skin color. The social hierarchies forged by sexism and racism trap her at the bottom. Not even her relationships with the Prophet and his Heir can pull up her rank; white supremacy and the patriarchy made sure of that.

Yet because Immanuelle is also biracial and lighter skinned than her Outskirt relations, she also exists in a state of comparative privilege. She lacks privilege in all-white Bethel, but she suddenly has it when she enters the all-Black Outskirts. In Bethel she is the token Black person who must bear the weight of representing an entire people, especially when she does something the white people don’t like. To them, her father’s Blackness has corrupted her femininity as much as her mother’s rebellion. It is a strange place to be, even more so as a young person already struggling with trying to find her place in a hostile world. I am a light skinned biracial Black woman who has lived and worked in predominantly white spaces for most of my life. While Henderson left much of Immanuelle’s biracial experience as subtext, readers like me will pick up on the nuances.

Unfortunately, the book’s ending doesn’t quite live up to everything that precedes it. Henderson lets certain characters off the hook and doesn’t demand as much from others as she needed to. I wish she had pushed Immanuelle a little harder instead of falling back on debating the difference between doing what is right and what is just. The fizzle of the climax puts a dent in Henderson’s fiercely feminist message, but not one big enough to kill the thrill of the story.

Full of blood and bigotry, The Year of the Witching is a chilling twist on stories about religious extremism and occultism. What’s not to love in a book where dangerous witches, cruel men, and oppressive religious zealotry collide, and the outcast girl who must sacrifice everything to stop them? With a keen eye and a sharp tongue, Henderson breathes new life into an old trope. Alexis Henderson is a fresh new voice in dark fantasy, and I look forward to hearing more from her.

The Year of the Witching is available from Ace Books.
Read an excerpt here.

Alex Brown is a teen services librarian by day, local historian by night, author and writer by passion, and an ace/aro Black woman all the time. Keep up with her on Twitter and Insta, or follow along with her reading adventures on her blog.

The post “Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter.”: The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson appeared first on Reactor.

Join us for sun-baked Australian tales, a story that swaps the moors for Mexico, and the book that as far as we’re concerned still stands as The Great American Novel, and tell us about your favorite Gothic tales in the comments!

Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

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Flyaway

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Flyaway

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Far from the misty moors of England or the dripping Spanish moss of the south, Kathleen Jennings gives us a new take on Gothic that thrives under a bright Australian sun! Bettina Scott has always believed her memories of her brothers’ disappearance. But when she gets a mysterious note from one of her brothers she has to question not only her own mind, but the facts around her father’s abandonment of her, as well. Bettina sets out from her small Western Queensland town to find the truth, and brings the reader along on a journey that becomes increasingly surreal as she tangles with uncanny dogs, schools that have… vanished (???), charmed talismans, and even actual monsters.

What happened to Bettina’s brothers? What will happen if she finds them? And if she can’t trust her own mind, who in the world can she trust?

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

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Picnic at Hanging Rock

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Picnic at Hanging Rock

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Picnic at Hanging Rock is the ur-Australian Gothic. Published in 1967 it quickly became a huge hit, and is considered a classic of Australian literature. The book is set in 1900 at a girls’ boarding school, and starts off exploring all the tropes of that subgenre, as we meet stiff, prim teachers who are feared by their pupils, the younger, more permissive teachers who inspire fervent love, Queen Bees leading their cliques, misfits trying to keep up, and intense friendships that blur into romantic obsessions. But soon the story takes a much creepier turn, when the girls head out for a Valentines Day picnic at the titular Hanging Rock. Four of the girls, including the most popular young lady at the school, venture off on a hike together, with their math teach following behind at a leisurely pace. Hours later, only one of them returns, frantic, with no memory of her time on the Rock and no idea how much time has passed.

The rest of the book follows the search for the women and the effect of their disappearance on the school and surrounding community, but of course what hovers over the entire story is that classic Gothic double whammy: the terror of female sexuality, and the terror of nature itself. Were the girls abducted? Raped? Eaten by beasts? Or did they transform into beasts themselves?

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

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Sing, Unburied, Sing

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Sing, Unburied, Sing

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Ward’s wrenching novel is a family saga, an examination of the US prison system, and a ghost story. Jojo and Kayla, a brother and sister living in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, come to rely on their grandparents while their mother, Leonie focuses on getting their father out of prison. The children and their grandmother have a connection their mother doesn’t share—all three can see and speak with the dead. As Leonie and a friend head out on a desperate, meth-addled journey to deal with the men in their lives, the children are forced to make sense of the adults’ behavior, their Mam’s illness, and the aura of death and desperation that hangs over their lives.

Ward’s novel uses the best tropes of Gothic fiction to peel back layer after layer of Southern life, through the impossible history of racism, the suffocating weight of white supremacy, the tug of addictions that promise release from all that pain, and the ghosts that are there to meet you at every bend in the road.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

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Wide Sargasso Sea is Jean Rhys’ explicitly anti-colonialist response to Jane Eyre. The novel follows Antoinette Cosway, a formerly rich Jamaican heiress of Creole descent who eventually becomes the “madwoman” in Mr. Rochester’s attic. Antoinette tells her own story, in which she is not mad at all, but forced into a hopeless situation by her tyrannical English husband, who is not named in the book. As the book unfolds in the days after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, Antoinette’s own racism and the consequences of her family’s choice to be slaveowners form a pivotal point in her downfall.

Rhys, who was born in Dominica, takes a scalpel to an iconic Gothic tale to look at British oppression in the Caribbean, the horror of white supremacy and slavery, and both men’s brutal treatment of women, and the way elite women can trade an illusion of safety to become complicit in the abuse of the lower class.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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High Place stands in the Mexican countryside, home to Howard Doyle, an ancient Englishman and his sons, one handsome but threatening, the other shy. When Noemí’s cousin Catalina asks her to leave her city life and come to High Place it’s shortly after her marriage to Virgil—and Catalina clearly feels that she’s under some sort of threat. Noemí is used to life as a pampered debutante, but she soon realizes that she’ll need to become an amateur detective to help her cousin. Is Virgil truly a threat? What are the secrets that seem to haunt Howard? And why has the High Place itself begun to appear in Noemí’s dreams, showing her images of grotesquerie and beauty that haunt her waking life and hint that she may never be able to leave? Can a house have a will of its own?

The author of Gods of Jade and Shadow takes all the tropes of a classic Gothic and transports them to the Mexican countryside, where the fading English elite fight to hold on to their power—even if it means living in thrall to ancient evil.

The Sundial by Shirley Jackson

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How about a Gothic Apocalypse? (A-goth-alypse?) While not an overt horror novel like The Haunting of Hill House, nor a creepy gothy delight like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Sundial takes the idea of making the house a character and runs with it. The Halloran house is a stately manor, encircled by a nice high wall, and occupied by the elderly Richard and Orianna, Maryjane, their daughter-in-law, and Fancy, their granddaughter. Until recently it was also inhabited by their son Lionel, but immediately before the book opens he dies in a mysterious fall that Maryjane is quite sure was murder. In addition to the family are Richard’s nurse, his sister, Fanny, Fancy’s governess, Miss Ogilvie, and Essex, who is supposed to be cataloguing the vast library but might be cataloguing Orianna instead. The book becomes a true locked room story as the remaining Hallorans bicker amongst themselves. They gradually become obsessed with the idea that the world is coming to an end, and that the only way they can survive the apocalypse and become the inheritors of the earth beyond the wall is to stay the heck inside.

When the book was released in 1958, plenty of reviewers thought that it was a commentary on the Cold War and nuclear tensions…but it might be just a little bit relevant right now, no?

Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote

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Truman Capote’s debut novel took a basic Gothic storyline, wrapped it up in a southern coming-of-age story, and made it queer as heck. Main character Truman Streckfuss Persons Joel Harrison Knox is sent to live with his father’s side of the family at Skully’s Landing—despite the fact that his father abandoned him when he was a baby, and doesn’t want him now. The family is exactly what you’d expect: Miss Amy, Joel’s furious stepmother, her cousin Randolph, openly gay and foppish, and, presumably, his father, whose whereabouts Miss Amy refuses to discuss. Joel befriends next door tomboy Harper Lee Idabel Thompkins, and the two navigate life with mysterious adults who don’t want them around very much. And, because this is a proper Gothic, Joel sometimes sees a ghost in the attic window of the house—who might not actually be a ghost.

Where is Joel’s father? Is the house haunted? Can two kids who refuse to conform to gender stereotypes get along in the rural South?

Beloved by Toni Morrison

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What can anyone still say about Beloved? Obviously, the greatest American novel is a ghost story. And just as obviously, any novel that sets out to understand this country must center our history of slavery and exploitation. Morrison gives us a classic Gothic framework: characters with troubled histories and secret shames; a contentious house that seems to have a life of its own; a second, more contentious house that threatens at every moment to drag our character back into the past and trap them forever; complicated gender dynamics; and, yes, A GHOST. (Or rather, a mass of ghosts—all the people whom main character Sethe saw destroyed by slavery Sethe’s hope and youth, Sethe’s daughter, Beloved, America itself.)

The difference is that in Morrison’s hands each of these tropes are used to confront slavery. The story’s current troubled house is in Ohio, the one Sethe and her mother-in-law and living children moved into after they escaped the South. But the neighbors don’t want them there, and every room is soaked in memories of Sethe’s dead child, Beloved, whom Sethe killed rather than have her taken back into slavey. The past house is Sweet Home, the plantation that Sethe was forced to work on, and there has never been a more perfectly-named setting in all of literature. The ghost is, of course, Beloved, come back to Sethe as the young woman she never became in life, determined to love her mother, and to punish her. How can Sethe ever move on into a future with Sweet Home as her past? How can she banish her daughter’s ghost when more than anything she wants her to stay?

The post 8 of Our Favorite Twists on Classic Gothic Stories appeared first on Reactor.

Enjoy these dozen SFF tales, ranging from cheeky epistolary novella to intricate manifestations of grief to choose-your-own-adventure Shakespeare, that take on the trickiest perspective and make you (that’s you, the reader) forget you were ever skeptical.

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Second-person point of view is often utilized when the protagonist has suffered a trauma and needs to distance themselves from the action of the story. No surprise, then, that Harrowhark Nonagesimus opens Harrow the Ninth addressing herself thusly, sick with self-loathing and wracked with confusion as the early days of Lyctorhood change not just her body but her relationship to the entire universe. This style perfectly encapsulates Harrow’s compulsion to hold her former self at a distance; and considering how Gideon the Ninth operated in close-third, it feels like an extra fuck you to the Ninth House’s cavalier. Of course, there’s more than meets the eye here, as Muir deftly twists language into multiple meanings while still imbuing it with self-sabotage and grief.

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The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

One of second person’s tricks is distracting the reader from who the narrator actually is—an impulse that Leckie plays upon in her first fantasy. Initially, the focus seems to be on young Eolo, aide to Mawat, the hot-tempered heir to the Raven’s Lease—a position that grants incredible power but demands a human sacrifice when the mortal Lease is up. Eolo is being watched, and subtly addressed, by the voice of the story, to the extent that the reader begins to identify with Eolo. The fact that Eolo is a trans man is brought up in the first few pages, but the second-person address dismisses any worries about pronouns—this is Eolo, plain and simple. Once you discover that the “I” is a sentient rock-god, suddenly Leckie expands the story to span millennia, broadening the scope from personal to epic and back again to personal, as Eolo and Mawat must uncover the circumstances behind his father’s rule being usurped.

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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

You are she, you are told in the first chapter of the first installment of Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy. She is you. You are Essun. Remember? The woman whose son is dead. And so the story takes off, with chapters alternating between other characters like Damaya, presented in third-person, and Essun interludes with such titles as you’re not alone and you discover wonders down below. There is a reason that you-as-Essun are being addressed thusly, but you the reader must walk in Essun’s footsteps before you can understand why.

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“The Girlfriend’s Guide to Gods” by Maria Dahvana Headley

In her short story, Headley reaches through the layers of time to engage every woman who knows her mythology, who identified with the Eurydices and Persephones and Heras without actually believing that they were the heroines of legend. To be sure, “your” story is more bitter than sweet, pockmarked with thoughtless betrayals by unworthy men and years wasted in Hell before you clawed your way back to the surface. But the greatest triumph of “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Gods,” both for Headley as oracle and you as reader, is the opportunity it offers to fully inhabit the experience of Greek mythology’s forgotten or dismissed wives, nymphs, shades, and brides.

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Romeo and/or Juliet by Ryan North

“Plays weren’t meant to be read,” proclaims the book page for Ryan North’s choose-your-own-adventure take on Shakespeare’s most famous tragic romance. “They were meant… to be played.” The Dinosaur Comics creator is retelling Romeo and Juliet through his signature irreverent voice, but really the ending is up to you, the reader. The CYOA style allows you to play as either (or both!) of the star-crossed lovers and follow your own path to all manner of destinies: dueling each other, getting real swole, fending off robots and ninjas… seriously. Nothing is off-limits in over 100 endings, each illustrated by a talented artist, including Noelle Stevenson, Kate Beaton, Kate Leth, Lucy Knisley, Randall Munroe, and many more.

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Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

In Jemisin’s novella, part of the Forward collection, “you” are an unnamed explorer sent back to an abandoned, graveyard Earth after your people long ago escaped the dying planet. Interestingly, the narrator describes an in-universe physical ideal that you will attain at the end of your mission—white, male, “patrician” looks, blond—they stress that “you must earn your beauty.” So for the duration of your mission, better to regard yourself merely as an augmented instrument for a higher power looking for answers on this lost planet. In Emergency Skin, Jemisin makes second person as close as possible by positioning the narrator (Jason Isaacs in the audiobook) as an AI embedded in the protagonist’s brain—literally a voice in your head.

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The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

Can a book be in second person if it doesn’t actually use the “you” pronoun? Yes, asserts Douglas Lain in his analysis of Gerrold’s seminal 1973 time travel narrative, folded in on itself as elaborately as a beautiful piece of origami. It’s not immediately obvious, as the novel takes place in the first-person, as college student Daniel inherits a Timebelt that allows him to jump forward and backward in time. As Dan hops in and out of his timestream, he encounters countless alternate versions of himself, forging the kinds of paradoxical relationships with those other selves that make this an unforgettable take on time travel. When you finish the novel, you might still wonder how it’s second person—but then you return to the opening lines: In the box was a belt. And a manuscript. You are Dan, opening the box… and suddenly you, the reader, are as folded as the man himself.

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Some epistolary novels don’t commit to second person all the way through, but still address “you” via letters—from thick scrolls to organic messengers, they reveal a narrative that feels intimately close because it was specially written for one person…

The Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera

One unassuming morning, after eight years of being alone, the Phoenix Empress, Daughter of Heaven, the Light of Hokkaro, Celestial Flame receives a scroll in a script that no one would ever use to write to her. No one, save her fated friend and fellow warrior, Barsalyya Shefali Alshar. As she unrolls the scroll and beholds a letter from Shefali, the Phoenix Empress becomes O-Shizuka again, reading her lost beloved’s explanation of what has transpired in the past eight years—but first, Shefali must retell Shizuka her own life story. For almost the entirety of The Tiger’s Daughter, the reader becomes Shizuka, desperately listening to the revelations about “your” fate and when you will see your Shefali again.

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This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar

El-Mohtar and Gladstone’s collaboratively written (as in, literally side-by-side at retreats) novella is mostly told through letters passed from one rogue time agent to another. These missives are bookended by third-person passages setting up the how of Red or Blue even finding the other’s off-the-record correspondence. But the letters—with such gorgeous addresses as Dear Red Sky at Morning and My Blueprint—fill in who is writing, what kind of connection they are slowly forging through truly beautiful language, and why they are willing to risk the wrath of the Agency and Garden. As the shadowy reader poring over their letters, you get to be Red, you get to be Blue, you get to be every color in-between—you get to feel like you’re falling in love just as much as they are.

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Honorable Mentions

Some SFF tales flirt with second person POV in short, but unforgettable segments:

Redshirts by John Scalzi

Scalzi appends his Star Trek-inspired, metafictional novel with three codas, each occupying first-, second-, or third-person perspectives. Coda II, appropriately titled “Second Person,” builds on a turning point from the novel involving second chances and alternate selves. Without giving much away, the story—in which “you” are a previously-mentioned character coming into the narrative for the first time on your own—has a Man Who Folded Himself-esque meeting of selves and interrogates what kind of agency a background character in someone else’s story can attain for themselves.

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Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

To wrap up his Southern Reach trilogy, VanderMeer explored all three perspectives in the final novel. “Something that really annoys me with multiple character novels is when they use all first person,” he told Clarkesworld in 2014. “It’s really hard to make those differentiated, and if you use too many third person points of view, then the same problem can occur, just not as giant. Using the mix of the three makes them really stand out from one another, because the second-person one is set in the past.” That past perspective belongs to the psychologist from Annihilation, and recontextualizes that expedition’s foray into Area X.

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You by Austin Grossman

Not to be confused with Caroline Kepnes’ social media thriller (and Netflix guilty-pleasure adaptation) You, Grossman’s novel captures both the experience of seeing the world as a game designer adult and, influencing that, adolescence via role-playing games. While the novel switches between all tenses, anyone who has gathered with friends to collaboratively create an RPG adventure will feel their heart lift at passages like this:

Your character is always going to be you; you can never ever quite erase that sliver of you-awareness. In the whole mechanized game world, you are a unique object, like a moving hole that’s full of emotion and agency and experience and memory unlike anything else in this made-up universe.

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You

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What are your favorite second-person stories in SFF?

Originally published in March 2020.

Natalie Zutter was a second-person skeptic, but these books have played with the style so cleverly and heartbreakingly that she can’t wait to read more. Share your favorite “you” stories with her on Twitter!

The post 12 SFF Stories Told From Second-Person Perspective appeared first on Reactor.

When I was doing research for my own upcoming superhero novel, I found that—fortunately for us—publishing is catching up with the rest of our hero-obsessed pop culture universe. And the best thing about getting your superheroes in novel form is the opportunity to dive into our costumed faves’ psyches.

In my debut YA novel The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope you’ll meet Nadia Van Dyne, a teen superhero who’s trying to do it all: be a good hero, take care of her mental health, be a supportive friend, head up her all-girl science lab, even learn how to drive. It was such an honor to write for Nadia, a brilliant, optimistic, kind superhero who always sees the best in everyone she meets and wants the best for everyone around her. When writing this novel I had to ask myself: what does it really mean to be a superhero, and what effect does it have on them emotionally? Let’s take a look at some of my favorite books that dive right into all that heroic goodness.

Black Widow: Forever Red by Margaret Stohl

Margaret Stohl is one of the queens of YA fiction, so it’s no surprise that her take on Natasha Romanoff is as adventurous, romantic, and high-stakes as you’d hope. But there’s a twist: the book isn’t really about Nat. It actually follows Ava Orlova, daughter of a missing Russian physicist, Black Widow rescuee, and ward of S.H.I.E.L.D. When she escapes her American captors, Ava is on her own… but it isn’t long before danger comes knocking. As Ava and Nat face down their enemies together, Ava learns about who she really is—and Nat is forced to take on the big sister role. It’s awkward and adorable murdertimes for everybody. If you’re stoked for the upcoming Black Widow movie, pick this one up—there’s lots of great Nat backstory you’ll want to know in advance.

Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

The first book in Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine series is so much fun you’ll want to snap up the sequels immediately (I definitely did!). Evie Tanaka lands herself a position as assistant to Aveda Jupiter, the best superhero in San Francisco (and her childhood BFF.) Evie does it all: fielding diva moments, wrangling demon-blood dry cleaning emergencies, staying mostly out of sight. But when Evie discovers she also has powers, her life changes overnight. If supernatural karaoke battles, superhero gossip bloggers, and Asian-American supersisters all sound good to you, then you’ll love the Heroine series, guaranteed.

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

If you’re a fan of Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha novels, there’s no doubt you’ll love her take on the most famous Amazon of Themyscira. As part of DC’s YA Icons series, Warbringer follows Diana on a quest to prove herself to her warrior sisters. Breaking the laws of her people to save a mortal called Alia Keralis, Diana accidentally dooms the whole world… because Alia is a Warbringer, a descendent of Helen of Troy. Hordes of enemies descend in an attempt to either destroy or possess Alia, whose fate is tied to destruction and death. Can Diana and Alia defeat them all? (I mean, obvi. She’s Wonder Woman!) Bardugo brings her signature flair to this novel, bringing to life one of the most likeable iterations of Diana ever to grace the page.

Dreadnought by April Daniels

I absolutely could not put this book down once I’d started reading it; Dreadnought is just that fast-paced and fun. It follows Danny, a trans girl who’s just accidentally inherited the powers of the superhero Dreadnought (he died in front of her; it was a whole thing.) Though Danny loves her new powers, she’s faced with all kinds of challenges: less-than-supportive parents; a best friend who suddenly wants to make out with her; other superheroes who can’t decide where and if she belongs or not. And that’s all topped by the fact that Dreadnought’s murderer, a super-evil cyborg called Utopia, is still out there. And, this time, Utopia wants to end more than just Dreadnought. (Hint: this time, it’s the whole world.)

Captain Marvel: Higher, Further, Faster by Liza Palmer

It’s an open secret that Carol Danvers is my favorite superhero, so I’m always looking for more of that good good Cap content. Liza Palmer’s novel, a prequel to the 2019 Captain Marvel film, follows Carol just trying to make it through U.S. Air Force flight school in the ‘80s. Carol meets her best gal pal, Maria Rambeau, and the two of them tackle the military boys’ club head first, crushing misogyny and flight circuits over the course of their first year. If you’re a fan of the strongest Avenger, I highly recommend picking up this fast and fun read.

Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor is a genius, obviously, and if you haven’t read Binti or her Shuri comics then I would recommend you give those a shot ASAP. But for the more powers-minded (and that’s what we’re here for, after all!) I would absolutely recommend her 2008 novel Zahrah the Windseeker. Zahrah, from the Ooni Kingdom, is born with vines in her hair—a sign that she has special powers. While most people fear Zahrah for her differences, her best friend Dari is always loving and supportive. So when Dari finds himself in danger, Zahrah has to put it all on the line to save him. With extremely Tolkien/Narnia vibes, Zahrah is suspenseful, magical, and a blast to read from start to finish.

Black Canary: Breaking Silence by Alexandra Monir

Okay, this one isn’t out until December 19th, but it sounds so good I basically had no choice but to include it on my list. Sci-fi scribe Alexandra Monir (The Final Six) takes on Black Canary as part of the DC Icons series, bringing her fierce feminist perspective to the character. Breaking Silence is set in a near-future dystopian Gotham City ruled by the Court of Owls, where women are stripped of their rights—no working, no learning, and certainly no singing. Seventeen-year-old Dinah Lance’s life is changed forever when she illegally stumbles onto music for the first time. Embracing the power of her voice might just mean changing the whole world. I cannot wait for this one.

Not Your Sidekick by CB Lee

CB Lee’s Not Your Sidekick is the first in the Sidekick Squad, a series of books that follow Jessica Tran, daughter of superheroes. With no powers of her own, Jessica decides to spite her parents with what she thinks will be the perfect internship for her college application… which just happens to be for her town’s resident Super Villain. Things don’t go incredibly smoothly for Jessica from there, as you can imagine. For the representation of bisexual identity in the series, CB (bisexual herself) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children’s/Young Adult Fiction, and she’s previously been a finalist in the Bisexual Book Awards!

Sam Maggs is a bestselling author of books, comics, and video games. She’s a Senior Writer for Insomniac Games, including work on Marvel’s Spider-Man; the author of DK’s Marvel Fearless and Fantastic! and Quirk Books’ The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy, Wonder Women, and Girl Squads; and a comics writer for beloved titles like Captain Marvel, My Little Pony, Star Trek, and Jem and the Holograms. A Canadian in Los Angeles, she misses Coffee Crisp and bagged milk.

The post 8 Amazing Novels About Female Superheroes appeared first on Reactor.

One of the ways I’m trying to, though, is by revisiting some books that are… I won’t call them “old” favourites, because very few of them are more than ten years old. Past favourites, perhaps. It’s interesting to see which hold up after some time and reflection, and which still mean just as much to me, albeit in different ways—and where my feelings have changed. Over the next couple of columns, I mean to share some of those visits.

Foz Meadows, An Accident of Stars (Angry Robot, 2016); A Tyranny of Queens (Angry Robot, 2017)

Foz and I became friends sometime before the London Worldcon in 2014, where we both lost a Best Fan Writer Hugo to Kameron Hurley—an award Foz has since gone on to win. Re-reading the Manifold Worlds duology now is strongly comforting, because its tone is so full of Foz’s matter-of-fact kindness and generosity (and sense of humour) that it’s almost like having a chat with a friend.

I say “almost” because most chats with friends aren’t full of narrative tension, fascinating and thoughtful worldbuilding, and both the painful inevitability of change and the hard work of healing from trauma. The duology takes the traditional, colonialist assumptions of portal fantasy, where someone from our world enters another and becomes pivotal to events, and puts them under a microscope. An ensemble cast of characters (compelling and diverse) deal with questions of power and responsibility, damage and recovery—but some damage you can’t fix, and have to learn to live with; sometimes all the power you can touch isn’t enough to rectify the problems that you face. An Accident of Stars and A Tyranny of Queens don’t shy from that.

And the characters are really great. Saffron Coulter, the girl from our world who ends up in another, is the centre of an ensemble that includes several other young people coming of age as well as a number of adults doing their best to handle a messy set of political coups. All of them have compelling lives and motivations, and all of them—even the villains—are treated with a generous measure of empathy. While the structure of A Tyranny of Queens is a little out of kilter, that’s more than outweighed by how much I enjoy the characters and world. And right now, novels with this much compassion and kindness are a balm for my soul.

Aliette de Bodard, In the Vanishers’ Palace (JABberwocky Literary Agency, 2018)

Kindness and compassion. In this adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, those things stand out: people trying their best in the midst of a ruined world.

The Vanishers are long gone—vanished, like their name implies—but the ruin they wreaked on the world remains, in tainted harvests and devastating illnesses. Yên is a failed scholar, teacher of village children, the only child of the village healer. Both she and her mother are marginal, unimportant in the calculations of power. When Yên’s mother summons a dragon in a last-ditch effort to save the life of the daughter of one of the village elders, matters fall out so that Yên’s life is the price. Sold to Vu Côn, last of the dragons to still move in the world, Yên expects to die. After all—everyone knows that dragons kill.

Vu Côn has responsibilities of her own: she’s a healer, her life spent treating the diseases the Vanishers loosed upon the world, or at least preventing their spread. And she is raising two children—rambunctious, energetic, isolated—on her own.  She has a use for Yên. Her children need a tutor. And what Yên wants—well, it’s not like Yên can go home again, is it?

(The reader may be forgiven for believing that Vu Côn is actually terribly lonely.)

Yên and Vu Côn’s mutual attraction starts from these unpromising beginnings. But In the Vanishers’ Palace is a novella about living in an imperfect world, and making it better; about duty and constraint and affection—and making better choices when you realise you’ve made poor ones. One of the strongest repeating themes is the bond between mothers and children: mothers protecting their children, children protecting their mothers, all the choices made out of love and loyalty to try to shelter each other from the worst of the world.

It’s vivid and compelling, and every time I reread it, I find it has more to say. I find it means more to me with each reading.

Stay safe, people. 

Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, was published in 2017 by Aqueduct Press. It was a finalist for the 2018 Locus Awards and was nominated for a 2018 Hugo Award in Best Related Work. Find her at her blog, or find her at her Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, and the Abortion Rights Campaign.

The post Sleeps With Monsters: Revisiting Comforting Favourites appeared first on Reactor.

While The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky both traced Elma’s paths from Earth to the Moon and then to Mars, Kowal has expanded the scope of her series by focusing on a new “astronette” for the third installment: ambitious, brilliant senator’s wife and WASP pilot Nicole Wargin, whose adventure on the lunar colony in The Relentless Moon runs parallel to the events of The Fated Sky. In doing so, Kowal reminds readers that humanity has a long way to go to settle the Moon, and that no two Lady Astronauts are alike.

At the same time that Elma is on a history-making three-year mission to Mars, her dear friend and fellow astronette Nicole grapples with present unrest on Earth. It’s been over a decade since the Meteor wiped out most of the Eastern Seaboard, transplanting the seat of government to Kansas City—where Nicole’s husband Kenneth is senator—and refocusing the world’s priority to escaping the increasing effects of climate change. But while the International Aerospace Coalition (IAC) works to establish and expand the lunar colony with new influxes of civilians and astronauts, the growing Earth First movement resists the narrative of leaving their planet… especially because it is clear that not every single human can afford (money- or health-wise) to go to the stars.

While past Lady Astronaut novels have explored the political challenges of resettling the human race, The Relentless Moon best embodies these obstacles in the tenacious Nicole, who would rather be showing people how to float-walk in zero-G but instead squeezes herself into high heels and grounds herself with Earth’s gravity in order to meet her peers where they’re at. Despite having the cachet and her own minor celebrity of being in the first class of Lady Astronauts, that aspect of her identity mostly makes her an oddity to the people in her Earth social circles. They can better stomach her when she’s Mrs. Kenneth Wargin, with her flattering laugh and undying support for her senator husband’s ambitions for the presidency. Seemingly the only characteristic that carries over between her two lives is her penchant for striking red lipstick-as-armor.

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The IAC’s semi-regular Moon missions, the next one of which Nicole is on, suffer setbacks in the form of increasingly suspicious accidents that further weaken public support of the IAC’s colonization plan. Paired with growing opposition and riots from Earth Firsters, it is a politically fraught atmosphere in which Nicole is planning to leave her husband behind for her next mission. Yet none of that will deter her from going to where she is at her best, both as a public figure and a pilot—even if higher-ups in the IAC are starting to murmur behind her back about the fifty-something astronette being “old hat,” and even if they aren’t giving her as many opportunities to prove herself as her younger, male colleagues.

A reader will likely empathize with Nicole’s impatience to get to the Moon already. The first third of the novel proceeds at a frustratingly slow pace, setting up the necessary conflict on Earth as well as the idiosyncracies of lunar living, albeit sometimes repetitively. It’s not until Nicole and her team are settled on the Moon, with a few hiccups, that the book’s action truly picks up—with sabotage. Leaving Earth doesn’t mean that you leave its problems behind.

Because what is at the heart of each Lady Astronaut story is the concept of distance and disconnection: between Earth and the Moon, or the Moon and Mars. When mysteriously-timed blackouts chip away at the colony’s calm, and a single incident of supposed food poisoning transforms into something much more sinister, what truly amps up the astronauts’ anxiety is the fact that they have to solve these issues on their own. Mission Control and their loved ones are just faraway voices with a 1.3-second delay, and they are still living (albeit with church services and bridge club) on a rock that could kill them in instants if their oxygen gets knocked out.

Part of the story’s slow pace is due to Nicole herself, a vexing (in the best way) enigma of a protagonist. While the in-universe news reports at the start of each chapter document the increasing tension on Earth, so much of the early scenes are filled with the same empty chatter without much action—because we’re witnessing them through the eyes of Nicole-the-politician’s-wife, who can only watch as her husband tries to manage the Earth First threat. Even after she’s back on the Moon, facing the potent cocktail of sexism and ageism from the IAC, she retains much of this making-nice persona—stubbornly digging her booted heels in, killing them with kindness. For someone so eager and accommodating to show off her various facets, Mrs. Wargin actually plays things very close to the chest.

The reward of reading, then, is sticking with Nicole until she unclenches enough to reveal the parts of herself that are not immediately apparent: the anorexia that lets her squeeze into gala gowns and exert control when so much agency is taken from her, that becomes unintentional self-sabotage just as the colony’s glitches shift from inconvenience to true danger. But as things get increasingly personal, Nicole also reveals another facet of herself, answering some questions of how she is so good with people, and it is spectacular.

Although it is physically impossible for Elma to be in the novel, bound as she is for Mars, her presence is keenly felt through glimpses of correspondence between her and her husband Nathaniel, waiting patiently on Earth for the years she’ll be gone. Their tender dynamic, the beating heart of the prior books, inspires Nicole and Kenneth on how to cope with their own long-distance relationship.

Yet the Wargins only work as well as they do because theirs is already a reassuring partnership of equals, especially for the time and for his position. Each anticipates the other’s needs, whether it’s a surprise Caesar salad (the ultimate declaration of love) or saying the right thing at the right party. If anything, their greatest source of tension—their future home—feels at times under-explored. Nicole clearly lives for her Moon stays, while Kenneth is gearing up to announce his candidacy for President of the United States. Even though the plan is to get as many Americans as possible to a new home off Earth, he has his reasons for staying on terra firma. This potentially marriage-altering dilemma gets a bit lost as the lunar sabotage ramps up.

On the Moon, Lady Astronaut Myrtle Lindholm and her husband Eugene see their own marriage tested: she with the daily dangers of investigating terrorist attacks on their home, he in struggling to rally the colonists and astronauts under the authority of a Black man. While the Lindholms seem to start the novel as merely supporting characters, Nicole’s crises create the space to bring them to the forefront as competent, courageous leaders. Really, every relationship in this series is impressively equipped to navigate an asteroid field of personal and professional barrages and come out the other side.

That’s the triumph of the Lady Astronaut books: exploring the dissonance of space travel, but also delighting in the moments of connection. The stories are strongest when they’re about two individuals, or two groups of humans, overcoming the expanse between them and working together toward some (physical or figurative) common ground.

The Relentless Moon is available from Tor Books.
Read an excerpt here.

Natalie Zutter is a playwright and pop culture critic, and a regular contributor to Tor.com, Den of Geek, and Read It Forward. Talk alternate histories with her on Twitter!

The post Lunar Self-Sabotage: The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal appeared first on Reactor.

Keep track of all the new releases here. You can also find a list of other horror titles scheduled for 2020 here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Note: Release dates are subject to change.

WEEK ONE (July 7)

Sensation Machines—Adam Wilson (Soho Press)

Michael and Wendy Mixner are a Brooklyn-based couple whose marriage is failing in the wake of a personal tragedy. Michael, a Wall Street trader, is meanwhile keeping a secret: he lost the couple’s life savings when a tanking economy caused a major market crash. And Wendy, a digital marketing strategist, has been hired onto a data-mining project of epic scale, whose mysterious creator has ambitions to solve a national crisis of mass unemployment and reshape America’s social and political landscapes. When Michael’s best friend is murdered, the evidence leads back to Wendy’s client, setting off a dangerous chain of events that will profoundly change the couple—and the country.

Survivor Song—Paul Tremblay (William Morrow)

In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government’s emergency protocols are faltering. Dr. Ramola “Rams” Sherman, a soft-spoken pediatrician in her mid-thirties, receives a frantic phone call from Natalie, a friend who is eight months pregnant. Natalie’s husband has been killed—viciously attacked by an infected neighbor—and in a failed attempt to save him, Natalie, too, was bitten. Natalie’s only chance of survival is to get to a hospital as quickly as possible to receive a rabies vaccine. The clock is ticking for her and for her unborn child. Natalie’s fight for life becomes a desperate odyssey as she and Rams make their way through a hostile landscape filled with dangers beyond their worst nightmares—terrifying, strange, and sometimes deadly challenges that push them to the brink.

WEEK TWO (July 14)

The Adventure Zone: Petals to the Metal—the McElroys (First Second)

Our boys have gone full-time at the Bureau of Balance, and their next assignment is a real thorny one: apprehending The Raven, a master thief who’s tapped into the power of a Grand Relic to ransack the city of Goldcliff. Local life-saver Lieutenant Hurley pulls them out of the woods, only to throw them headlong into the world of battle wagon racing, Goldcliff’s favorite high-stakes low-legality sport and The Raven’s chosen battlefield. Will the boys and Hurley be able to reclaim the Relic and pull The Raven back from the brink, or will they get lost in the weeds?

The Only Good Indians—Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Other People’s Pets—R.L. Maizes (Celadon)

La La Fine relates to animals better than she does to other people. Abandoned by a mother who never wanted a family, raised by a locksmith-turned-thief father, La La looks to pets when it feels like the rest of the world conspires against her. La La’s world stops being whole when her mother, who never wanted a child, abandons her twice. First, when La La falls through thin ice on a skating trip, and again when the accusations of “unfit mother” feel too close to true. Left alone with her father—a locksmith by trade, and a thief in reality—La La is denied a regular life. She becomes her father’s accomplice, calming the watchdog while he strips families of their most precious belongings. When her father’s luck runs out and he is arrested for burglary, everything La La has painstakingly built unravels. In her fourth year of veterinary school, she is forced to drop out, leaving school to pay for her father’s legal fees the only way she knows how—robbing homes once again. As an animal empath, she rationalizes her theft by focusing on houses with pets whose maladies only she can sense and caring for them before leaving with the family’s valuables. The news reports a puzzled police force—searching for a thief who left behind medicine for the dog, water for the parrot, or food for the hamster. Desperate to compensate for new and old losses, La La continues to rob homes, but it’s a strategy that ultimately will fail her.

Episodes—Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

Christopher Priest is one of the most acclaimed writers of both SF and literary fiction at work today. Here, for the first time in almost twenty years, is a collection of his short work. Largely previously uncollected, ranging from the horrific to the touching, the science fictional to the realist, these stories are a perfect demonstration of the breadth and power of Priest’s writing. Eleven stories are included, along with commentary and reflection from the author. Within these pages you will discover the stage magic-inspired horror of ‘The Head and the Hand’, the timeslip accidents of ‘futouristic.co.uk’, the impossible romance of ‘Palely Loitering’ and the present-day satire of ‘Shooting an Episode’.

WEEK THREE (July 21)

The Year of the Witching—Alexis Henderson (Ace)

In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle Moore’s very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement. But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood. Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.

I Come With Knives (Malus Domestica #2)—S.A. Hunt (Tor Books)

Robin—now armed with new knowledge about mysterious demon terrorizing her around town, the support of her friends, and the assistance of her old witch-hunter mentor—plots to confront the Lazenbury coven and destroy them once and for all. Meanwhile, a dangerous serial killer only known as The Serpent is abducting and killing Blackfield residents. An elusive order of magicians known as the Dogs of Odysseus also show up with Robin in their sights. Robin must handle these new threats on top of the menace from the Lazenbury coven, but a secret about Robin’s past may throw all of her plans into jeopardy.

The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained—Colin Dickey (Viking)

In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational—in fringe—is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures. Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today’s Illuminati is yesterday’s Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America’s wildest fringe beliefs—from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining “evidence” of the great Kentucky Meat Shower—investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.

Malorie (Bird Box #2)—Josh Malerman (Del Rey)

Twelve years after Malorie and her children rowed up the river to safety, a blindfold is still the only thing that stands between sanity and madness. One glimpse of the creatures that stalk the world will drive a person to unspeakable violence. There remains no explanation. No solution. All Malorie can do is survive—and impart her fierce will to do so on her children. Don’t get lazy, she tells them. Don’t take off your blindfold. AND DON’T LOOK. But then comes what feels like impossible news. And with it, the first time Malorie has allowed herself to hope. Someone very dear to her, someone she believed dead, may be alive. Malorie has already lost so much: her sister, a house full of people who meant everything, and any chance at an ordinary life. But getting her life back means returning to a world full of unknowable horrors—and risking the lives of her children again. Because the creatures are not the only thing Malorie fears: There are the people who claim to have caught and experimented on the creatures. Murmerings of monstrous inventions and dangerous new ideas. And rumors that the creatures themselves have changed into something even more frightening. Malorie has a harrowing choice to make: to live by the rules of survival that have served her so well, or to venture into the darkness and reach for hope once more.

WEEK FOUR (July 28)

I Hold A Wolf by the Ears—Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her acclaimed and prizewinning Isle of Youth, draws readers into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and mind like rotten, fragrant fruit. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg’s trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Iceland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the thoughts we reveal to no one but ourselves.

Afterland—Lauren Beukes (Mulholland Books)

Most of the men are dead. Three years after the pandemic known as The Manfall, governments still hold and life continues—but a world run by women isn’t always a better place. Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole’s own ruthless sister, Billie—all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won’t be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home. To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that’s all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step… even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.

The Butterfly Lampshade—Aimee Bender (Doubleday)

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents—her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact—she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her own place in the world. As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality. The scenes set in Francie’s past glow with the intensity of childhood perception, how physical objects can take on an otherworldly power. The question for Francie is, What do these events signify? And does this power survive childhood?

Empire of Wild—Cherie Dimaline (William Morrow)

Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year—ever since that terrible night they’d had their first serious argument hours before he mysteriously vanished. Her Métis family has lived in their tightly knit rural community for generations, but no one keeps the old ways …until they have to. That moment has arrived for Joan. One morning, grieving and severely hungover, Joan hears a shocking sound coming from inside a revival tent in a gritty Walmart parking lot. It is the unmistakable voice of Victor. Drawn inside, she sees him. He has the same face, the same eyes, the same hands, though his hair is much shorter and he’s wearing a suit. But he doesn’t seem to recognize Joan at all. He insists his name is Eugene Wolff, and that he is a reverend whose mission is to spread the word of Jesus and grow His flock. Yet Joan suspects there is something dark and terrifying within this charismatic preacher who professes to be a man of God… something old and very dangerous. Joan turns to Ajean, an elderly foul-mouthed card shark who is one of the few among her community steeped in the traditions of her people and knowledgeable about their ancient enemies. With the help of the old Métis and her peculiar Johnny-Cash-loving, twelve-year-old nephew Zeus, Joan must find a way to uncover the truth and remind Reverend Wolff who he really is… if he really is. Her life, and those of everyone she loves, depends upon it.

Crossings—Alex Landragin (St. Martin’s)

On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence. The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations. With each new chapter, the stunning connections between these seemingly disparate people grow clearer and more extraordinary. Crossings is an unforgettable adventure full of love, longing and empathy.

The post All the New Horror and Genre-Bending Books Arriving in July! appeared first on Reactor.

Seventeen-year-old Xochi arrives in the grungy, anything goes San Francisco of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Alone and adrift, she wanders the street in search of a way to make the pain go away. Instead she finds Pallas, the precocious 12 year-old daughter of a wild family of queer musicians. Now with a roof over her head and a job as a governess to keep her occupied, Xochi finally has a chance to breathe.

But her history lurks in the shadows of this new life, not just metaphorically but literally. After one reckless, raucous night, Pallas and Xochi summon two magical creatures called Waterbabies, and they declare themselves Xochi’s protectors. Anyone who hurts her is subject to their wrath, and that includes people from her past and present. As much as Xochi wants to shed her previous persona, she cannot move forward until she faces what has followed her to the city.

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All of Us With Wings

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Poetry and interludes from the perspective of a hyper-aware neighborhood cat are interspersed in the narrative, giving the story a heightened, theatrical feel that floats somewhere between magical realism and fantasy. Keil jumps perspectives frequently, but keeps the story flowing smoothly. With effortlessly impressive prose and a cast of fully realized characters, Keil crafts an engaging story of a young woman coming into her own

Xochi’s pain is burned into her soul, but she hides her secrets from her new friends. She tries to drown her past, but the Waterbabies dredge it all back up again. Because her unreliable mother abandoned her, Xochi has learned to sabotage her relationships, hurting others before they hurt her. And because the man her mother ditched her with manipulated and sexually abused her, Xochi cannot comprehend what a healthy relationship with a father figure looks like. So when Leviticus, Pallas’ attractive father, enters Xochi’s life, her feelings of parental longing get tangled up with sexual confusion.

Although he is only a few years older than her, he finds himself drawn to her for reasons he doesn’t yet understand. They shouldn’t. They can’t. They want to. But it’s not so simple as “older man takes advantage of a confused teenage girl” or “sexually charged teenage girl seduces an older man.” For many young women, this uncomfortable but familiar territory. Teens trying to fill the void left by being abandoned and/or harmed by their parents can lead them to make regrettable decisions about their body and who gets access to it. It can make it hard to discern between appropriate and inappropriate interactions with adults. And it can make it nearly impossible to see a way out of the encroaching darkness.

Keil doesn’t shy away from the realities of Xochi and Leviticus’ relationship. He pursues her and she pursues him (as much as a teen girl can pursue an adult man). In age she’s still a child, but by past experiences she thinks she is a world-weary adult. In truth she’s neither; she’s an adolescent caught between the past, present, and future and unequipped to understand any of it. She makes bad choices while living with her abuser in Humboldt County and makes even more bad choices while living with Leviticus in San Francisco. But Keil makes it clear that her actions don’t mean she deserves what happens to her or that she’s “asking for it.”

With Leviticus, Keil tries to explain but not excuse his interest in Xochi. For the most part she succeeds. He’s had his own share of familial pain that has thrown his sense of right and wrong out whack just like Xochi. Where Keil stumbles is the end. I won’t spoil the events, but suffice it to say Leviticus does not get as much comeuppance as I would like. I don’t want him to suffer – after all, he’s not a villain, just a troubled twenty-something – but Keil lets him off too easily. I’m not convinced he fully understands why going after Xochi was so awful and how his actions will affect her relationships with others in the future.

With its fraught and intimate subject matter, the lines between necessary and problematic get blurred. Some readers will find the content in All of Us with Wings triggering or emotionally painful, while others will find relief in seeing those same hard topics depicted with nuance. If ever there was a Your Mileage May Vary book, Michelle Ruiz Keil’s debut is it. But I hope that won’t stop you from at least giving this powerful novel a try.

All of Us With Wings is now available in paperback from Soho Teen.

Alex Brown is a teen services librarian by day, local historian by night, author and writer by passion, and an ace/aro Black woman all the time. Keep up with her on Twitter and Insta, or follow along with her reading adventures on her blog.

The post Complications and Contradictions: All of Us With Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil appeared first on Reactor.

It all begins with the death of Jonathan Lambshead’s grandfather. Jonathan hadn’t seen him in ages, not since his mother dragged him away as a child and escaped to Florida. He went back to England after her death and was stashed away at a boarding academy, but now he’s truly alone in the world. The executor of his grandfather’s estate, a deeply odd man known only as Stimply, tells Jonathan that the only way he can inherit the property is to catalogue everything in his grandfather’s home. A simple enough feat, he thinks. But upon arrival he realizes the extent of his grandfather’s hoarding. Every room, every closet, every nook and cranny is crammed floor to ceiling with junk, inexplicable items, and ominous notes left by Dr. Lambshead for Jonathan to find. And then there are the doors that lead to other worlds.

Jonathan and two of his best friends from Poxforth Academy, siblings Danny and Rack (and Danny’s pet rat Tee Tee) tumble through one of the doors and end up in Aurora, a Europe where magic runs wild and Aleister Crowley is trying to conquer the continent. The Order of the Third Door, a mysterious group Dr. Lambshead was a member of, wants to prevent Crowley from becoming emperor by any means necessary. But they aren’t the only group who, for their own reasons, don’t want him to win. You see, Crowley isn’t working alone. His familiar (who isn’t as subservient as Crowley thinks) is an infernal monster called Wretch who has other plans for his master and Aurora.

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A Peculiar Peril

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On Aurora, Europe and Britain never colonized anyone and is looked on with the same level of disdain and disregard by everyone else that white westerners look at their former colonies in our world. Crowley is allowed to wreak havoc in Aurora’s Europe partly because the rest of the civilized world doesn’t care about some unadvanced backwater and partly because they see Europe as a sacrificial lamb – stage the war there and destroy him before he spreads his influence out. It’s a neat and unexpected twist, one that plays out gradually and subtly.

The basic plot involves Jonathan, Danny, and Rack journeying across Aurora to get to Prague so they can take a door back to England. They’re joined by two adults – a scheming woman named Alice who, like everyone else, has her own secret plans that make her Jonathan’s ally only while their plans happen to line up, and Mamoud, a member of the Order – and other non-human allies. Enemies, those sent by Crowley and Wretch and others up to their own devices, as well as allies who want what Jonathan has and can do also give chase. Mishaps ensue and wild adventures are had. It’s hard to explain in detail what goes down without either spoiling key plot points or just listing off random and weird occurrences with no context. Suffice it to say, the plot is straightforward but the execution is wholly Jeff VanderMeer.

It took me a little bit to settle into A Peculiar Peril. At first the story alternates between Jonathan and Crowley, but VanderMeer soon throws in other characters that expand the world in fascinating ways but also slow down the narrative. Jonathan occasionally feels sidelined in his own story. There is clearly more to him than meets the eye, but because we spend so much time with everyone else (and because this is a duology that needs to save some secrets for the second book) we don’t get much in the way of answers. That’s fine, though. Part of the fun of a VanderMeer novel is VanderMeer himself. His writing style is so unique and compelling that I get as much enjoyment from the act of reading as I do from the actual story.

Besides the bonkers elements, there are lots of little moments of heart, soul, and truth. Jonathan stifling his grief over losing his mother and never knowing his father until it finally overtakes him is handled well. VanderMeer allows him to feel and cry and mourn in a way that feels true to his personality. Danny comes out as queer. Rack assumes Jonathan is asexual and later, in a scene where he is compelled to tell the truth, Jonathan’s revelations confirms he’s somewhere on the asexual spectrum. I didn’t love the way that bit was written, but I rarely like how allosexuals handle acespec characters; it could’ve been done better but it was hardly the worst I’ve seen. There are also a few characters of color (one of whom is also disabled) and thankfully none are reduced to tropes or stereotypes.

If you want a weird and refreshing summer treat, A Peculiar Peril is exactly the book for you. I never knew what to expect, and each new development was as delightful as it was unusual. This isn’t the kind of book you blow through in an afternoon. It demands careful attention and a solid time commitment. But it is so worth it.

A Peculiar Peril is available from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Read an excerpt here.

Alex Brown is a teen services librarian by day, local historian by night, author and writer by passion, and an ace/aro Black woman all the time. Keep up with her on Twitter and Insta, or follow along with her reading adventures on her blog.

The post Portal Doors, Talking Marmots, and Disembodied Heads: A Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer appeared first on Reactor.

Keep track of all the new releases here. You can also find horror titles scheduled for 2020 here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Note: Release dates are subject to change.

WEEK ONE (July 7)

Cinderella Is Dead—Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury YA)

It’s 200 years after Cinderella found her prince, but the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl’s display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen are never heard from again. Sixteen-year-old Sophia would much rather marry Erin, her childhood best friend, than parade in front of suitors. At the ball, Sophia makes the desperate decision to flee, and finds herself hiding in Cinderella’s mausoleum. There, she meets Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella and her step sisters. Together they vow to bring down the king once and for all—and in the process, they learn that there’s more to Cinderella’s story than they ever knew…

Girl, Serpent, Thorn—Melissa Bashardoust (Flatiron)

There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story. As the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison. Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming…human or demon. Princess or monster.

Hard Wired—Len Vlahos (Bloomsbury YA)

Quinn thinks he’s a normal fifteen year-old. He plays video games, spends time with his friends, and crushes on a girl named Shea. But a shocking secret brings his entire world crashing down: he’s not a boy. He’s artificial intelligence. After Quinn “wakes up,” he sees his world was nothing more than a virtual construct. He’s the QUantum INtelligence Project, the first fully-aware A.I. in the world—part of a grand multi-billion-dollar experiment led by the very man he believed to be his dead father. But as Quinn encounters the real world for the first time, his life becomes a nightmare. While the scientists continue to experiment on him, Quinn must come to grips with the truth: his mom and brother don’t exist. His friends are all adults who were paid to hang out with him. Even other super computers aren’t like him. Quinn finds himself completely alone—until he bonds with Shea, the real girl behind the virtual one. As Quinn explores what it means to truly live, he questions who he can trust. What will it take to win his freedom… and where does he belong?

A Peculiar Peril (Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead #1)—Jeff VanderMeer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR)

Jonathan Lambshead stands to inherit his deceased grandfather’s overstuffed mansion―a veritable cabinet of curiosities―once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But the three soon discover that the house is filled with far more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where the notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley has stormed back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals (and vegetables). Swept into encounters with allies more unpredictable than enemies, Jonathan pieces together his destiny as a member of a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate from Aurora. But as the ground shifts and allegiances change with every step, he and his friends sink ever deeper into a deadly pursuit of the profound evil that is also chasing after them.

Burn Our Bodies Down—Rory Power (Delacorte)

Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot’s questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along. But that’s not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for. Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there? The only thing Margot knows for sure is there’s poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she’s there, she might never escape.

The Princess Will Save You—Sarah Henning (Tor Teen)

When her warrior father, King Sendoa, mysteriously dies, Princess Amarande of Ardenia is given what would hardly be considered a choice: Marry a stranger at sixteen or lose control of her family’s crown.But Amarande was raised to be a warrior―not a sacrifice. In an attempt to force her choice, a neighboring kingdom kidnaps her true love, stable boy Luca. With her kingdom on the brink of civil war and no one to trust, she’ll need all her skill to save him, her future, and her kingdom.

The Unleashed (The Haunted #2)—Danielle Vega (Razorbill)

After everything that went down at Steele House, Hendricks just wants her life to return to normal. Prom is coming up and the school is in full preparation mode. Hendricks tries to pitch in, to mimic her best friend Portia’s enthusiasm, but the events of the last few months still haunt her. Steele House. Raven. Eddie. Hendricks believes Eddie is still out there. She just has to find a way to reach him. Together with her friends, she forms a circle of seven and attempts to summon his spirit. Suddenly things start happening again. Flickering lights in the school library. Mysterious girls roaming the halls. The same song playing on a loop wherever she goes. It all culminates in a violent attack and Hendricks realizes what they summoned may not be Eddie at all. The one thing she does know is that Steele House was only the beginning. And whatever they’ve unleashed is more dangerous than anything they’ve ever seen before.

Faith: Taking Flight—Julie Murphy (Balzer + Bray)

Faith Herbert is a pretty regular teen. When she’s not hanging out with her two best friends, Matt and Ches, she’s volunteering at the local animal shelter or obsessing over the long-running teen drama The Grove. So far, her senior year has been spent trying to sort out her feelings for her maybe-crush Johnny and making plans to stay close to Grandma Lou after graduation. Of course, there’s also that small matter of recently discovering she can fly. When the fictional world of The Grove crashes into Faith’s reality as the show relocates to her town, she can’t believe it when TV heroine Dakota Ash takes a romantic interest in her. But her fandom-fueled daydreams aren’t enough to distract Faith from the fact that first animals, then people, have begun to vanish from the town. Only Faith seems able to connect the dots to a new designer drug infiltrating her high school. But when her investigation puts the people she loves in danger, she will have to confront her hidden past and use her newfound gifts—risking everything to save her friends and beloved town.

Saintsville—Brittani Louise Taylor (Permuted Press)

Eve and Maggie Abbott are desperate. Out of money, and options, they are forced to move into one very old house. It happens to have belonged to their dead grandmother, but the rent is cheap, and the location is killer. That last sentence is a joke, unless you’re into a “middle of nowhere” vibe—and cows. Welcome to Saintsville, population…too small to matter. Poor girls. Their parents died four years prior, and Eve has been raising Maggie ever since. Correction: trying to raise her, but failing miserably. Attempting to adjust to their new surroundings, life becomes a boring routine of work and school, until one fateful day. A moving truck, preceded by a sleek black hot rod, pulls up to the abandoned shack across the field. Out pour five brothers. Attractive, tall, tattooed, and lethal. But why are all their tattoos the same? What are the new neighbors hiding? And why does Eve have a funny feeling that it has something to do with her? Lock your doors. Close your blinds. The clock is ticking. And the Abbotts? They’re almost out of time.

The Crow Rider (Storm Crow #2)—Kalyn Josephson (Sourcebooks Fire)

Thia, her allies, and her crow, Res, are planning a rebellion to defeat Queen Razel and Illucia once and for all. Thia must convince the neighboring kingdoms to come to her aid, and Res’s show of strength is the only thing that can help her. But so many obstacles stand in her way. Res excels at his training, until he loses control of his magic, harming Thia in the process. She is also pursued by Prince Ericen, heir to the Illucian throne and the one person she can’t trust but can’t seem to stay away from. As the rebel group prepares for war, Res’s magic grows more unstable. Thia has to decide if she can rely on herself and their bond enough to lead the rebellion and become the crow rider she was meant to be.

Evil Thing (Villains #7)—Serena Valentino (Disney-Hyperion)

From her lonely childhood, to her iconic fashion choices, to that fateful car crash (you know the one), Cruella tells all in this marvelous memoir of a woman doomed. Even the cruelest villains have best friends, true loves, and daring dreams. Now it’s Cruella’s turn to share hers.

The Damned (The Beautiful #2)—Renée Ahdieh (Putnam BFYR)

Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can’t quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn’t know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she’s not ready to learn. Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.

WEEK TWO (July 14)

The Extraordinaries—TJ Klune (Tor Teen)

Nick Bell? Not extraordinary. But being the most popular fanfiction writer in the Extraordinaries fandom is a superpower, right? After a chance encounter with Shadow Star, Nova City’s mightiest hero (and Nick’s biggest crush), Nick sets out to make himself extraordinary. And he’ll do it with or without the reluctant help of Seth Gray, Nick’s best friend (and maybe the love of his life).

Mayhem—Estelle Laure (Wednesday)

It’s 1987 and unfortunately it’s not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy’s constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem’s own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren’t like everyone else. But when May’s stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem’s questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good. But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.

WEEK THREE (July 21)

Ghost Wood Song—Erica Waters (HarperTeen)

If I could have a fiddle made of Daddy’s bones, I’d play it. I’d learn all the secrets he kept. Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness. But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets. In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing.

Shielded—KayLynn Flanders (Delacorte)

The kingdom of Hálendi is in trouble. It’s losing the war at its borders, and rumors of a new, deadlier threat on the horizon have surfaced. Princess Jennesara knows her skills on the battlefield would make her an asset and wants to help, but her father has other plans. As the second-born heir to the throne, Jenna lacks the firstborn’s—her brother’s—magical abilities, so the king promises her hand in marriage to the prince of neighboring Turia in exchange for resources Hálendi needs. Jenna must leave behind everything she has ever known if she is to give her people a chance at peace. Only, on the journey to reach her betrothed and new home, the royal caravan is ambushed, and Jenna realizes the rumors were wrong—the new threat is worse than anyone imagined. Now Jenna must decide if revealing a dangerous secret is worth the cost before it’s too late—for her and for her entire kingdom.

Windswept—Gwen Cole (Sky Pony)

Every day, Sam endures the same subway ride on her way to school, but when she meets a boy named Reid, suddenly her daily commute isn’t so ordinary. Reid has the ability to teleport—or, drift, as he calls it—and for the first time, Sam has the opportunity to travel anywhere without a passport or plane ticket. But as their two worlds come together, Sam discovers her family had been keeping secrets from her, and meeting Reid was just the beginning of unraveling the truth. When drifters begin to disappear, Sam has no choice but to face the threat when she finds out her family is among the missing. As Reid and Sam start their search for the missing drifters, help comes from the most unexpected of places. After a significant breakthrough, Reid is taken, and Sam finds herself alone in a world she knows nothing about. With the enemy closing in, she soon realizes she’s the only person who can save them all.

River of Dreams—Jan Nash (Roaring Brook Press)

Finn Driscoll is counting down the days until she can leave for college. With her beloved brother, Noah, in a coma and her high school social life sinking every day, she’s ready for a fresh start. Until the night she sees Noah in a dream. He begs for her help. At first, she shakes it off as just a nightmare. Then it happens again. And again. Frightened, Finn confides in her grandmother, only to learn the shocking truth about her family. They’re Dreamwalkers—heroes who step into the River of Dreams and fight the monsters in other people’s nightmares, freeing them to face the problems in their real lives. Awake or asleep, Finn has never thought of herself as any kind of hero, and walking through other people’s dreams seems much worse than just hiding at school. But as hard as facing this challenge might be, Finn knows she has no choice: she will do anything she can to save her brother.

Splinters of Scarlet—Emily Bain Murphy(HMH BFYR)

For Marit Olsen, magic is all about strategy: it flows freely through her blood, but every use leaves behind a deadly, ice-like build-up within her veins called the Firn. Marit knows how dangerous it is to let too much Firn build up—after all, it killed her sister—and she has vowed never to use her thread magic. But when Eve, a fellow orphan whom Marit views like a little sister, is adopted by the wealthy Helene Vestergaard, Marit will do anything to stay by Eve’s side. She decides to risk the Firn and uses magic to secure a job as a seamstress in the Vestergaard household. But Marit has a second, hidden agenda: her father died while working in the Vestergaards’ jewel mines—and it might not have been an accident. The closer Marit gets to the truth about the Vestergaard family, the more she realizes she and everyone she’s come to love are in danger. When she finds herself in the middle of a treacherous deception that goes all the way up to the king of Denmark, magic may be the only thing that can save her—if it doesn’t kill her first.

The Shadow of Kyoshi (Avatar, The Last Airbender: Kyoshi #2)—F. C. Yee (Amulet)

Kyoshi’s place as the true Avatar has finally been cemented—but at a heavy cost. With her mentors gone, Kyoshi voyages across the Four Nations, struggling to keep the peace. But while her reputation grows, a mysterious threat emerges from the Spirit World. To stop it, Kyoshi, Rangi, and their reluctant allies must join forces before the Four Nations are destroyed irreparably. This thrilling follow-up continues Kyoshi’s journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice still feared and admired centuries after becoming the Avatar.

WEEK FOUR (July 28)

A Wicked Magic—Sasha Laurens (Razorbill)

Dan and Liss are witches. The Black Book granted them that power. Harnessing that power feels good, especially when everything in their lives makes them feel powerless. During a spell gone wrong, Liss’s boyfriend is snatched away by an evil entity and presumed dead. Dan and Liss’s friendship dies that night, too. How can they practice magic after the darkness that they conjured? Months later, Liss discovers that her boyfriend is alive, trapped underground in the grips of an ancient force. She must save him, and she needs Dan and the power of The Black Book to do so. Dan is quickly sucked back into Liss’s orbit and pushes away her best friend, Alexa. But Alexa has some big secrets she’s hiding and her own unique magical disaster to deal with. When another teenager disappears, the girls know it’s no coincidence. What greedy magic have they awakened? And what does it want with these teens it has stolen?

Ever Cursed—Corey Ann Haydu (Simon Pulse)

The Princesses of Ever are beloved by the kingdom and their father, the King. They are cherished, admired. Cursed. Jane, Alice, Nora, Grace, and Eden carry the burden of being punished for a crime they did not commit, or even know about. They are each cursed to be Without one essential thing—the ability to eat, sleep, love, remember, or hope. And their mother, the Queen, is imprisoned, frozen in time in an unbreakable glass box. But when Eden’s curse sets in on her thirteenth birthday, the princesses are given the opportunity to break the curse, preventing it from becoming a True Spell and dooming the princesses for life. To do this, they must confront the one who cast the spell—Reagan, a young witch who might not be the villain they thought—as well as the wickedness plaguing their own kingdom… and family. Told through the eyes of Reagan and Jane—the witch and the bewitched—this insightful twist of a fairy tale explores power in a patriarchal kingdom not unlike our own.

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