As a sickness spreads through the world of Arcelia, a princess with forbidden magic joins forces with her realm’s sworn enemies in Constantine’s underbaked romantasy debut. Princess Leilani Stellarion has always been an outcast for her powers of foresight. When her ancestor charges her with a quest to retrieve the Starlight Staff and cure the Sickening that plagues her people, Leilani jumps at the chance to save her mother and delay her own unwanted marriage. As she and representatives from all four realms of Arcelia make the grueling journey to the peak of the Astral Mountain, Leilani learns there is someone who will keep her from success at all costs. To complete her mission, she’ll need help from an old political rival. Despite the initial complexity of Arcelia, with a glossary of its gods and historical periods taking up the first five pages of the book, the plot plays out as a straightforward fetch quest and does little to actually engage with the worldbuilding. Leilani’s repetitive, overly explained internal struggles and romantic woes take up the vast majority of the page count, leaving the side characters and initially promising plot points underdeveloped. Readers in it simply for the romance may be satisfied, but others will see wasted potential here. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

In the entertaining sequel to Interstellar Megachef, Lakshminarayan once again indulges readers with a zany sci-fi plot and delicious descriptions of food. After winning the Interstellar Megachef competition, Saraswati Kaveri and Serenity Ko have made waves in Primian culinary circles with the announcement of Feast, their new food sim “delivering flavour and audio-visual experiences straight into the brain” via nutrient bites, which are coded to trigger memories and experiences based on food. The product has to be perfect in time to serve at the launch party, Millennium Feast. Their effort to create a new way of experiencing food is not without its detractors, however, with much vitriol aimed at Saraswati due to her status as an Earthling on Primus. Ko is torn between protecting Saraswati at every turn and fighting the romantic feelings that threaten to overwhelm her. Politics and xenophobia threaten to derail their project, and Saraswati faces manipulation from all sides as her secrets come back to bite her. Lakshminarayan’s meditations on food and culture and the different ways of experiencing both mix smoothly with the politics and intrigue that the main characters find themselves caught up in. Fans of the first book will not want to miss this. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Hugo award winner Huang (The Water Outlaws) stuns in this philosophical sci-fi exploration of linguistics and lost civilizations. It stars four-legged, four-stomached, two-hearted, and fur-covered alien Ro, affectionately nicknamed a “cheerful disaster” by the elders in Orro. Ro desperately wants to be the first Linguist in generations to make a jump—that is, take over the mind and body of another being, a Star Eater, on a spy mission that would also serve as a “one-way trip” away from his home hive. Star Eaters are one of the least known but most essential species in the galaxy, as they can sense and harvest the meridian element that allows for faster-than-light travel. Unfortunately, they are dying out, unable or perhaps unwilling to reproduce. When Ro manages to take over the body of a Star Eater (much to the shock and annoyance of his superiors), the nefarious history of these jumps comes to light, causing Ro to question all the received wisdom about both the Star Eaters and Ro’s own species. Huang manages to make completely alien ways of understanding and complex ideas about language, culture, and hegemony easy to follow while providing a fascinating linguistic puzzle that will entice hard sci-fi fans and literary scholars alike. This packs an impressive punch. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pueyo (But Not Too Bold) spins a glittering neo-noir that reinvigorates vampire lore, rendering the classic monsters as both decadent and threatening. In an alternate Brazil where vampires, known as guls, hold some degree of political power, quadruple-amputee Ariadne, who lost her limbs in a gul attack, provides medical treatment for injured guls under the direction of her mentor and father-figure, Erik Yurkov. When Erik vanishes without a trace, one of his old friends, an ancient gul named Quaint, suspects he’s been kidnapped. Ariadne reluctantly teams up with Quaint to find him, a quest that takes them to a glittering cabaret club in Rio de Janeiro that caters to the upper echelons of guls, through the heart of Brazil’s political turmoil, and into a confrontation with Ariadne’s past. Pueyo does an impressive job grounding the fantastical elements, tantalizing mystery, and glitzy setting in realistic politics and frank discussions of heavy topics, including child abuse. Add in an intimate romance that never feels rushed despite the slim page count, and this is a triumph. Agent: Lee O’Brien, Looking Glass Literary and Media. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Kaschock (Explain This Corpse) delivers a fiercely unsettling gothic novel that fuses maternal devotion, scientific obsession, and inherited trauma into a narrative as claustrophobic as it is hypnotic. Chemist Agnes Krahn returns to her family’s farmhouse after her father’s death, reentering a family history steeped in silence and folk belief. The narrative plays out through diary entries and Agnes’s late mother’s journals, which eerily echo each other, as Agnes documents an experiment that, in her telling, is both chillingly rational and emotionally fraught: she’s attempting to breed a crow large and intelligent enough to carry her daughter, Mina, to a freedom Agnes herself has never known. The dread mounts as Agnes’s scientific rigor gives way to fixation, and the crow rapidly evolves not only in size but also in language, cunning, and violence. The book’s fragmented structure, weaving past and present, mother and daughter, and memory and myth, mirrors Agnes’s unraveling psyche in a disorienting but precisely rendered whole. Kaschock uses Agnes’s monstrous experiment to interrogate the thin boundary between care and control, asking whether love can become another form of harm when shaped by unexamined trauma. Readers drawn to literary horror that privileges interiority over spectacle will find this a powerful experience. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

This mixed-bag horror outing from Dumas (The Paleontologist) focuses on the bloody side effects of a new weight-loss drug. Emmett Truesdale has struggled with obesity for much of his life, a condition that has hampered his personal relationships as well as his job prospects. Instead of following his dream of becoming a teacher, Emmett works in customer service at Target, where his appearance subjects him to near-constant mockery. Desperate to find love with the right man and escape his dead-end job, Emmett signs up for a trial of Obexity, a new gene therapy treatment. To his delight, Obexity more than meets the promises made by its manufacturer, Monstera BioSciences: Emmett drops pounds daily without exercising or altering his diet. Dumas does a good job capturing Emmett’s inner torment but gives away the game by opening the book with someone devouring a human corpse, and a letter from Monstera stating that a trial participant became a cannibal, sapping much of the suspense. The plot is largely predictable, and its sillier aspects—including a reveal about Monstera’s CEO—overwhelm Dumas’s empathic portrayal of his lead. Cannibal horror is having a moment, but this fails to stand out from the pack. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Wisecracking private eye Jack Mitchell again walks down the mean, undead streets of an alternate post-WWII Los Angeles in Turtledove’s gritty second City of Shadows novel (after Twice as Dead), this time following the trail of an unrepentant SS officer who is both vampire and werewolf. While working cases that involve the recording industry and blackmail of a jazz club owner, Jack also rubs up against the mob and the equally unsavory LAPD, who aren’t too happy that the Black PI is dating blonde Hungarian Dora, even if she is a vampire. Meanwhile, Dora is unhappy with Jack’s growing attachment to Rivke, a Jewish concentration camp survivor who works protecting sleeping vampires in the daytime. Turtledove puts a more personal spin on Jack’s adventures this time around, bringing in more of his past and centering the main plot’s resolution on his present-day friends and allies. If the ending gives the novel a bit of a shaggy-dog feel, readers will forgive this for the chance to canoodle with Jack and Dora in the sultry recesses of Turtledove’s well-drawn world. Series fans will find much to enjoy. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Wong (Climbing the Ranks) kicks off his Thousand Li series with this competent wuxia fantasy. Long Wu Ying works on his family farm in the kingdom of Shen and trains as a cultivator, someone with the ability to master his internal chi and the potential to live for centuries, at the command of the king, who hopes to bolster his forces in the war against a rival state. The king knows it’s a risk: cultivation allows an individual to become a superior soldier, but the discipline is also a threat, as “a single cultivator, if they achieved true power, could overturn governments.” Wu Ying’s progress leads to his selection by the Verdant Green Waters, Shen’s most powerful martial arts sect. Wong takes readers through the stages of Wu Ying’s training, which exposes him to multiple dangers, including a would-be murderer. The worldbuilding and magic system impress, but Wu Ying remains somewhat underdeveloped as a character, and the plot is a bit on the slow side. Still, there’s enough intrigue to make readers curious about where the series goes from here. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

The smart and exciting sequel to Blackgoose’s Nebula Award–winning debut, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, digs into the colonialism and classism of magic academy and dragon rider tropes. Indigenous heroine Anequs’s Naquisit community on the island of Masquapaug faces increased surveillance from the Anglish colonizers following the events of the previous book. Whisked away to the wealthy, male-dominated Kuiper’s Academy, Anequs navigates prejudice and struggles to adapt to the gendered mores of Anglish culture while studying dragon handling and skiltakraft, the manipulation of natural elements using the controlled power of dragon’s breath. She also develops feelings for both Theod, the only other “nackie” dragoneer, and Liberty, a young blackfolkish woman indentured to the school. Meanwhile, the philosophical discussion group The Disorder of the Grinning Teeth wants Anequs to join its ranks, but its members soon feel challenged by the level to which she wants them to put their ideals into action. All the invented language takes some adjusting to, but once the story gets underway, Blackgoose creates a deep sense of immersion. It’s satisfying to watch Anequs comes into her own, and Blackgoose sets things up nicely for the next installment. Readers will be eager for more. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Hall (Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot) makes an ambitious pivot from witty romance to epic space opera in this dazzling retelling of Moby Dick set in the gaseous miasma above Jupiter after humanity’s exodus from Earth. The plot follows the original beat for beat as Captain A of the hunter-barque Pequod’s obsession with the Mobius Beast puts his crew in danger, but almost every aspect of the world has been cleverly reimagined. The spermaceti from the Leviathan is a psychoactive cerebrospinal fluid, processed by the Olympus Extraction State to power everything in the solar system; the narrator’s harpooner friend Q hails from Old Earth; captain A’s replacement leg comes from the predatory Venusian pharma-state; and the narrator’s relationships with both Q and A turn sexual. Hall’s prose is mostly modern, but he retains some of Melville’s grandiose lyricism and pays homage to his famous fact-filled tangents. The narrator, a schoolmistress turned monster hunter who opens by instructing readers to call her “whatever the fuck you like,” provides detailed technical exposition about the spaceship’s functions and the process of hunting the alien creatures called Leviathans, which she muses about as both biological creatures and mystical quasi-gods. Along the way, she serves up whole chapters of philosophical asides and jokes of dubious relevance. Most impressively, Hall captures a breathtaking sense of adventure throughout. This thrills. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink