A young boy goes on a quirky quest through a postapocalyptic world in bestseller Sloan’s gentle yet thought-provoking adventure set 11,000 years after humanity lost a war to the genetically engineered “dragons” it had developed for space exploration. Now 12-year-old Ariel de la Sauvage is tasked by the Wizard Malory with pulling Excalibur from its stone. But Ariel angers the wizard when he returns with another sword, bucking his destiny. Fleeing Malory’s wrath, Ariel experiences life beyond his small village for the first time as he travels toward the city Rath Varia, helped along the way by talking beavers and amiable robots. Once there, he learns how wizards can reshape life and concocts a dangerous scheme to defeat Malory by activating humanity’s “Plan Z” in its fight against the dragons, a signal meant to summon a human army held in stasis in space. Unfortunately, the signal brings only Durga, a teen girl trained by humans in propaganda and kept in stasis for centuries. She agrees to help topple Malory if Ariel will help confront the dragons once and for all. Narrated by the fungal chronicler implant that attaches to Ariel, the story is full of wildly inventive and audacious worldbuilding delivered in a cozy tone reminiscent of Becky Chambers. With the flavor of a classic coming-of-age adventure or a complicated video game, this is a world readers will hope to come back to. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co. (June)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Family drama, unspoken resentments, and something far more sinister simmer—but never reach a boiling point—in this lackluster ghost story from Thorne (Lute). Black sheep Anna Pace travels to Italy for a family vacation with her parents and adult siblings prepared to deflect and endure their judgments. As an unmarried, unambitious artist in her 30s, there’s no shortage of criticisms for the other Paces to throw her way. Anna weathers her sister’s need for control and her mother’s nagging comments, but as signs of a haunting appear around the villa they’re renting, the vacation devolves into one disaster after another. To make matters worse, when the Pace family looks into the history of the villa, they open some doors better left closed. Thorne paints in broad gothic strokes, incorporating all the major elements of the genre, from the spooky architecture to the blood and romance, but leaving things disappointingly underdeveloped. Anna’s snarky voice initially balances the darker elements but becomes grating as the story goes on. Eventually, her characterization descends into cliché: she’s smart enough to make everyone around her jealous, and though she’s supposedly unattractive, many of the male (and female) side characters lust after her. Seasoned genre fans will be disappointed. Agent: Katelyn Detweiler, Jane Grinberg Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

The explosive adventures of the starship Calamity continue in Fay’s un-put-downable second Uncharted Hearts scifi romance (after Calamity). Cynbeline “Cyn” Khaw is a name feared throughout the known galaxies due to her reputation for having once “spaced” an entire ship filled with human traffickers. The legend, of course, bears little resemblance to reality. Now a struggling bounty hunter, Cyn is lucky enough to pick up a case from the powerful and dangerous Escajeda family—though this one is personal. Young Boreal Escajeda has been kidnapped by the Abyssal Abductor, the same man who abducted and killed Cyn’s younger cousin Aymbe years ago. To track the Abductor down, Cyn must reunite with the Calamity crew, who knew her as Generosity, the cultist they rescued who asked to go back. Now she’s hoping no one, particularly medic Micah Arora, will recognize her. For his part, Micah describes Cyn as “a whole woman sewn from red flags,” but he still can’t help feeling drawn to her. The simmering attraction between medic and bounty hunter colors the rip-roaring adventure, and Cyn’s struggles with relatable things like asking for help and navigating social expectations provide a perfect counterpoint to the crew’s occasionally over-the-top antics. This keeps the series going strong. (June)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

A sinister sanatorium with a history of escapes and deaths is the centerpiece of this eerie splice of psychological and supernatural horror from Panatier (The Phlebotomist). Using the alias Charlotte Turner, Morgan Bright voluntarily commits herself to the Hollyhock House, an asylum in Hay Springs, Neb., to undergo a short stint of treatment for purported “domestic psychosis.” Really, Morgan is seeking to uncover the undisclosed facts behind her sister Hadleigh’s death after she fled from Hollyhock two and a half years earlier. To Morgan’s dismay, the character of “Charlotte” soon takes over and begins cooperating complacently with the asylum’s bizarre treatment regimens—as revealed in postcommitment interviews conducted between Morgan and police and medical authorities and laced throughout the text. These transcripts suggest Morgan harbors two strong personalities in conflict with one another and call into question how much about Morgan’s identity the reader can trust. Though the description of Hollyhock’s strange therapies becomes repetitive in spots, Panatier conjures an unsettling mood of suspicion and disbelief from his depiction of the asylum’s cultish caregivers and their oddly ritualized behavior. Fans of paranoid thrillers like Catriona Ward’s Last House on Needless Street will devour this. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Chandrasekera’s beautiful yet murky sophomore outing (after The Saint of Bright Doors) takes a certain amount of work to unlock. Through gorgeously rendered fragments, it tells of two friends, Annelid and Leveret, growing up in the wake of the Sri Lankan civil war—and then reincarnating over multiple lifetimes. There are elements of fantasy, science fiction, and the surreal throughout. The first section, for instance, is told from the perspective of fans watching a television show about Annelid and Leveret years in the future. Demons also make frequent appearances. However, the nonlinear plot, ever-changing narrators, and mix of genre elements means there’s very little for the reader to grasp onto. Though some will give up in the face of these challenges, others will sink into Chandrasekera’s lyrical and evocative style: “I chew the leaf and spit out my red days. They splatter. You chew the leaf and spit out your hours of mad redder.” Readers who put in the effort will be rewarded by this rich and sweeping epic. (June)

Reviewed on 03/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

The fields of math, linguistics, and music come together to save humanity in this intricately plotted and heavily academic sci-fi experiment from Anderson (The Trail). In 2489, Juanita Popov, chair of the World Council of Mathematicians (WCM), oversees an urgent project to use time travel technology to Lift history’s mathematical, scientific, and musical geniuses into the present to cure humanity’s “ ‘virus’—the human propensity to covet, take, and kill” by creating a new universal language. The world is on the brink of World War IV, and humankind’s extinction is projected within 15 months. Only nine people can be Lifted from their timelines at a time, so WCM institutes a continual rotation of fresh Liftees from around the world, including Bach, Curie, Einstein, Euclid, Liu Hui, Muhammed al-Khowarizmi, and Srinivasa Ramanujan. These great minds are tasked with developing a universal language that combines the “one universal truth,” mathematics, with linguistics and music. If they fail, there’s Plan B—shipping humans off-world. But this backup plan is complicated when SETI, a nonprofit devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, discovers signals from numerous alien intelligences. How will humanity react, and will its new language be useful in communicating with the extraterrestrials? While the details may go over some readers’ heads, there are fascinating ideas at play here and the optimism in the face of impending apocalypse is inspiring. Hard sci-fi fans seeking hope for the future will be pleased. (May)

Reviewed on 03/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bond (The Watcher in the Woods) gets her new fantasy series off to a rocky start with this murky adventure. The knight Maddileh sets out on a mission to prove herself by recovering the Fireborne Blade, a mythical sword forged by dragons, lost by humans, and rumored to now be in the possession of the infamous dragon known as the White Lady. Maddileh’s squire, Petros, has his own goal for the mission: to rescue his sister, Saralene, who was abducted by the dragon. Together, Maddileh and Petros brave the White Lady’s lair, where they encounter the murderous ghosts of knights killed by the dragon in the past. The duo’s relationship, including how they came to be working together, feels somewhat muddled for much of the book, but their odd dynamic is explained in an explosive final twist that recasts much of what came before. It’s an impressive trick, but it can’t make up for the half-baked magic system and rushed plotting. This is a strong concept that falters in the execution. (May)

Reviewed on 03/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

Hope wins out in this triumph of a postapocalyptic tale from Hugo and Nebula award winner Sawyer (The Oppenheimer Alternative). Capt. Letitia Garvey agreed to be cryogenically frozen for a 500-year space journey to a distant planet in hopes of colonizing a new home. Come the year 2548, Garvey awakens—only to discover that she and her crew of fellow astronauts never left Earth. Even worse, they and a group of convicts who recently awoke from their VR prison are the only survivors of an apocalyptic event. Earth is devastated and yet another calamity is on its way. Can these two disparate groups learn to work together to survive? Sawyer keeps the stakes climbing ever higher as he toggles between the perspectives of his disparate cast. A smattering of droll humor breaks up the gloom and plot twists aplenty keep the pages flying. Sci-fi fans will eat this up. Agent: Matt Kennedy, Startling, Inc. (May)

Reviewed on 03/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Malerman (Bird Box) offers some predictable yet still-eerie scares in this horror novel, which is told from the perspective of eight-year-old Bela, who first introduces herself saying good night to her Daddo and Mommy, before sharing that, after they leave her bedroom, “Other Mommy” emerges from her closet. Malerman gradually reveals more about Other Mommy, a thing with eyes that migrate around her head, who repeatedly asks Bela if she can “go into her heart” and talks of what Bela understands as “carnations” and readers will quickly realize is reincarnation. Bela’s parents initially treat the existence of Other Mommy as a joke, but then her father notices a foul smell around the house. As Other Mommy increases her pressure campaign on Bela and becomes more active at different times of day, and in different places, Daddo and Mommy frantically search for answers and a way to eliminate the threat, even as fissures form in their marriage. Bela’s naive narrative voice is the book’s best feature, freshening up the familiar story beats and enhancing the creeping sense of dread. Malerman’s fans will want to check this out. (June)

Reviewed on 03/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

Nahil impresses in his debut, a taut work of horror set within the claustrophobic confines of an unusual whaling ship. Isaiah Chase, crew member of the ironically named Merciful, is present when his shipmates eviscerate a whale to harvest its parts and discover in the animal’s belly something wholly unexpected: the body of a man, who, amazingly, is still alive. To the dismay of Capt. Erasmus Coffin, the unconscious man is brought onboard, but Coffin orders that he be confined to the brig and that no entry about him be recorded in the official log. Unlike his fellow shipmates, Chase shows some sympathy for the rescued man—who, once he regains consciousness, reveals his name as Essex—and even goes into debt to procure some food for him. Before long, odd things happen onboard the Merciful, including a bounty of fish that appears on deck, an odd leak in the hold, and several tragic deaths. Nahil gradually ratchets up the creepiness until it becomes undeniable that something supernatural is afoot. Admirers of Dan Simmons’s The Terror will be especially riveted. (May)

Reviewed on 03/22/2024 | Details & Permalink