Szal leans heavily on the super soldier trope. Reapers predictably possess extraordinary strength, agility and healing. Where Szal’s narrative stands out is in the considerations of these soldiers after war ends. Addiction and loss of purpose cast Vakov in a more relatable and nuanced role.
The novel also presents an extremely sympathetic exploration of brotherhood when the needs of Vakov’s estranged brother are pitted against his Reaper ‘brothers’ and both require him to dive further into addiction.
Stormblood could stand alone as a novel, but the suggestion of more to come will delight readers.
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
The Carls #2
by Hank Green
Trapeze
Review by Damien Lawardorn
After turning the world upside-down in An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Hank Green uses the sequel, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, to ask ‘what comes next?’. The answer is a riveting adventure that explores the social and technological fallout from an alien intervention.
The novel picks up almost six months after the aliens vanished and their human envoy, April May, died. In her absence, three of her close friends tell the story, while other, unexpected characters take up narratorial duties later. None of the voices feels unique, though each is strongly differentiated by the personalities and individual stories attached to it.
Green uses multiple perspectives to focus on different points of interest. Maya, for example, raises questions that set events in motion, while Miranda and Andy explore scientific and philosophical ramifications of the aliens’ dis/appearance. This approach enables Green to inform readers in a naturalistic way, following the interests of each character to debrief the events of the previous book, and explain the timely sense of uncertainty and disillusionment that permeates the fictional world.
Green also demonstrates effective pacing. The first half of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor centres around mysteries: predictive books, conspiracies and powerful yet shady corporations. By midpoint, many of the questions are solved, and the novel shifts to focus on a heist-styled process of planning before concluding with strong action. This ebb and flow of events gives the book a hypnotic quality that draws you in and refuses to let go.
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is an engaging read that meditates on ideas of power, influence and ethics with engaging prose or plot.
Dear Dead Women
by Edna W Underwood
Tartarus Press
Review by Maddison Stoff
I was fascinated by the idea of Dear Dead Women, a re-release of a collection of supernatural short stories (and an additional novella) by an American writer, originally published in the early 1900s to some acclaim and gradually forgotten about afterwards.
The stories read like feminist parodies of canonical horror fiction, and are written from a place of anger and anxiety over the way that men see women, and the situations women can be put into because of it.
The women in this book are mostly ghosts: objects of heterosexual male desire that mostly male protagonists invoke, then blame for their inadequacies. They’re not women, in the same way that the women in the mostly male-written horror stories the book responds to were never really women either. It takes advantage of these tropes to play with the reader’s expectations, and it’s here that Dear Dead Women really shines.
But it has shortcomings though. There’s a recurring white supremacist subtext to the way Underwood talks about race and bloodlines. One narrative, ‘The King’, seems to take what could have been an interesting Christian realist horror story on domestic violence and collapses into pure anti-Semitism by the end. The first story also relies on the idea of AMAB (assigned male at birth) gender non-conformity as a sign of danger or perversion, but this referent is mild and discontinues in the stories afterwards.
It all makes sense in context: the book is written from a place of female fear, but it’s a white, heterosexual, cisgender fear specifically. If you keep this in mind and read the foreword on its history, the chances are you’ll probably enjoy it. But your patience for it will depend on how much these prejudices personally affect you, and how much you’re prepared to overlook them in favour of the parts that still feel interesting and relevant today.
The Memory of Souls
A Chorus of Dragons #3
by Jenn Lyons
Tor Books
Review by Rebecca Langham
The third instalment in A Chorus of Dragons, this epic fantasy continues to deliver masterful storytelling that will engage and delight readers, leaving them begging for the next book.
The journeys of trope-subverting characters Kihrin, Janel and Taraeth reach a climax in The Memory of Souls, with the earlier machinations of gods and wizards coming together in an explosive, albeit dizzying, fashion.
The cast of characters is enormous, yet Lyons guides the reader through the vast tapestry of reincarnated souls and distinct cultures with expert skill, never insulting the intelligence of her reader. The history of each race and family is complex and rich; there’s nothing two-dimensional here.
Epic battles between demons, gods and body-swapping immortals are punctuated by character moments that give the narrative genuine depth. Even Xivan, a sort-of zombie, melts the heart at times. Loyalties shift and we’re constantly wondering if there’s any such thing as ‘the right side’.
The Memory of Souls delivers dragons aplenty and world-building so rich that readers feel convincingly transported, but our assumptions about high fantasy must end there. Lyons is not playing the traditional genre game with this series. The cliché of ‘the chosen one’ is turned inside out, and the romantic subplot takes shape as a nuanced gender-bending polyamorous engagement. Half the characters seem to be bisexual, and queer readers may be ecstatic.
In danger of asserting a controversial opinion before the final two books in this series are released, A Chorus of Dragons is shaping up to be better than A Game of Thrones!
The Last Emperox
The Interdependency #3
by John Scalzi
Tor Books
Review by Terence MacManus
From the opening page where an aircar blows out of the sky, narrated the entire way down by its luckless, swearing occupant, The Last Emperox brings John Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy to a hilarious, thoughtful and dramatic conclusion.
Scalzi’s trademark wit, forthright presentation and potty mouth saturate the text, drawing readers through the frantic pace of the narrative. His masterful balance between the many and distinctive characters is captivating, enhanced by his habit of killing off major players at any point. Presented without traditional markers of the genre such as paragraphing or chapter breaks, the suddenness and impact of these deaths lend a true sense of chaos to the text, as we watch this system-spanning galactic Empire hurtling towards complete societal breakdown.
In these waning days of her rule, Emperox Grayland II finds herself unable to focus on spending rapidly-diminishing time on ways to avert the catastrophe. She’s forced to wage a political war against those who fear her determination to save billions of human lives will cost them the primacy of their institutions. Averting coups and assassination attempts, the Interdependency slips closer to inevitable collapse, heightening Scalzi’s focus on how impactful the actions of these few people at the top are on the lives of the unseen people supporting them.
It’s impossible to miss the clear parallels between the Interdependency’s looming loss of faster-than-light travel and the contemporary threat of climate change. Scalzi’s critique of corporations preferencing profit over public good is acerbic and relentless, and the willingness of the ruling class to sacrifice anything to preserve their wealth in the collapse is far too believable.
Winner of the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2020, The Last Emperox brings Scalzi’s first intentional trilogy to a worthy and satisfying close. Even if you haven’t read the preceding books of the series, this gripping, swear-riddled r
umination on how humanity faces existential crises is worth your time.
Last Case at a Baggage Auction
by Eric J Guignard
Illustrations by Steve Lines
Harper Day Books
Review by Eugen Bacon
Joey Third’s poker days are over, and he’s not even the protagonist of this story. Charlie Stewart is, and he’s way in over his head at this auction. You never know what you get for a dollar, but there’s something off about what’s housed within the last piece of unclaimed baggage.
Eric Guignard’s first-person storytelling in this novella is a winning act. The narrator’s voice is affable, it flows with the story. You engage with Charlie and his character. You’re frustrated with Joey and Ray. You adore Gail. You envision the auctioneer, ‘country-fat—the kind raised on gravy and hog—and his teeth stuck out as if his mouth caught fire and every chomper tried escaping in different directions’. His molten honey voice going One, now one. Going one once, going one twice. Sold! One dollar is all it takes, but it costs a lifetime.
It’s an antique player inside the last baggage from the auction. A voice inside the record. A voice inside the voice inside the record, and it’s music and it’s not: Vkhodite. It scratches, full of melancholy. Its soul fills you with nausea, then euphoria in its repeat of words: Vkhodite.
Before you know it, you’re hooked to the music that is a chant of words, and they speak personally to you, only you, a hypnosis of sound, and it physically changes you. Suddenly your life is a weightlessness that is water and you’re drifting.
The illustrations almost delay the story because Guignard and his prose bewitch you. That creepy chant never turns off, and you’re impatient to skip the graphics. There’s a curse in the prose, and it has something to do with a Russian love machine!
Last Case at a Baggage Auction is a haunting and a pleasure so articulately written you want to read it over and over. Given the novella’s history, you’ll incant to the gods in gratefulness that it saw the light of day. Vkhodite.
London Centric: Tales of Future London
by Ian Whates (ed)
NewCon Press
Review by Damien Lawardorn
From refreshing twists on zombie and alien tales to tense political thrillers, London Centric: Tales of Future London offers an eclectic collection of stories. Thirteen writers share their imaginings of humanity, all of them centring around the unique colour of London’s streets.
Opening the anthology is Neal Asher’s ‘Skin’, a taut technothriller laden with creeping horror. This story is part of Asher’s Polity Universe that, divorced from that context, remains an accomplished short and a gripping entry point. This kind of tense read recurs throughout the collection, with Aliette de Bodard’s ‘A Dance of Dust and Life’ being another highlight.
More meditative stories punctuate the punchy action. Ida Keogh’s ‘Infinite Tea at the Demara Café’ is an example. This charming story is characterised by a shifting backdrop and intensely personal revelations.
In some stories, the city itself is an AI character that plays a key role in the goings-on. Technology, more broadly, is common thread, but the various writers muse on themes as disparate as trauma, surveillance and government interference in private life. You never know what’s coming next, which makes each new story a compelling reason to continue.
‘Fog and Pearls at the King’s Cross Junction’ by Aliya Whiteley feels like a thematic outlier, being a historical horror, though it remains an intriguing inclusion.
Every story in London Centric earns its place. With the imagination, quality and ability to evoke a sense of place, London Centric belongs in the collection of any Anglophile. Sci-fi fans will find plenty to enjoy here.
Frequencies of Existence
by Andrew Hook
NewCon Press
Review by Eugen Bacon
A collection couldn’t open with a better hook than Andrew Hook’s ‘Your Golden Hands’—a story that’s as tender and ruthless as it is colonial or filled with conquiste, cryptic yet strong, and you know this author has won you, no matter what.
You’ll find it over and over, the enchantment, in something so simple, much researched, as the silhouettes in ‘Making Friends with Fold-Out Flaps’, an analogy of truth and mistruth; in a love affair with photography in the theme story ‘The Frequency of Existence’, almost scholarly in its insights; from the perspective of a dead girl in ‘The Stench of Winter’, a ghost investigating her murder.
Hook’s fondness for Japanese-themed stories spills out in ‘Kodokushi’—that finishes in enlightenment; ‘Eskimo’—a superhero unable to feel fear, yet entrapped in love and conflict with himself; ‘A Life in Plastic’—a father’s dilemma entangled with the haunt of the island of Okunoshima; and other stories that introduce you to cross-cultural fixations in ‘I’, ‘we’ or ‘you’ narratives. He impeccably soars across perspectives, and you travel with him, lured by the accomplishment of an utterly underrated author.
There’s dark beauty, cold affection in stories laden with secrets and meaning, depth in the texture of each text, and you’ll trace it to locate its music, because Hook is a fiddler with words. One story, ‘The Universe at Gunpoint’, plays out a music score with keys to the cosmos.
At the end of each tale is a delicious ‘behind the story’, and you’ll lap it up because already you’re rapt with each fresh taste of darkness, each lifetime in a paragraph, each essence of a traveller obsessed with lonely deaths, mummified bodies, serial stalkers, collective nouns, aniseed gumballs, the curse of a photograph and Kafka’s missing novel.
For lovers of metafiction, poetic text, intellectual narrative and elusive characters who linger to haunt you. The thrill you get reading Andrew Hook’s weird collection is out of this world. It’s a pastiche of the literary strange. You’ll want to read more of Hook after this.
The Forest of Dead Children
by Andrew Hook
Black Shuck Shadows
Review by Eugen Bacon
‘Their laughter had been pure, squealing tyres.’+
This micro-collection of five stories, one of longer length and comprising vignettes, is pregnant with Andrew Hook’s penchant for slipstream fiction: fantastical, non-realistic, unconventional. The author has a skilful knack of stealing something ordinary from the world, and making it weird.
The opening story ‘Shipwrecked in the Heart of the City’ is a potent one of loss, a woman going about her life knowing she has a dead baby inside. Hook has an ability to paint the inner/outer with such clarity in parallel stories, where death is ‘an almost’, as a grown male travels his world with a umbilical cord appended to his frame, and outside, the sky is a ‘colourbox absent’.
In ‘The Rhythm of Beauty’ is a captivation with night terrors, sleepwalking, the staling of a relationship in the absence of a present child. The grim inside ‘My Tormentor’ leaves you with the sour taste of anarchy—but whose?
The reader becomes an unwitting tourist inside a train through ghoulish landscape in ‘The _____ of ____ __________’, (yes, exactly) a telescopic anthology in vignettes that haul your core inside out.
Andrew Hook writes on completely another level.
Sex, dead children, connection, isolation, perspective, distortion, loss, denial… are themes that cord the stories in The Forest of Dead Children. Like a hypnotist, Hook is the master artist who suspends you, the reader, in the throes of unknowing. Inside the incongruity of each story, you’ll trust this author anywhere.
Grave Secrets
The Lavington Windsor Mysteries #1
by Alice James
Solaris
Review by Aimée Lindorff
Lavington Windsor is not like other girls. Real estate agent by day, raising the dead by night, Toni’s simple supernatural life in Staffordshire is about to get complicated when the very mysterious, very attractive vampire Oscar requests keys to a new home... and potentially to her heart. The debut novel Grave Secrets by A
lice James is a sexy witty vampire romcom and strong foundation to a new fantastic and fun series.
One part Midsomer Murders, one part The Sopranos, with a hefty dose of True Blood and a contemporary comedy edge, Grave Secrets delivers an exciting heroine with a knack for trouble and her own unique power-set—necromancing—adding shades of depth to the well-worn vampire muse.
Toni Windsor is the heir of Bridget Jones—awkward, ambitious, and unlucky in love—who finds herself at the centre of a spate of mysterious deaths and a vampire turf war between the somewhat civilised and integrated Brits and the brash American transplants.
Coupled with a cast of compelling, quirky support characters, including a chivalrous zombie and policeman brother, that flesh out the sweet locale of Staffordshire. Setting the core action outside the main cities of London provides an exciting opportunity for intrigue, tapping into the notorious gossip, secrets and uniqueness of country village life.
James’ ability to blend the small-town mundane and supernatural extreme creates a rollicking action mystery that will keep you engaged to the last page.
Midnight Movie Monographs: The Brood
by Stephen R Bissette
PS Publishing
Review by Clare Rhoden
This book forensically examines one of the most terrifying films of the 20th century.
The Brood is a 1979 horror movie that redefined the genre, tackling a clutch of cultural and social ills of the time. Equally, it established that the genre can stimulate deep and varied emotional responses. It’s not all about the fright.
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