Hamill (A Cosmology of Monsters) returns with a dark and enchanting account of four friends whose dabbling in the supernatural as teenagers threatens their present happiness. In the 1990s, Hal, Athena, Erin, and Peter discover the Dissonance, which enables them to transform negative emotions into great feats of magic, and form a power-hungry coven. In 2019, now adults and their coven dissolved due to some unstated disaster, the friends must reckon with the consequences of their impulsive adolescent actions. Toggling between the two timelines to tease out what happened between now and then, Hamil weaves a tale of magic, teen angst, the power of enduring friendship, life in small-town America, sexuality, and the use of religion (in this case, Christianity) as a tool of subjugation. As the friends learn more of what they are capable of, they also discover what, and who, is behind the forces of Dissonance, building to a shocking conclusion that will change them forever. Fantasy readers won’t want to put this down. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this overwrought debut, visual artist Pechaček crafts a medieval fantasy with shades of Alice in Wonderland and The Tombs of Atuan. Pell is an apprentice from the Black Tower, whose wimple-wearing women attend all births and deaths in a strange, four-cornered land ruled by ancient houses. When the guardian of the West Passage dies in her sleep, Pell steals a book from her room, triggering a sudden, endless Winter. As crops fail and serfs starve, she embarks on a quest to repair her misdeed. Meanwhile, young Kew, who was the guardian’s next-in-line but was never officially appointed, sets out on a parallel quest to warn the great houses that the mythical Beast is planning a return through the unguarded passage. The narrative alternates between Kew’s and Pell’s adventures, including encounters with bizarre creatures (such as an owl schoolmaster who keeps awkwardly laying eggs) and the giant, ancient ladies of the houses whose old vendettas form fault lines in the land’s jagged history. Pechacek uses broad brushstrokes to paint a world in decay. Though he provides plenty of asides explaining the complex lore, the worldbuilding gets in the way of plot and character development, leaving the protagonists feeling thin despite some quirky Canterbury naturalism. Through all the clutter, it’s hard to connect to the story. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Grant (Where All Is Night, and Starless) crafts an awkward frame narrative to connect an otherwise delightful collection of stories that ably straddle the line between horror and historical fantasy. That frame, following the struggles of queer Black gallery owner Marcus Evanche in 2015 Camden, England, feels oddly disjointed from the short tales, 1970s escapades narrated by white art critic and appraiser Justin Margrave. The best entries focus on female vengeance, as in “The Madness of Queen George,” in which a sculptor seeks revenge for her brother, who died of an overdose, and “The Smoke Market,” about a pottery workshop that offers curious protection to the battered women who work there. Other tales take their cue from The Wicker Man and focus on haunting folk traditions, among them “The Beasts of Kemberdale,” “Elk Boys,” and “The Children of Angles and Corners.” Throughout, Grant offers a nuanced and sympathetic portrait of British gay life from the late 1940s to the days of Thatcher. While the twist bringing together Margrave’s past and Evanche’s present falls flat, the short stories themselves are well worth reading. Grant’s fans will find plenty to enjoy. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

YA author Brennan (In Other Lands) hooks readers from page one of her spellbinding adult debut. Rae, who has cancer, delights in having her sister Alice read from their favorite fantasy series, Time of Iron, in her hospital bed. One night, she dreams of a mysterious woman from the world of the series, who offers her a cure. All Rae has to do to be cancer-free is enter the books and pluck the Flower of Life and Death. But if she fails, she’ll die in her earthly body and wind up trapped in the story forever. Rae takes the deal and is transported into Time of Iron—in the role of villainess Rahela Domitia. Arriving in medias res, she must evade execution or risk dying in both worlds. Brennan has a lot of infectious fun with her meta conceit, and as Rae interferes with the plot she knows so well, the stakes ratchet up and the story takes some unexpected turns. Readers won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Harris (Chocolat) delivers a sweetly upbeat urban fantasy in which—unbeknownst to humans or the supernatural Sightless Folk with whom they coexist—the Butterfly and Moth Kingdoms wage an ancient war. Tom Argent lives a quiet, solitary life in London, with a passion for photography and little else. This changes with two chance meetings, first with an unhoused man who calls himself Spider, then with a woman named Vanessa, whose beauty shines so brightly Tom can’t help falling deeply, foolishly, in love with her. Tom’s pursuit of Vanessa unexpectedly draws him into the conflict between the butterflies—vibrantly beautiful creatures of daytime—and the moths, somber and unassuming denizens of night. Tom is a cipher for much of the story, tossed between the two sides while his own goals are frustratingly limited to capturing stolen moments on film and declaring his love to Vanessa. The combination of epic story and fairy tale prose captivates, however, and Harris builds an enchanting world around Tom and his companions. Urban fantasy readers seeking a lighthearted treat will find plenty to enjoy. Agent: John Wood, RCW. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

A small California town is cut off from the rest of the country by a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions in Belardes’s uneven debut horror novel. Bayside oyster farmer Bernhard Vestinos first notices something amiss when a rampant snail infestation overruns his beds, forcing him to take deadly measures. What appears to be a manmade eco-disaster ultimately proves to have an otherworldly component as a contagion with an inexplicable side effect spreads through town: people begin “deading,” dropping to the ground in apparent death throes, only to revive minutes later and obliviously go about their business. That’s enough weirdness for a government drone squadron to enforce a protective perimeter around the town. Within that inescapably sealed environment, the social glue of Bayside quickly gives way to the ascent of the Risers, a quasireligious cult violently hostile to the non-deading minority. Belardes toggles between the perspectives of a variety of townspeople, including the Enriquez brothers—Chango and Blas—but his efforts to give the horrors a human dimension bog down in the minutiae of their lives (especially the details of Blas’s amateur birding). Still, this patchwork of familiar horror plot motifs offers some fun scares. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Ex-cop Daniel Carter and his partner-in-violence Valentina “Tina” Hyde return in this blood-soaked urban fantasy. Having slaughtered the monster clans who ruled the criminal underworld and dispatched their creator Edward Hyde in 2021’s Jekyll & Hyde, Inc., Daniel and Tina, made unstoppably strong and nigh-indestructible through a special elixir, discover that aliens have long coveted Earth. With the monster clans gone, only Daniel and Tina remain to foil the aliens’ insidious agendas. The duo must track down and destroy the Greys, the Reptiloids, the Martians, and the Bug-Eyed Monsters who labor in secret to exploit and conquer the world, a quest which sees them contacting old friends for information and making strange new allies along the way. This second installment has an episodic feel, but it’s just as brutal, visceral, and bloody as the first, with Green’s protagonists coming across as every bit as monstrous as their opponents and twice as violent. The result is a fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled tale that’s reminiscent of grindhouse cinema and sure to satisfy series fans. Agent: Joshua Bilmes, JABberwocky Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bacigalupi (The Tangled Lands) dazzles in this addictive account of the rivalries between powerful families in a brilliantly rendered fantastical world inspired by 15th-century Florence. Narrator Davico di Regulaif’s father, Devonaci, owns a rare dragon’s eye, still “burning with inner fire as if it retained life.” Davico’s obsession with the orb, which seems to trap a “flaming rage,” eventually has significant consequences. Father and son belong to one of the most influential banking families of Navola and Devonaci, who has many enemies and seeks every opportunity to “shape the politics of [the] city to his will,” hopes that Davico will succeed him as the family’s head. Unfortunately, that aspiration is imperiled by a betrayal that forces Davico to undertake a desperate flight to survive. Davico hints early on that he is not being entirely truthful with the reader, which only enhances the suspense. Admirers of Game of Thrones and Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolò series will be riveted. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Nebula, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Award finalist Allen (Aftermath of an Industrial Accident) presents a titillating collection of 14 horror stories and poems. Throughout, Allen takes the idea of nothing being as it seems to supernatural extremes. In “The Green Silence,” the narrator waits impatiently for some kind of succubus named Violet to come out of her periodic hibernation. (“Whenever Violet goes dormant, Gerry pines for her with a skin-peeling, meat-dissolving hunger he does not dare express.”) Allen’s lyricism works better in his prose than in his poetry, which can sometimes be too abstract to deliver real scares, as in the collection opener “The Windows Breathe,” a somewhat generic haunted house poem. On the other end of the spectrum is the blunt, bloody narrative poem “The Strip Search,” in which the speaker is disemboweled upon their entrance to hell in order to remove all hope from their body. Though readers hoping for straightforward chills may long for something more to hold onto, these slippery, surprising stories will appeal to horror fans seeking something fresh. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

This seething, sweltering postapocalyptic novel from Volodine (Black Village) follows the eponymous character as he navigates life as a double agent for both the corrupt state apparatus and the denizens of Henhouse Four, an underclass ghetto monitored by the government for possible revolutionary activity. Still mourning the death of his wife, Verena, 20 years prior, Mevlido stumbles upon a young woman who looks exactly like her—only to watch the doppelgänger, a possible terrorist, get her head crushed beneath the wheels of a tram. As he struggles to make sense of what he saw, Mevlido must hide his investigation from his autocratic superiors, and reality itself unravels as he attempts to reconcile the past, the future, and the completely impossible present. Translator Stamm does an admirable job of rendering Volodine’s serpentine prose in English, and the noirish, surrealist story turns into an unlikely romp as it riffs on the absurdity of 20th-century political institutions and pop culture. The cumulative effect is frequently baffling but never dull. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink