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Laura Hubbard

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

A Pale Light in the Black

Review by Laura Hubbard

Set hundreds of years in the future, A Pale Light in the Black imagines a universe where humans—and the branches of our military—have expanded beyond the solar system. Least among these branches is the Near-Earth Orbital Guard (NeoG), who are often derided by their fellow service members as being little more than “space cops.” A Pale Light in the Black follows the members of the NeoG Interceptor team Zuma’s Ghost. After a narrow defeat at the annual Boarding Games, the team has trained hard to redeem themselves. But that training is thrown into jeopardy when one of the team’s core members is unexpectedly promoted and reassigned. In his place they are given Maxine “Max” Carmichael, a young, awkward lieutenant with no experience in the Games. And when it becomes apparent that someone is targeting the team following a routine smuggling-busting mission, the Games aren’t the only thing Zuma’s Ghost will have to deal with.

There are plenty of TV shows and books out there for folks who want gritty, high-stakes action and intrigue. A Pale Light in the Black is not that. While it does have a mystery subplot with sabotage and murder, most of the book’s action covers the all-consuming Games. And while this might seem boring compared to alien invasions and intergalactic warfare, the Games make the perfect backdrop for the real focus of the book: the growing bond between the members of Zuma’s Ghost and their new lieutenant. At its core, A Pale Light in the Black is as much about Max learning to be more confident or Commander Rosa Martín Rivas worrying about her daughters as it is about the games themselves. Far from boring, Wagers’ focus on character growth and relationships is refreshing, providing a welcome palate cleanser from the grimdark dramas that have come to dominate much of the science fiction landscape.

But all this isn’t to say that the book isn’t exciting. Wagers has a gift for describing action, especially in the sequences surrounding the Boarding Games’ cage match-style fights, emphasizing the feel of a tooth coming loose after a particularly hard hit or the panic of knowing that you’re about to get hit hard. For readers who enjoyed Rocky or Top Gun as much as they did Star Trek, A Pale Light in the Black is a thrilling and heartwarming ride.

Set hundreds of years in the future, A Pale Light in the Black imagines a universe where humans—and the branches of our military—have expanded beyond the solar system.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Lady Hotspur

Review by Laura Hubbard

I’ve always thought that Shakespeare’s histories (especially the Henrys) were a bit dull. Sure, they were epic, sweeping tales of kingdoms won and lost, wars fought with sweat and tears and political machinations. But they seemed like one big speech after another with all the really cool stuff (the battles) happening offstage. I never got over the feeling that there was another, more interesting story waiting to be told. Tessa Gratton’s latest novel, a gender-bent retelling of Henry IV, is the story I always wanted. It doesn’t just fill in the exciting missing details or rehash a story already well-known. Lady Hotspur breathes fresh life into its subject matter and creates a tale both familiar and wholly new. 

The novel opens at the end of a bloody rebellion that has thrust three young women into the spotlight. The first, Hal, had never planned on being a prince. A member of Aremore’s lady knights, Hal is more at home telling fantastical stories and leading drunken quests than she is playing politics. But when the coup leads to her mother taking the throne, Hal is forced to choose between playing a fool and playing a prince. The second, Lady Hotspur, also has no love of politics. Most comfortable with a sword in hand or on the battlefield, the end of the rebellion sees the Wolf of Aremoria in a place she never expected: falling in love with Prince Hal. The third is Banna Mora, the heir to the now-deposed king. Disgusted by the idea of the intemperate Hal ruling Aremoria, Banna Mora flees to Innis Lear to rebuild her strength and fight to reclaim the throne is rightfully hers, setting off a slow-burning rebellion that will force Hotspur to choose between love for family and love for Hal. Together, the three women hold not just their own fate, but the fate of Aremoria between them as well.

Although set in the same world as Gratton’s previous Shakespearean adaptation, readers don’t need to have read The Queens of Innis Lear in order to enjoy Lady Hotspur. While the book does reference the lives of Elia the Dreamer and her siblings, Lady Hotspur stands on its own. Readers also don’t need to be familiar with the novel’s source material. While the novel does largely follow the events of Henry IV, there will be no great insight gleaned from remembering the intricacies of each Shakespearean scene. What readers do need is patience. At nearly 600 pages, Lady Hotspur is a long and sometimes dense book full of beautiful prose and a labyrinthine plot. But readers who are willing to let the story slowly unravel will be magnificently rewarded by an enchanting, worthy read for lovers of Shakespeare and fantasy alike.

Lady Hotspur, a gender-bent retelling of Henry IV, breathes fresh life into its subject matter and creates a story both familiar and wholly new.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Bone Ships

Review by Laura Hubbard

As a preteen, I wanted to love movies like Pirates of the Caribbean. I loved tall tales of swashbuckling pirates and daring adventures on the high seas, but the movies didn’t live up to what I thought a sea adventure should or could be. Maybe it was the language, or maybe it was how painfully un-magical the movies were. Whatever the case, they just never clicked. But The Bone Ships, the first book in R.J. Barker’s Tide Child trilogy, is everything I wished those movies of the sea had been and much, much more. Simultaneously gritty and full of a sense of wonder, The Bone Ships is the perfect adventure for anyone who’s ever had dreams of the sea—or of dragons.

The endless war between the Hundred Isles and the Gaunt Islands was built on the bones of dragons. When those dragons disappeared, the island nations recycled what they could, each generation using the scavenged parts of the dragon-bone ships of the warriors who came before. The war went on, each generation’s ships smaller than the last. As their ships weakened and rotted, the war diminished to raids meant to steal ships and children. But the uneasy equilibrium will soon end: The first dragon in hundreds of years has been sighted. Lucky Meas and her ragtag crew of the condemned are determined to find it first and change the course of the war, but they aren’t the only ones desperate to find and claim the creature as their own.

One of the most interesting things about The Bone Ships is our perspective into its world. Joron Twiner, our point of view character, is no hero. He is cowardly and prideful. He’s incompetent and haunted by his past. It is clear even from the very first pages of The Bone Ships that if we are to have a traditional hero, it will be the woman who has taken Joron’s ship, Gilbryn “Lucky” Meas. Meas’ knack for driving her crew to success against all odds might feel cheap if she were our window into this world, as her ability to lead others is almost otherworldly. But because we see Meas through Joron’s eyes, we are only seeing Meas as her crew sees her: a great captain who causes remarkable changes in others, including Joron himself.

The world we see through Joron’s eyes is alien, from the little details (ships are referred to as “he” rather than “she”) to the big ones (normalized infant blood sacrifice). But as strange as these details sometimes are, there’s something about Barker’s style that makes them seem utterly natural. In many ways The Bone Ships reads not as a fantasy, but almost like a recent historical fiction, lending it an air of verisimilitude that many fantasy books lack. The narrator assumes that readers know the Hundred Isles as well as its characters do. That assumption can sometimes be confusing—the traditions, superstitions and even the language of the denizens of the Tide Child are as numerous as they are complicated—but this approach is also necessary. While a Tolkienesque explanation of the history of everything might have simplified the book, it would have been for the worse rather than for the better.

Appealing to the adventurer in all of us, The Bone Ships is an excellent book for any reader in search of a fantastical journey.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with R.J. Barker about The Bone Ships.

Simultaneously gritty and full of a sense of wonder, The Bone Ships is the perfect adventure for anyone who’s ever had dreams of the sea—or of dragons.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

The Cruel Stars

Review by Laura Hubbard

A good space opera can be many things. It can be funny or deeply philosophical. It can be touching, and it can be gory. John Birmingham’s latest novel, The Cruel Stars, balances all of those things, making readers laugh out loud even as it pulls them through an intergalactic battle for the soul of humanity.

Hundreds of years ago, humanity faced a terror like no other: the Sturm, a cultlike subculture bent on exterminating any human with genetic or cybernetic modifications. After a bloody and hard-fought civil war, the Sturm were forced to retreat. Because they weren’t heard from for hundreds of years, many thought the Sturm had to be extinct. That is, until they suddenly executed a system-wide, coordinated attack designed to cripple both human defenses and the enhancements of any “impure” humans. Led by a group of space pirates, a young military officer, a princess, a convicted criminal and a war hero, those who survived the initial onslaught must make a stand. Their mission? Drive the Sturm back before they can carry out their goal of system-wide purification.

The Cruel Stars showcases Birmingham’s remarkable mastery of scope. In just a few short chapters, he manages to paint (and then proceeds to destroy) a complex, flawed and deeply interesting version of human civilization. The grandness of this vision could be overwhelming. How, after all, can five point-of-view characters hope to encompass the entirety of a civilization or of a war? The simple answer is that they can’t, so Birmingham doesn’t try. Instead, he focuses his attention on a single planet and the Habitation satellites surrounding it. Instead of a grand, sterile view of the war, he creates a claustrophobic nightmare—well, as close as you can get to a nightmare and still have jokes. Despite the admittedly disturbing drive behind the Sturm’s crusade, The Cruel Stars manages to be deeply funny. In fact, it’s probably because of the disturbing potential consequences of the Sturm’s religious zeal that the humor works. Jokes about overly literal rhino men and space Nazis act as comic relief, breaking up the tension and letting Birmingham’s characters and universe shine.

If you aren’t a fan of gore (or if you just don’t like your humor and your gore to mix), then The Cruel Stars might not be the right book for you. But for readers who loved the frenetic pacing of the first few episodes of “Battlestar Galactica” or the gritty realism of A Song of Ice and Fire, The Cruel Stars needs to make its way to the top of summer reading lists.

A good space opera can be many things. It can be funny or deeply philosophical. It can be touching, and it can be gory. John Birmingham’s latest novel, The Cruel Stars, balances all of those things, making readers laugh out loud even as it pulls them through an intergalactic battle for the soul of humanity.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Desdemona and the Deep

Review by Laura Hubbard

Sometimes it can feel as if the world of science fiction and fantasy is nothing but epic tales spanning thousands of pages and dozens of books. And while those reads are enjoyable, sometimes a good novella is just what the librarian ordered. C.S.E. Cooney’s Desdemona and the Deep, the standalone third book in the Dark Breakers series, is a perfect palate cleanser.

The land of Seafall is a study in excess, and Desdemona is at the center of it all with nothing to occupy her mind except her mother’s dreadful charity events and her best friend, Chaz. But that was before she learned the origin of her family’s fortune. Her father’s family made a series of deals with the goblin king, the latest of which left hundreds dead and a handful trapped in the world below. Determined to right her family’s wrongs, Desdemona embarks on a quest to enter the underground worlds to bargain for the lives her father callously threw away.

One of the things that makes Desdemona and the Deep so compelling is that in its scant pages, Cooney manages to sketch the boundaries and vagaries of not just one fantastic world, but of three. Desdemona’s world, the world above, is a too-real Gilded Age nightmare where the poor suffer to make the opulent lives of robber barons possible. The worlds below are equally vivid, the dark and sharp world of the goblins standing in stark contrast to the gentry’s light and dreamy plane. That the three worlds are so distinct would be impressive in a much longer book. Within the confines of novella, it is a feat.

Another thing that makes Cooney’s world building remarkable is that, unlike many fantasy writers, she isn’t content to plop a society much like ours onto a foreign set. If sculptures can come to life, Cooney’s world asks us, is it really so strange to have a world that is more accepting and affirming of its LGBTQ citizens? Of course not. And that’s part of the power of these worlds. It’s not just their ability to showcase the fantastical. It’s their ability to showcase both the best of what humanity could be and the worst of what we have been.

The one drawback to Cooney’s latest novella is also one of the things that makes it so fun: It’s a novella. The shortened format means that Chaz and Desdemona’s story almost feels cut short because we don’t get to see as much of the worlds below as we might in a longer novel. But their journey is still a well-crafted one. A gripping tale from beginning to end, Desdemona and the Deep is a great read for anyone who loves a good fairy story.

Sometimes it can feel as if the world of science fiction and fantasy is nothing but epic tales spanning thousands of pages and dozens of books. And while those reads are enjoyable, sometimes a good novella is just what the librarian ordered. C.S.E. Cooney’s Desdemona and the Deep, the standalone third book in the Dark Breakers series, is a perfect palate cleanser.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Grand Dark

Review by Laura Hubbard

The Great War is over, and that’s cause for celebration in Lower Proszawa. Alcohol, sex and drugs flow freely at opulent parties where artists and their friends and benefactors try to ignore the threat of a new war just around the corner. Automatons, disfigured war veterans in iron masks, deadly plagues and the invisible presence of the secret police are ever-present but best ignored. In the center of it all is the Grand Dark, a theater where actors in puppet suits reenact grisly stories of murder and lust. To Largo Moorden, recently promoted to head courier of the city’s bike messenger service, everything is perfect. His new position comes with more money and possibly even a chance to move out of the messenger service entirely. His girlfriend is an actress at the Grand Dark, and there are enough drugs and parties to keep them both happy. But perfection comes with a price, and as Largo learns more about his new job, he begins to learn just how fragile Lower Proszawa’s peaceful façade really is.

Richard Kadrey’s The Grand Dark takes its time. Indeed, for the first third of the book it is unclear exactly what plot Largo Moorden is blindly walking into. Kadrey reveals Lower Proszawa almost as though by candlelight, showing readers just enough at any one time for them to see a few vibrant figures of a city under immense strain. Beyond that, the dark outlines of the threatening world are present but obscured and muted. Despite its lack of cliffhangers and action scenes, the subtle but constant pressure from that insidious outside world makes The Grand Dark an unexpected page-turner. With secret police and anarchist groups seemingly everywhere, it feels like a conspiracy in book form. Around every corner is a potential mystery, although it is sometimes unclear which mysteries are important and which aren’t. But when the central conflict of the book is finally revealed, it is both wholly unexpected in the moment and perfectly obvious in retrospect.

Kadrey’s characters are clueless, idealistic youths who could have stepped out of the bohemian dreams of a 19th-century opera composer. They dream of a better (or at least a drug-filled) life but are forced to live their lives within a dark, Kafka-esque state in which people disappear for seemingly no reason. Between these characters’ struggles and Lower Proszawa’s strange yet familiar technologies and magics, Kadrey successfully weaves the ultra-realistic with the nearly possible into a beautiful and morbid tapestry that fascinates as much as it entertains. The result is a fantastically written book for suspense or fantasy fans looking for a bit of gloom to fight the summer heat.

The Great War is over, and that’s cause for celebration in Lower Proszawa. Alcohol, sex and drugs flow freely at opulent parties where artists and their friends and benefactors try to ignore the threat of a new war just around the corner. Automatons, disfigured war veterans in iron masks, deadly plagues and the invisible presence of the secret police are ever-present but best ignored.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Storm of Locusts

Review by Laura Hubbard

In the weeks since the climactic events of Trail of Lightning, Maggie Hoskie’s life has returned to normal. The demigod Neizghání has been safely imprisoned under several tons of rock, the uneasy alliance between Maggie and the Goodacre clan has largely dissolved, and Maggie’s partner, Kai Arviso, is miraculously back from the dead. Granted, Kai still isn’t speaking to Maggie, and a hunt gone wrong has left her responsible for Ben, a grieving teenage girl. And there’s a new problem: a cult leader called the White Locust. But normal is relative when you’re a supernaturally gifted monster hunter living after the climate apocalypse. When Clive and Rissa Goodacre show up on Maggie’s doorstep with the news that both Caleb Goodacre and Kai have been abducted by the White Locust, Maggie is pulled into a hunt that will take her outside the relative safety of Dinétah, a former Navajo reservation, and into the horrors of the world beyond.

For some series, a second installment can be a “set-up” book that slowly introduces new characters and new places as it builds toward a final conclusion. Rebecca Roanhorse’s Storm of Locusts is not that sort of second book. It’s the kind that makes a fantastic first book pale in comparison, that captivates readers from the first page to the last. Storm of Locusts introduces new characters who captivate as much as Maggie, Kai and the Goodacres while also giving readers a glimpse into the world outside of Dinétah—a world dominated by slave traders, organ harvesters and dedicated park rangers. But none of these introductions makes the book feel slow. Storm of Locusts careens from scene to scene with the same frenetic energy and electrifying prose that set Roanhorse’s debut apart.

But while Trail of Lightning dealt with conflict on a godly scale, Storm of Locusts changes perspective, showing just how destructive clan powers can be if placed in the wrong hands. The shift focuses our attention on Maggie, Ben and their companions. Whether it’s Maggie’s search for Kai or Ben’s desire for revenge for the death of her uncle, the stakes are high. Roanhorse’s prose and pacing are electric, and so are her characters, who clearly have many more stories to tell.

Storm of Locusts will delight and captivate fans of speculative fiction and mythology. Your only complaint will be that the next book isn’t out yet for you to devour.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Rebecca Roanhorse about Storm of Locusts.

Normal is relative when you’re a supernaturally gifted monster hunter living after the climate apocalypse. Maggie Hoskie is pulled into a hunt that will take her outside the relative safety of Dinétah, a former Navajo reservation, and into the horrors of the world beyond.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

The True Queen

Review by Laura Hubbard

While The True Queen is the second in Zen Cho’s Sorcerer Royal series, in many ways it is more of a standalone novel than true sequel. It is true that readers who enjoyed Sorcerer to the Crown will delight in the reappearance of familiar characters and settings, as well as the expansion of Cho’s vision of a magical Regency England. But because The True Queen is told from the perspective of characters new to Prunella, Henrietta and Zacharias’s world, the novel gives incoming readers a smooth introduction to Cho’s complex and exciting creation. But be careful—once you’ve experienced Cho’s vision of the past, you will never want to leave.

The True Queen opens in the weeks after Muna and her sister Sakti found themselves on the shores of Janda Baik, a tiny (and fictional) island. Stripped of their memories by an unknown magician, the girls take refuge with the witch Mak Genggang. But as the weeks go on, Sakti and Muna learn that their memories may not be all that the curse took from them. Sakti is beginning to fade from existence, and the sisters’ only hope in lifting the curse is to travel to Britain and enlist the aid of the Sorceress Royal. But when Sakti gets lost in the Unseen Realm between Janda Baik and Britain, Muna must learn how to navigate the world of magicians without Sakti. In the process, she will learn exactly how far she’ll go to save her sister.

Purposefully or not, much of historical fiction and fantasy tends to show a whitewashed view of European history. In both Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, Zen Cho reminds us that Britain was far from homogenous. And while Cho never strays into direct discussions of imperialism (at its core, The True Queen is a fairly light book), it is a constant presence. Its threat looms in Janda Baik as Mak Geggang struggles to keep the influence of the British from growing on the island. And while few are outright hostile towards Muna, she is treated as an exotic addition to society rather than a person of her own. These additions distinguish the novel from others of its genre, making The True Queen a book worth reading for lovers of historical fantasy and thoughtful historical fiction alike.

While The True Queen is the second in Zen Cho’s Sorcerer Royal series, in many ways it is more of a standalone novel than true sequel. It is true that readers who enjoyed Sorcerer to the Crown will delight in the reappearance of familiar characters and settings, as well as the expansion of Cho’s vision of a magical Regency England. But because The True Queen is told from the perspective of characters new to Prunella, Henrietta and Zacharias’s world, the novel gives incoming readers a smooth introduction to Cho’s complex and exciting creation.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

The Kingdom of Copper

Review by Laura Hubbard

Nahri thought she was going to be a doctor. As a grifter in Cairo, she saved up in the hope that one day she’d be able to afford to study at a university that would take a woman. When she accidentally summoned the ancient warrior Dara and learned of her own Daeva heritage at the beginning of Chakraborty’s debut The City of Brass, Nahri’s life changed forever. But in the aftermath of Dara’s death at the hands of Prince Ali, her life has been turned upside down. Nahri is alone. So too is her once-friend Prince Ali, whose treasonous sympathies towards the shafit, humans with djinn blood, have forced his father to banish him, all but putting a price on Ali’s head. As both are pulled deeper into the ever-shifting schemes of Daevabad’s royal court, a darker force looms that threatens to shatter the fragile peace that keeps the city from tearing itself apart.

As far as epic fantasy goes, The Kingdom of Copper checks all the boxes. It presents readers with a world so vivid that it doesn’t require the suspension of disbelief. Nahri and Ali’s world simply is, and we as readers just happen to be lucky enough to get a brief glimpse into it. Chakraborty creates characters who are complex and who have motivations and allegiances that require them to make bad (and sometimes even contradictory) decisions. And that’s okay. They’re characters we want to root for even when they aren’t always wise or likeable.

More than anything, the second novel in S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy is a great epic fantasy because it’s just that. It’s epic, and that’s what makes it so much fun. Although most of the action takes place within the city of Daevabad, it’s clear that much more is at stake than the fate of a single city. Nahri, Dara and Ali’s story is rooted in a millennia long conflict, which means that the slightest (even unintentional) gesture has the weight of centuries behind it. The pressure of that enduring cultural conflict also means that the solutions in Chakraborty’s world can often be painful, forcing characters to compromise and politic in ways that epic fantasy rarely allows. That sort of politicking could leave The Kingdom of Copper feeling dry or cold. But it is neither of those. Nahri’s situation has intensely personal and emotional stakes, and many of the choices she’s forced to make frankly don’t have right answers. And it’s that focus on individual choice that really makes Chakraborty’s trilogy work. It is epic fantasy that is shrunk to the perspective of the individual. If you’re looking for a compelling, heart-rending drama that just happens to also be one of the most thought-provoking epic fantasies to come out in a long time, look no further. Just make sure to read The City of Brass first.

Nahri thought she was going to be a doctor. As a grifter in Cairo, she saved up in the hope that one day she’d be able to afford to study at a university that would take a woman. When she accidentally summoned the ancient warrior Dara and learned of her own Daeva heritage at the beginning of Chakraborty’s debut The City of Brass, Nahri’s life changed forever. But in the aftermath of Dara’s death at the hands of Prince Ali, her life has been turned upside down. Nahri is alone. So too is her once-friend Prince Ali, whose treasonous sympathies towards the shafit, humans with djinn blood, have forced his father to banish him, all but putting a price on Ali’s head. As both are pulled deeper into the ever-shifting schemes of Daevabad’s royal court, a darker force looms that threatens to shatter the fragile peace that keeps the city from tearing itself apart.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

The Post

Review by Laura Hubbard

If you don’t like being surprised by books, then Kevin A. Muñoz’s debut novel The Post is not the book for you. If, however, you are a fan of adrenaline-packed, post-apocalyptic mystery and adventure, then it might just be right up your alley.

The Post opens in The Little Five, a small, wall-bound community near the ruins of Atlanta, Georgia, ten years after a pandemic wiped out most of the world’s population. The Little Five’s chief of police is Sam Edison, who seeks to create what little order he can in a world where zombie-like creatures called Hollow Heads threaten humanity’s very existence. After two refugees are murdered shortly after seeking asylum in The Little Five, Edison uncovers a human trafficking ring that extends throughout Georgia, one that some residents of The Little Five have secretly been complicit with. When Sam attempts to imprison those sympathizers, the ring takes the mayor’s stepdaughter hostage in retaliation, reminding everyone that there are far more sinister things in the world than mere Hollow Heads.

The Post is a celebration of the sci-fi and action genres, but it is not captive to them. Sam is the epitome of the gruff action hero with a tragic past, but the chief is also deeply sentimental and often naïve, a fact that humanizes parts of the novel that could easily feel callous if presented in the usual cold, analytical tone of many action novels. Sam’s perspective forces readers to reckon with the humanity of those—whether human or Hollow Head—who end up at the other end of the police chief’s gun. And from that perspective we’re forced to consider an important question: Who is less human, the Hollow Head or the man in charge of a trafficking ring? Similarly, while the novel builds a spectacular mystery (How deep does the conspiracy go, and who, exactly, is behind it all?), it doesn’t do so at the expense of the pacing of the novel itself. The result is a perfect blend of action and mystery, part revenge tale and part chase.

It’s worth nothing that many post-apocalyptic novels are described as gritty and visceral, but that Muñoz’s work takes that description to a new level. It deals with some heavy content, including abuse, child death and sex trafficking. The Post doesn’t pull punches when it comes to the fight scenes typical of its genre, either. Sam’s encounters with the Hollow Heads and with fellow humans are visceral to the point of being uncomfortable. And his internal monologue provides a window into the mind of a person who has had to suffer abuse in order to make it as far as the end of the world. However, for readers who choose to take the time to really dig in, The Post is a gem that rewards them for their time. Just when you think you’ve gotten everything figured out, Muñoz hands out a piece of information that you could have never anticipated, but that you realize in retrospect was awaiting you the entire time. The only thing you’ll complain about at the end is that it wasn’t longer.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you don’t like being surprised by books, then Kevin A. Muñoz’s debut novel The Post is not the book for you. If, however, you are a fan of adrenaline-packed, post-apocalyptic mystery and adventure, then it might just be right up your alley.

Science Fiction & FantasyShort Stories

How Long ’til Black Future Month

Review by Laura Hubbard

Short story collections are like potato chips. Sometimes you sit and eat a few and can put them away, spreading out your treat to enjoy on another day. Other times you sit and eat an entire bag in one sitting because the chips are just that good and you can’t help yourself. How Long ’til Black Future Month?, N.K. Jemisin’s new collection of short stories, is the perfect example of the second kind of collection. Each of the pieces held within is masterfully written and beautifully imagined, making the book difficult to put down even as it flits from dragons in Earth’s ruined sky to predators among us to the relationship between machines and reality.

At the same time as she builds different worlds, Jemisin experiments with different narrative structures, points of view and story forms. In another collection of short stories, this sort of exploration to the limits of speculative fiction could feel like experimentation for experimentation’s sake. However, the way Jemisin plays with the structural elements of her short stories feels necessary, helping pull readers into the hopelessness of being stuck in your own fractal universe or the feeling of power and powerlessness that comes alongside the birth of a great city. Each story grabs you by the collar, sometimes whispering in your ear before letting you go and other times pulling you a breakneck speed.

Readers of Jemisin’s other works will recognize some of the worlds (she describes a few of the forays into fictional worlds as “proofs of concept” in the introduction) but these short stories aren’t short drabbles exploring a not-yet-full-realized fantasy realm. They are powerful stories that deal with issues of race, gender and religion. They give readers windows into worlds that feel so real that you could slip inside them—not that you would want to—and inhabit her characters’ lives. Anyone who appreciates Jemisin’s work, speculative fiction or simply the art of the short story shouldn’t miss this collection. But beware: Once you get started, you might not be able to put it down. It’s just that good.

Short story collections are like potato chips. Sometimes you sit and eat a few and can put them away, spreading out your treat to enjoy on another day. Other times you sit and eat an entire bag in one sitting because the chips are just that good and you can’t help yourself. How Long ’til Black Future Month?, N.K. Jemisin’s new collection of short stories, is the perfect example of the second kind of collection. Each of the pieces held within is masterfully written and beautifully imagined, making the book difficult to put down even as it flits from dragons in Earth’s ruined sky to predators among us to the relationship between machines and reality.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

Breach

Review by Laura Hubbard

Anyone who has read books about Soviet era espionage recognizes a certain kind of scene: intelligence agents meeting to exchange information—and occasionally prisoners—in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Breach, the first book in W.L. Goodwater’s Cold War Magic series, uses this well-worn trope and amplifies it with the threat of magical annihilation, bringing a new edge to the traditional spy story.

In the waning hours of World War II, Soviet magicians conjured a wall of pure magic, dividing Berlin in two and protecting their hold on East Germany. While the world was aghast, there was little the West could do. The wall was impenetrable except at specific, predetermined crossing points like Checkpoint Charlie. Until now. The wall is failing, and to avoid World War III, the US needs to find out why—and try to reverse the process. The CIA calls on Karen, a young researcher from the American Office of Magical Research and Deployment. As she searches for a way to repair the wall, Karen quickly realizes that the truth is never straightforward in Berlin, especially when it comes to the story behind the Wall itself.

The characters of Breach shine as much as the plot and world do. Like the book itself, the characters are well-trodden archetypes that are given new life. There’s the young magician burnout-turned spy and his partner, the not-quite-recovering alcoholic chief, and the young spitfire determined to make her place in the world. If those sound familiar and even overdone, it’s because they are. But Goodwater takes those cardboard cutouts of what we would expect from a 1980s spy novel and turns them into three-dimensional characters that readers can actually root for. Far from being mere types, Karen and her compatriots are vibrant characters with complex inner lives. They go off-script from typical spy novels, making a world that could have been a parody of itself into one that readers will be eager to get back to.

Goodwater’s debut novel is tightly wound in the way that only good suspense stories can be. At any moment it seems that the fragile peace built between the West and East could fall apart with disastrous consequences, which is a testament to Breach’s overall success with dramatic timing. By the same token, however, if it’s possible to make a complaint about Breach, the only complaint to make is that at a few points the story felt rushed, with too many events being crushed into not enough space. While this fits with the frenetic pace of the scenes in question, it also made action sequences difficult to follow because so much was happening at once. However, the pleasure of the book as a whole more than made up for these slight pacing issues.

Breach combines the magical world building of The City & the City with the suspense of Cold War thrillers like Bridge of Spies, resulting in a cinematic suspense story that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very last page.

Anyone who has read books about Soviet era espionage recognizes a certain kind of scene: intelligence agents meeting to exchange information—and occasionally prisoners—in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Breach, the first book in W.L. Goodwater’s Cold War Magic series, uses this well-worn trope and amplifies it with the threat of magical annihilation, bringing a new edge to the traditional spy story.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

A rip-roaring sci-fi adventure

Review by Laura Hubbard

The universe was once overrun by an intergalactic war, fought with star system-destroying technologies. Then a mysterious energy called the pulse pushed technology’s progress back, including humanity’s ability to destroy one another. In some cases, planets lost a few conveniences or even space flight. In others, they lost the ability to generate electricity at all. Enter Jane Kamali, a member of the Justified, the group responsible for the pulse. Jane’s job is simple: she must find children with special powers and get them back to the Sanctum—the Justified’s base—before other sects can find them and abuse their powers. When a mission to rescue a gifted girl named Esa goes south, Jane is pulled into a struggle against the Pax, a bloodthirsty, militaristic sect that values strength and domination above all else. In the battle to survive, Jane, Esa and the Sanctum itself must fight tooth and nail if they hope to stand up to the Pax.

The Stars Now Unclaimed takes what should be a predictable space opera—fight scenes with a bit of plot sprinkled in like glue—and creates something truly fun. Kamali and her compatriots’ sarcasm prevent the book from taking itself too seriously, breaking up the tension created by the near endless fight and chase scenes (there is barely a page in the book that is not at least affected by one or the other). The fight and chase scenes themselves are magnificent and compelling, careening the reader from tense pre-ambush jitters to the adrenaline of an attack and back again in just a few sentences. Williams’ combination of fantastic fight scenes and skillful character writing makes The Stars Now Unclaimed a compulsively readable treat for readers in search of a kinetic space opera.

But it is not a good choice for anyone who is less than enthusiastic about fight scenes, as well as for readers who are squeamish about a little bit of (non-graphic) gore. And while Williams writes a great story, it is an action story rather than a deep, contemplative look at the nature of the universe. That doesn’t mean that Williams shies away from some difficult questions. But it does mean that The Stars Now Unclaimed doesn’t get bogged down in the philosophical details. It moves quickly, hurtling its readers towards its exciting (and lengthy) climax.

The Stars Now Unclaimed is a perfect pick for any reader who loved “Firefly”’s Mal or Star Wars’ Han, or for anyone who just wants a good romp through the galaxy with a thousand fighters on their tail.

The universe was once overrun by an intergalactic war, fought with star system-destroying technologies. Then a mysterious energy called the pulse pushed technology’s progress back, including humanity’s ability to destroy one another.

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