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In Three Kinds of Lucky by Kim Harrison, author of the bestselling Hollows series, magic has its own specialized sanitation service: Sweepers, who pick up a byproduct of magic called dross. If left unattended, dross can attract shadow, a dangerous, somewhat intelligent life-form that can easily kill mages, sweepers and normal humans alike.

Harrison wastes little time getting down to business; the story kicks off in St. Unoc, a fictional city set east of Tucson, Arizona, where mages congregate to learn, research and test their skills at St. Unoc University. While tackling a messy dross cleanup, our narrator and protagonist, sweeper Petra Grady, discovers she has the rare ability to manipulate shadow itself. Petra is soon drafted into a research project on dross that could upend everything she thought she knew about St. Unoc. 

Three Kinds of Lucky revolves around its distinct class system: The magical equivalent of janitors, sweepers cannot use magic, and most mages ignore or sneer at them. However, unlike mages, the sweepers can directly handle dross with no ill effects. Harrison uses Grady to personify this complicated interplay. Her struggle to balance her pride in her work with the fact that some people would rather spit on her than acknowledge her is a key pillar of the story. What’s more, jealousy over the mages’ ability to craft and manipulate magic has always burned in Grady’s heart, despite her sense of duty as a sweeper. As her role in St. Unoc evolves, she learns more about the origin of the two separate classes, discovering sins so old that the mages don’t remember their existence.

Three Kinds of Lucky will immediately pull readers in with its fast pace and efficient storytelling; the entirety of its nearly city-shattering events all happen within a few days. Sometimes, however, the character development fails to keep time with the speed of the plot, resulting in frustrating moments where one wishes that Grady and her companions would adapt more quickly to what’s happening around them. However, the mechanically intricate magic system and complex world Harrison has created makes this series opener well worth the read.

Kim Harrison’s Three Kinds of Lucky is an immediately compelling urban fantasy with an intricate magic system and complex world.
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Tiankawi may be a city half-submerged in water, but like so many cities, it is divided between the haves and the have-nots. The haves, who inhabit Tiankawi’s sweeping spires, are nearly all human. Some of the have-nots are too, but the majority of the city’s dispossessed are of the fathomfolk diaspora: people of the sea who have been forced out of their underwater havens by pollution and human-mediated destruction. Mira straddles both worlds. The first half-siren captain in the border guard, she wants to make a difference in the lives of those who she grew up with—if anyone will let her. Mira’s way of making change is slow and methodical, often relying on her well-connected water dragon boyfriend to help push for better legislation and provide an image of a model minority. Her boyfriend’s sister, Nami, has other plans. Banished to Tiankawi for her rebellious ways, she begins to associate with groups who view violence as necessary for revolution. As she bonds with these new friends, she begins to realize that their methods may be questionable, and soon both Nami and Mira will be forced to grapple with the fallout.

A modern urban fairy tale, Eliza Chan’s Fathomfolk pairs futuristic cityscapes with fantastical races and real-world politics. The folk are in many ways climate refugees, feared by their hosts and forced to wear bracelets that suppress their powers and prevent them from harming humans, even in self-defense. While it is tempting to draw parallels between the central struggle for the rights of fathomfolk and the rights of refugees in general, Chan’s focus on the intersectionality of issues within Tiankawi makes it satisfyingly difficult to draw a straight line between our world and hers. Chan shows the divisions among the folk, from species-based class divisions among the sea dragons, kappa and kelpies to a distaste for families of mixed heritage. But she also shows that a society bent on oppressing one group will surely not stop there: Tiankawi’s slums are as full of humans as they are full of folk, and its draconian policies harm everyone. This message, both obscured and amplified by the fantasy elements of the story, makes Fathomfolk a nuanced, powerful and complex parable, one that raises questions that linger far after the novel reaches its conclusion.

Set in a city that’s half aboveground and half underwater, Eliza Chan’s Fathomfolk pairs fantastical races and real-world politics.
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Mackerel Sky hasn’t had a good fishing season in centuries. Not since its founder betrayed the mermaid who captured his heart, and she cursed the Maine fishing village in retaliation. That grand tragedy begat many others, but no curse is absolute, even one cast by the most vengeful scion of the relentless ocean. And as young Leo Beale’s alcohol-fueled rebellion against his opiate-dependent mother leads him to the shelter of town elder Myra Kelley; Manon Perle quilts her way out of the miasma of grief over her daughter, born with her legs fused together like a mermaid’s tail and dead far too young; and the local high school’s star pitcher, Derrick Stowe, falls clandestinely in love, the mermaid’s magic may finally be at an ebb.

The Moorings of Mackerel Sky is a book to submerge yourself in. Debut novelist MZ’s storytelling does not flow in straight lines. Rather, it eddies, lingering in tiny moments in the present before transporting readers back to the story’s headwaters, hundreds of years ago. She explores the past in loving detail, filling every page with lushly crafted, often poetic prose. The backstory seems, at times, irrelevant to the modern-day plotline, inserted more for world building than narrative necessity. However, MZ does nothing without purpose. Every half-finished historical anecdote and ancillary encounter contributes to the larger story, like a school of fish following an insistent current.This nonlinear structure is unified by an underlying theme of foreignness. Humans are creatures of the land, whose trespasses on water are tolerated at the mermaids’ whim, while the mermaids themselves are antithetical to land. At its core, The Moorings of Mackerel Sky is both a tragedy and a romance, a tale of humans and merfolk struggling to live and love in each other’s domains, and how they all end up moored to the liminal space of the shore.

A lushly crafted tale of a Maine fishing village cursed by a mermaid, The Moorings of Mackerel Sky is a debut to submerge yourself in.
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Ever since the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of her aunt and childhood guardian, Hester, Ellie has been determined to be as unremarkable as possible. Interesting people, she thinks, go missing. She’s content with her life working as a librarian and taking care of her aging aunt—with the occasional trip to Pittsburgh for dates with women she rarely sees twice. But when an impeccably dressed, impossibly handsome woman appears in the library sipping a cup of tea, Ellie’s world is set off its carefully controlled tracks. After a near-death experience involving an unfortunately placed cow, Ellie learns that she has magical powers and is teleported to the city-state of Crenshaw, where the strong are required to stay and learn to control their abilities, and the weak are often stripped of their magic and cast out. Despite the draw of Prospero, the mysterious witch in the library, Ellie wants nothing more than to go back to her ordinary life. There’s just one problem: She’s also the solution to a prophecy concerning the salvation—or destruction—of Crenshaw itself. 

Melissa Marr’s Remedial Magic is a satisfying addition to the magic school subgenre. Crenshaw is a witchy community college-cum-commune that exists somewhere outside of normal existence. It’s equal parts melting pot and pressure cooker, where people with disparate goals and fears collide with sometimes electric effects. Marr highlights the friction by hopping among the perspectives of Ellie and a variety of other Crenshaw inhabitants, like Maggie, a lawyer and mother desperate to get back to her son, and Dan, for whom magic provides an escape from cancer. While Marr’s shifting points of view does mean that Remedial Magic unfolds slowly, the variety keeps the novel from feeling like it has leaned too far into the “chosen one” trope. From the twists and turns of its sapphic romance to Crenshaw’s internal politicking, Remedial Magic is an excellent series starter that combines the aesthetics of a classic fish-out-of-water story with the sensibilities of a book for and about adults.

Melissa Marr’s Remedial Magic is a satisfying addition to the magic school subgenre—written for and about adults.
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Without any career prospects after grad school, Alicia finds her dead-end retail job tolerable only because of two co-workers she sort-of calls friends: bright, bubbly Heaven and jaded, focused Mars. After a rare appearance at one of Heaven’s parties, Alicia tries to return to the Toronto apartment she shares with her mother only to be waylaid by River Mumma, the ethereal Jamaican spirit of the water. Somebody has stolen her comb, and if Alicia doesn’t return it to her in 24 hours, River Mumma will leave this world and take all her waters with her.

Unmoored by the request, Alicia sets off to find the thief. But as visions from her ancestors begin to overwhelm her, and wicked spirits called duppies start to chase down her and her friends, Alicia will need to choose a path, step into her family legacy and go where the river takes her.

Millennial ennui and Jamaican legend intertwine in Zalika Reid-Benta’s propulsive debut novel, River Mumma. Alicia’s quest rests on folk medicine and the oft-buried spirituality of diasporic communities, which Reid-Benta juxtaposes against modern issues of social media and poorly organized subway lines, but also uses to lend a mythic tone to her tale of young people struggling to find their purpose in a big city. 

The robust cast of characters, from Heaven’s spiritualist friend, Oni, to the creepy Whooping Boy duppy, keep the story feeling fresh as Alicia catapults between past and present, though River Mumma rightfully takes center stage with each appearance. “Water heals, water nourishes, water has power,” as Heaven declares, and Alicia’s family ties to the water spirit offer her a guiding light through the choppy seas of her late 20s. Ultimately, Alicia, Heaven and Mars learn to embrace the fullness of life over the apathy that helped them survive a mundane day to day. While these themes get lost on occasion, especially in the chaos of duppy attacks, the adventure along the way is worth a sometimes bumpy ride.

For those entranced by folkloric fantasy, and for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Kat Howard, River Mumma will be a must-read.

Millennial ennui and Jamaican legend intertwine in Zalika Reid-Benta's propulsive debut novel, River Mumma.
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The legacy of Sherlock Holmes is a wide one, spanning genres. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles and The Tainted Cup give two vigorous nods to Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mysteries while embodying radically different tones: While the first is a cozy sci-fi whodunit with romance sprinkled in, the other combines the classic Holmesian ethos with the sort of existential threat epic fantasy can provide. Both novels, however, are tightly constructed celebrations of the mystery form.

The second in Malka Older’s Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti series, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles rejoins Investigator Mossa and her paramour, the botanist Pleiti, as they investigate a series of disappearances around Valdegeld, the university community on the rings of Jupiter in which Pleiti makes her home. As they search for 17 missing students, staff and faculty, Pleiti and Mossa travel from the habitable platforms that surround the planet to Mossa’s childhood home on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. All the while, the specter of their last case looms large in Pleiti’s mind, the conclusion of which shook her faith in both the university and herself. The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is a delightful cozy mystery: engaging, concise and as focused on its characters’ relationships as it is on the puzzle itself. If that wasn’t enough, Older delivers a world that is detailed enough to be believable but sidesteps away from distracting technical issues that could bog down the story. While lovers of hard sci-fi might feel frustrated by some of the implausibilities of Older’s depiction of life in Jupiter’s rings, the fantastical backdrop not only enables a clever mystery, but also serves as a subtle reminder of what might be in store for humanity if we can’t get our act together about climate change and income inequality.

Despite those faint warnings, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is ultimately a warm hug of a book. Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup, however, is a shot of distilled paranoia. The city of Daretana is under persistent threat of magical contamination and attack from the massive Leviathans that stalk the waters outside its sea walls. When an officer of the imperial engineering corps dies in a way that is both gruesome and horticulturally intriguing, famed investigator and notorious eccentric Ana Dolabra is pulled onto the case. Ever wary of engaging directly with the outside world, she sends her new assistant, the young Dinios Kol, in her stead. Magically engineered to remember everything he ever experiences, Din becomes Ana’s eyes and ears, and as they dig into the engineer’s death, they find a trail of intrigue that threatens the safety of the empire itself. The mystery within Bennett’s latest novel is slow and methodical, unspooling subtly throughout its 400-plus pages. True to the promise of its epic fantasy backdrop, the novel spins the consequences of the murder into something bigger than any could anticipate. Bennett expands the scope of this story in a way that feels both natural and occasionally surprising, dazzling readers with both his imaginative world building and perfect pacing.

As with many homages to Sherlock Holmes, both The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles and The Tainted Cup are told not from the perspective of their singular investigators, but from the perspective of their assistants. Just as with Conan Doyle’s John Watson, both assistants are in many ways far more three-dimensional than their partners. Older’s Pleiti spends as much time thinking about her research and her budding relationship with Mossa as she does on the case itself. And Bennett’s focus on Din and his occasional misgivings about Ana are often more compelling than any depiction of Ana’s antics.

But even as both novels focus on the everyman features of their investigative assistants, they also continue the tradition of the idiosyncratic, possibly neurodivergent, investigator. Both Ana and Mossa are singular entities, their intellects unmatched by their peers and just as quixotic as Sherlock Holmes himself. While neither wakes up the neighbors at all hours of the night playing the violin, each will worm their way into readers’ hearts in similarly unlikely ways, whether it’s Ana’s tendency to question visitors about the smell of their urine or Mossa’s encyclopedic knowledge of every food stall in the greater Jupiter area. Their lineage is clear, and their prowess is unquestionable.

The Great Detective’s heirs take to the stars and tangle with magical murders.
STARRED REVIEW

Top 10 books for February 2024

Beloved and buzzy authors such as Tia Williams, Francis Spufford and Katherine Arden took new and exciting directions in February!
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The author of the marvelous Winterlight trilogy makes her grand return to historical fantasy with this haunting tale set during World War I. Former nurse

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Book jacket image for A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

Tia Williams broke out in a big way in 2021 with her emotional second-chance romance, Seven Days in June, and her follow-up novel sounds like

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Book jacket image for The Last Stand by Antwan Eady

Antwan Eady, author of the lovely Nigel and the Moon, unites with Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey! The acclaimed sibling duo wrote and illustrated This Old

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Book jacket image for Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

It’s a special gift when a favorite poet writes a novel. Martyr! is Kaveh Akbar’s fiction debut, after poetry collections Calling a Wolf a Wolf

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In 1911, 12 Black men were delivered to the forest in rural Maryland and began building their new residence, the State Hospital for the Negro

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Award-winning author Amber McBride teams up with acclaimed poets Taylor Byas and Erica Martin to curate an electric, extraordinary lineup of contemporary and classic Black

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Book jacket image for City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter

Temim Fruchter’s remarkable debut novel is a book full of belly laughs, intergenerational wonder, queer beauty, Jewish history and storytelling that reshapes worlds.

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Book jacket image for Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Visit an alternate America where European colonization never took place in this intricately plotted police procedural from Francis Spufford.

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Book jacket image for The Gardener of Lashkar Gah by Larisa Brown

Larisa Brown’s The Gardener of Lashkar Gah tells the harrowing story of the Afghan aid workers that NATO left to their fates when the Taliban

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Book jacket image for The Cancer Factory by Jim Morris

Jim Morris’ urgent, heartbreaking The Cancer Factory traces how a known toxic chemical destroyed the health, happiness and lives of Goodyear factory workers.

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Recent Reviews

Beloved and buzzy authors such as Tia Williams, Francis Spufford and Katherine Arden took new and exciting directions in February!

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

What if we considered our lives as marked not by romantic entanglements but by the big friendships that nourish and thwart us? The first in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friend depicts the early lives of narrator Lenù and her best friend Lila, who come of age, dramatically, by the book’s end. Their impoverished Naples neighborhood is rife with violence: Early in the novel, Lila’s father throws her out a window, breaking her arm, and the girls routinely witness neighbors being beaten in the street by the local mafia. Both girls show promise in elementary school; while Lenù must study hard, Lila seems to excel without trying. Idolatrous as much as they are envious of each other, Lila and Lenù are cutthroat competitive, but they find that their friendship creates space for imagination, creativity and envisioning a future outside of their neighborhood. Until that space abruptly closes, and Lila sees that her future will be one of mere survival. Few narratives capture the euphoric, gutting fluctuations of friendship so specifically. Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, Lenù’s singular voice is propulsive and urgent. You will see yourself in both characters, and you will be drawn to the darkness. 

—Erica, Associate Editor


Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Growing up, I was utterly obsessed with the ocean, and I wanted to be a marine biologist. Unfortunately, I eventually learned that marine biology was more science and less dolphin whispering, but I still get excited when I come across a story that recognizes the magic of the marine world. The premise of Remarkably Bright Creatures immediately caught my eye: a giant Pacific octopus befriends an elderly woman and helps her solve the mystery of her son’s death. Tova, our protagonist, is gentle yet resilient, earning the adoration of Marcellus (the octopus) as she works the night shift cleaning his aquarium. Marcellus has an agenda of his own—yes, we get to hear the octopus’s thoughts—but he balances it with compassion for Tova and for the human race that humans, honestly, could learn from. The characters in this story are kind to each other, yet the goodness doesn’t feel contrived. Rather, Shelby Van Pelt has achieved a tale where there are no villains but the stakes are still high. Tova and Marcellus each have a heart as big as the deep blue sea, and their unique bond reminds us what we stand to gain from offering love, empathy and generosity to the remarkably bright creatures around us.

—Jessica, Editorial Intern


First Test by Tamora Pierce

In First Test, Tamora Pierce takes readers back to the enchanting and beloved realm of Tortall, which was first introduced in her acclaimed young adult fantasy series, the Song of the Lioness. Although it has been 10 years since it was decreed legal for women to become knights, Keladry of Mindelan (Kel) is the first girl brave enough to openly train for knighthood. Facing extreme scrutiny, an unfair probationary year and a training master hellbent on her failure, it seems like Kel might never achieve her dream. Enter Nealean of Queenscove (Neal), who is also considered an oddity as the oldest of the first-year pages. Neal takes Kel under his wing and becomes one of her biggest champions in her uphill battle to prove that she’s just as good as the male pages. As they bond over being set apart due to their unusual circumstances, their friendship allows them to overcome every obstacle thrown their way, from hazing taken way too far to being thrown into the middle of a very real battle. Together, best friends Kel and Neal prove that they are exactly where they are meant to be.

—Meagan, Production


On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is an unusual love letter—written by a son to his mother, even though she cannot read. As a child in Vietnam, her school was destroyed by American napalm. Her son, called Little Dog, grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, after she immigrated there with him, and became a writer. With this letter, he is putting into words the physical language of harm and care that forms their intricate bond. He describes the impact of her PTSD from living through the Vietnam War, combined with the isolation and vulnerability of being unable to speak English in Hartford: When he tells his mother he was attacked by bullies at school, her response is to hit him, then admonish him to use his English to protect himself, because she cannot. In a way, his journey into writing is an act of love towards her, the fulfillment of her wish, even as it takes him further and further from her. Vuong tells this story with arresting beauty and intensity, following Little Dog through world-shifting experiences with love, sex and loss into his adulthood as a published writer.

—Phoebe, Associate Editor

Valentine’s Day draws our attention to romance, but these four tales of friendship, connection and the parent-child bond affirm that platonic love is just as beautiful and impactful as romantic love—if not more.
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On December 6, 1917, a cargo ship exploded in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, after a minor collision with another ship started a fire on the deck. The blast was the largest ever human-made explosion at the time, flattening an entire district of the city. About a month earlier, one of the most horrific battles of World War I, the Battle of Passchendaele, had staggered to a close. These things really happened.

However, Laura Iven, a decorated Canadian army nurse who recently lost both of her parents, one in the Halifax explosion, was not a real person. Neither was her brother, Freddie, declared dead on the Western Front after Passchendaele; Hans Winter, the German soldier Freddie finds himself trapped with; or Penelope Shaw, a beautiful widow who lost her only son to the war. And while the First World War was certainly hellish, there were no actual devils wandering the wounded Flemish countryside.

In The Warm Hands of Ghosts, these carefully chosen fictions amplify the facts to render a gorgeously written, brutally honest portrait of the unremitting horror of trench warfare. Author Katherine Arden (The Winternight Trilogy) deliberately frames the story in apocalyptic terms, opening each chapter with a quote from the book of Revelations and portraying Laura’s resistance to her parents’ messianic belief in Christian prophecies of the End Times. Arden knows that her heroes cannot end the Great War. Their battles are smaller: Laura and Penelope travel to a Belgian field hospital seeking news of their lost loved ones, and Freddie and Winter seek to save each other. Arrayed against them are chateaux-dwelling generals playing Risk with real lives; the deliberate, protective myopia of countries coping with years of trauma; and the mysterious Faland. A Stygian violinist haunting the battlefields, Faland offers his victims a choice: Will they keep their memories, or hand them over to his safeguarding? Since humankind persists in creating an Armageddon, Faland argues that his deviltry is, in fact, merciful.

Not all the heroes succeed. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is not one of those war stories where a brave soldier snatches their comrades from the jaws of certain death before riding off into the sunset with a medal for their trouble. But each of Arden’s protagonists chooses their own fate. And as she argues in this exquisitely researched, heartbreaking book, that small revanchism is enough when the world ends.

Exquisitely researched, gorgeously written and utterly heartbreaking, Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a triumph of historical fantasy.
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When you imagine humanity’s first contact with an alien, what do you picture? For me, it’s the optimism of classic sci-fi: ethereal beings slowly stretching out long-fingered hands from a glowing ship, a sign of peace and acceptance. Seth Dickinson doesn’t share my vision. In Exordia, his energetic, suspenseful melange of alien invasion and military action, Earth sits squarely in the middle of an intergalactic power struggle. If the aliens don’t get us, our own nuclear fallout might.

Anna Sinjari, a Kurd living in New York City, sees an alien in Central Park, basking on a rock in broad daylight. And Ssrin—the alien—needs her help, having been shot by another faction of beings. For some reason, Anna feels drawn to Ssrin, which is something the alien calls surendure: two souls existing as one. Anna begins to think of Ssrin as a friend, but their new partnership is barely formed when disaster strikes. Will Anna and Ssrin be able to fend off other alien agents and help save the world?

How Seth Dickinson wrote one of the wildest first-contact novels you’ll ever read.

Exordia’s first act is its most successful. Anna and Ssrin’s initial interactions are personal, hilarious and thought-provoking. Once the broader storyline kicks in, however, it can be a struggle to keep up, so impenetrable are some of Dickinson’s ideas. If you are someone who loves a monumental level of specificity when it comes to military command structures or the complex metaphysical value systems of aliens, this is the book for you. Dickinson’s obsession with detail greatly enriches the atmosphere of Exordia, which rockets across many points of view and locations as various team members look for clues to unravel the mystery. But at times, the numerous technical terms and jargon practically wash over the reader.

However, Dickinson has crafted a number of very human stories in a book ostensibly about aliens. Trauma, morality in the face of disaster, forgiveness, guilt, lost love and the bond between parents and children all find their way to the page. Yes, these people are witnessing and trying to survive the craziest moment in the history of Earth, but their connections to one another ring true.

While some may wish it spent as much time with its characters as it does exploring its many fascinating ideas, Exordia is undoubtedly impressive. But there’s no question that it will be many sci-fi fans’ favorite book of the year, especially those willing to surrender to it, and be consumed.

Seth Dickinson’s Exordia is an energetic, suspenseful melange of alien invasion and military action.
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Anna Sinjari is a Kurdish woman dealing with both office drone existential dread and the lingering trauma of the violence she escaped when she immigrated to America. Ssrin is an alien on the run, who immediately bonds with Anna when they encounter each other in Central Park. As a cosmic crisis looms, the pair’s uncanny connection could be what saves Earth from destruction—or dooms it. 

When you were first forming the ideas that became Exordia, what concept crystallized first?
I was in study hall in high school in 2002 or 2003, and because it was 2002 or 2003 and I was about 14 years old, of course I was thinking about Lego Bionicle: an action figure line with a weirdly compelling (and somewhat uncomfortably appropriative) world based on Maori and Polynesian myth. And I was also thinking about space. And when you put those two together, you might think to yourself, what if Lego Bionicle was invaded by space aliens? So I wrote a story about that.

And it turned out in the course of this story—inspired by Garth Nix’s Sabriel—that, like many fantasy villains, the invading aliens were evil. Not just destructive, or behaviorally incompatible, or obeying an alien set of beliefs or incentives or values, but actually, in a real physical way, inhabited by capital-e Evil. After many years I got to thinking, huh, what would that mean for a galaxy of inhabited life?

You can’t do this story with human beings. I think the idea of a human culture that is intrinsically evil is itself unhuman, it’s an evil thought experiment. It’s too close to so many lies that have been used to justify suffering and genocide. And one of the duties, maybe the only duty of a writer, is “You will not spread lies.” But it is nonetheless an idea humans entertain anyway: What if my moral enemies were not just wrong, but actually, ontologically evil? I think that when we get into disagreements or fights or actual life-or-death conflicts with other humans, there is still a part of us which craves that certainty.

“What if, along the way, we had to work with people we’ve treated quite badly?”

Do you think Exordia depicts how Earth would respond to an alien invasion in real life?
To this specific subtype of alien invasion, where the aliens are hostile, where they are advanced but still roughly constrained by the need for a ship and a physical presence and so forth, where they need something from the planet and can’t just kill us all with impunity from on high?

Sure. I’ll say yes! Just cause I’m really interested to see what email I get as a result. Yes, it’s an accurate depiction of how we’d react to that scenario.

We have one advantage in this book that we probably wouldn’t get in real life, which is that the aliens need something specific from our planet, and we have a chance to get to it first. I suspect that if you narrowed this question to “Does this book accurately depict how Earth would respond to a bizarre radio signal from the Qandil Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan?” then my answer is “Yes, to the best of my ability, with a few concessions for dramatic effect.” But I also bet that if you got the national security advisor or the Joint Chiefs of Staff or their counterparts from Iran or China or Russia or Turkey or Pakistan, etc. etc., to do an interview with me, they could give me some pointers on what I got wrong.

Book jacket image for Exordia by Seth Dickinson

I loved the choice to make Anna Kurdish. What drew you to the Kurds when building her character?
In 2019, a guy named Jon Schwarz wrote something which seems pretty correct: “Nothing in the world is certain except death, taxes, and America betraying the Kurds.”

What’s really striking about the Kurds to an American is that they are a huge challenge to American exceptionalism. We see ourselves as the birthplace of modern democracy. We like to believe that we bring democracy to places we invade. But of course we fuck it up constantly, we create this hideous cauldrons that spawn monsters. Yet the Kurds, living in exactly that kind of cauldron, have produced some social movements which are dramatically more egalitarian and democratic, in some respects, than anything you could campaign on in America. Try to get a law passed in the U.S. which says you must have as many women as men present at every level of government. Try to declare that women are the primary actors of history and that women’s liberation is the central task of human liberation. You’d never make it past the local selectboard. But not only have Kurds in places like Rojava made these declarations into central principles of their communities, they have done so in the kind of war-torn, chaotic environment that Americans, I think, implicitly believe can only spawn groups like ISIS.

I am not here to beatify the Kurds. Like any group of people they have evils and mistakes and dark history. It is always dangerous to just pick an ethnic or cultural group and treat them like your favorite Pokémon. But I am here to put the Kurds and their relationship with the United States at the center of a science fiction story. Very probably, even with the help of some Kurdish readers, I have fucked it up in some significant ways. But there are so many science fiction stories which treat America’s generous military and aerospace resources as a guarantee that we would be the protagonist of first contact. What if, along the way, we had to work with people we’ve treated quite badly? What if they had their own efforts at first contact, their own communication with the aliens, established before we even arrived?

What if, as has so often been the case, we ended up doing as much to harm as to help?

Exordia’s various female characters contemplate their place in the macho-man pressure cooker of the military. What choices do you have to make as a writer to examine such a topic while also letting the characters breathe and the story flow?
When it comes to the culture of the United States military in 2013, when Exordia is set, I’m pretty much just a reporter. It’s not hard to talk to vets or current service members on the internet and get their feedback. You never take it uncritically, but you can get a much stronger idea of how these characters would think and act than you would by just watching “Generation Kill” for the ninth time. And of course everyone has strong opinions about the place of women in the military. 

A big theme in talking to vets was the idea that in the military, a lot of people don’t really care who you are as long as you do your job and understand the culture—but you’ve got to withstand a degree of hazing and offensive irreverence to prove that you’re tough. Some women I spoke to took a lot of pride in giving as good as they got, in the idea that the military is an endless generator of both stupid bullshit and transgressive humor. Not every woman in the military has the same beliefs as me, an avowed feminist but definitely a civilian. I tried to respect that.

Ultimately, I just tried to give each character their own opinions and values. A joke one character would make offhand strikes another as grotesque and offensive. Black people in the military say things to each other that another Black character would never say in the Obama White House. There were some lines I didn’t want to cross, but other places where expert readers pushed me to just make the characters sound like real people they’d known (or been). My rule was that I wouldn’t write anything I wouldn’t be comfortable reading out loud to a good faith audience.

“If your characters care deeply about what’s happening, so will the readers.”

Daniel M. Lavery’s review of Exordia calls it “a comprehensive taxonomy of violence at every level.” Do you agree with him? Was that an intentional focus on your part?
Sure. I think the problem of violence is an intentional focus in all my work. There’s this override code for any disagreement in the universe, which is, you just go kill the other guy. You’re a little slimeball in the primordial ocean and you can’t get enough carbon? Well, you could evolve a novel strategy of carbon fixing, and chill out reproducing without hurting anybody else. Or you could just eat your neighbor and take its carbon. Which one’s more likely to evolve?

Everything in the universe faces this problem. They say never argue with an idiot, because they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. But how do you make anything good and durable in the universe when you’re constantly being dragged down to the level of “Do what we want or we’ll kill you,” or, alternately, “Nice industrialization, but you fucked up your environment and now you can’t get any calories lol.” The need to defend your own existence from violence, whether intentional or natural, is the idiot. And it keeps on dragging you down.

Exordia in particular is about what we do when violence is used to coerce us. If someone holds a gun to your head and says “Shoot one of your relatives, or we will shoot them all,” is it morally better to do what they’re forcing you to do, because you cannot be held responsible for someone else coercing you into evil—the evil is ultimately theirs? Or better to refuse, because you will not enable evil by complying with it? Or better to make a grab for the gun, because you’re so hopping mad you’d rather die fighting? Or better to never get into this situation in the first place, to treat your lack of answering violence as the real moral wrong? 

When you think back on writing Exordia, what sequence or moment was the most memorable to put down on paper?
The finale, no question. Just the whole last act. The bit where things move fast, you’ll know it when you read it.

When it came to the humorous bits of your novel, did those moments arise naturally or did you find yourself intentionally deploying it in certain parts?
I never once thought “I should go back and script doctor this to add some humor.” Sometimes the situation just lenses through the characters in such a way that the resulting ray of focus points to something funny. It’s absolute death to a story, in my opinion, when the characters get too arch and self-reflexive about it. “So THAT just happened” is the quip that gets bagged on the most, but the real problem, I think, is nonspecificity. Self-reflexive humor is humor about recognizing a trend across stories, and if you’re recognizing a trend across stories, maybe you should instead be making your story different! If there’s gonna be a funny bit, it should be a joke that’s specific to those characters in that situation. 

I am glad you thought there were funny bits, though. That’s a good sign.


Read our review of ‘Exordia’ by Seth Dickinson.

When writing, how did you know when a scene or idea was working? How did you know when something wasn’t working, either tonally or logically?
If something is just going on and on, building up complications—whether it’s dialogue or an explanation of some alien phenomenon—it needs to be tossed. Now you might say, “this whole book goes on and on, building complications!” That is true. To tell you the truth, in a few months I will work up the courage to reread this thing, and then I will have to decide if it’s worked or if I should’ve tried again.

The real trick with this is that if a scene is not working it may be because of a mistake you made 10,000 words earlier. You got to this scene but didn’t find the right ingredients waiting, because 10,000 words ago, you didn’t get those ingredients ready.

And the realest trick of all is just that you’ve got to constantly be finding more important reasons for your characters to care about what happens. People ultimately care about people. If your characters care deeply about what’s happening, so will the readers. If it’s all confusing and opaque and alienating to your characters, then odds are it will be to the reader too. Now you might say, “This whole book is about a confusing, opaque, alienating artifact!” Yes. But it is hopefully an artifact that heightens what the characters care about, rather than concealing it.

What other works inspired you the most when writing this book?
Startide Rising by David Brin, just for the giddy maximalism of its alien galaxy—I read it very young. The Andromeda Strain and (more importantly) Sphere by Michael Crichton, for their absolutely terrifying scenarios of alien contact. A whole bunch of technothrillers, particularly by David Mace, an obscure British writer I adore. Eon by the late Greg Bear, the tributes there are pretty obvious.

Diane Duane’s Young Wizard books were a huge influence in their willingness to reckon directly with death and evil on a cosmic scale. C.J. Cherryh is a touchstone whenever I try to write anything tense or military-adjacent; I do not think I have grasped much of her style but it’s an ongoing project. Vonda N. McIntyre’s brutally under-read Starfarers books have one of my favorite aliens ever, Nemo the squidmoth; her “Star Trek” novels were also a huge early influence on me (same for Margaret Wander Bonanno’s and for Diane Duane’s “Star Trek” books). Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest steered me into the multiple protagonist structure.

Do you think that serendure, the connection between two souls, is a real sensation?
No, I don’t. Not in the same way as compassion or camaraderie or love or hate. Those passions are the result of shared experiences with other people, and the attitudes that form in our minds. Even when we’re compatible with someone as a friend or a partner, we have to come to realize that inside ourselves. 

Serendure isn’t just “you really vibe with someone.” It’s “Like it or not, you are stuck to each other.” Stuck so hard that if a bullet comes at you, then serendure will make sure it kills both of you, or neither. That doesn’t exist in reality, unfortunately. I can’t love someone enough to protect them from bullets, or hate them enough to share wounds. But it’s a pretty common idea in storytelling, whether it’s soulmates in romance or vendetta in tragedy. So serendure is like the cosmic generalization of that human story, like realizing that the sun in the sky is the same as all the stars.

In his action-packed sci-fi debut, the author wades into the murky morality of evil, imperialism and violence.
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Nestled in the mountains of Kentucky, not far from the Red River Gorge, is a valley whose ghostly victims hunger for flesh and pain. When graduate student Clay finds the valley while doing research for his doctorate, the possibilities seem endless—it could very well be the next new climbing hot spot. He enlists fellow student Sylvia and climbers Dylan and Luke to join him as he maps the area. It’s miles away from the road, let alone civilization, and as soon as they get there, things go wrong. Starting with the disappearance of Luke’s dog and culminating in an accident that leaves them cut off from the rest of the world, the valley seems determined not just to end their lives but to make them suffer in the process.

There is no final girl in This Wretched Valley, Jenny Kiefer’s startlingly bloody survival horror debut. Readers know from the very beginning how our heroes’ stories end, that their lives and deaths will become forensic mysteries for coroners and the conspiracy-obsessed. Despite this, Kiefer has crafted characters whose will to live is so strong that it’s possible to believe they just might make it. Modeled loosely on the infamous 1959 Dyatlov Pass incident, in which nine young Soviet alpinists died under mysterious circumstances, This Wretched Valley pays careful homage to its outdoorsy roots, weaving in enough jargon to let you know that Kiefer has done her research. Even Luke’s dog’s name, Slade, is a reference to the real Kentucky town in the Red River Gorge that often serves as home base for climbers. 

Kiefer’s insider knowledge sets the table, but her pacing is the main course. Despite the novel’s relatively short length, it feels like a slow burn at first, as the forest holds back its malice. But once the floodgates break, Kiefer doesn’t slow down. From gangrenous injuries to more gruesome body horror, the climbers (and readers) are put through a gauntlet of nonstop action that grinds to a sudden, deadly stop when the valley finally gets its due. A masterclass in both suspense and gore, This Wretched Valley is a treat for climbers and horror lovers alike.

A master class in both suspense and gore, This Wretched Valley is a treat for climbers and horror lovers alike.

Heather Fawcett’s second installment in the Emily Wilde series is a cozy read sure to entrance fans of fantasy and romance alike. A charmingly cantankerous and brilliant Cambridge professor, the titular Ms. Wilde might be the world’s foremost expert in faerie lore. She traces the history and habits of the Hidden Folk, and she’s recently written the first encyclopedia about them. In Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, while working on the titular map, Emily is faced with a number of challenging and life-altering adventures—which are complicated by the presence of her former academic rival and now lover, Wendell Bambleby. 

The first book in the series, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faerie, revealed that Bambleby is an exiled faerie king, which means Emily’s commitment to him is a high-stakes endeavor. His dangerous and powerful mother is trying to find him, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to discover a portal back to his realm. Most stress-inducing of all, if Emily commits to Bambleby’s proposal of eternity together, she’ll be giving up her quiet and predictable existence as a humble professor. The two lovers are the very definition of opposites attract, and their every interaction, whether awkward or fiery, delights and excites.

Fawcett’s melodic writing style immediately transports readers to early 20th-century Cambridge, beckoning them to stride down cobblestone streets, stroll along the scenic River Cam and sit saturated in old-book smell in gothic university libraries. This immersion into English academia is heightened by Emily’s narration, as she’s unable to compose any sort of writing without a smart peppering of footnotes and references. Each clever addition is a tiny showcase for the character’s dry humor, quick wit and wealth of wisdom. 

The intimately close perspective allows Fawcett to highlight how Emily blooms and grows as she and Bambleby pursue their goals. Love can change a person—or a faerie—in the most unexpected of ways, and it’s impossible to walk alongside Emily on her journey of scholarship, mapmaking and true love without rooting for her.

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands immerses readers in a cozy and magical 20th-century Cambridge while reuniting them with the wry and clever Professor Wilde.

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