Rosenbaum’s Game
Choice of Games published Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Ghost and the Golem, a “450,000-word Jewish historical fantasy interactive fiction,” in August 2024. Rosenbaum calls it “kind of a magnum opus,” and explains, “Unlike a game which is graphics and fight mechanics with some story crammed in here and there, these games are purely a bunch of fictional narrative words: you do make choices, but the output, after having made those choices, ...Read More
Sean Dowie Reviews Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston
Archangels of Funk, Andrea Hairston (Tordotcom 978-1-25080-728-1, $29.99, 384pp, hc) July 2024.
Andrea Hairston’s Archangels of Funk forced me to rewire my brain chemistry. The book contains a stew of dense but rewarding elements as people, dogs, spirits, and bots dot a literary canvas unlike anything I’ve read. It’s a cozy dystopia that demands attention, demands that you think on its wavelength. The book largely contains good but flawed ...Read More
Liz Bourke Reviews The Price of Redemption by Shawn Carpenter
The Price of Redemption, Shawn Carpenter (Saga 978-1-6680-3373-9, $18.99, 358pp, tp) July 2024.
The Price of Redemption is Shawn Carpenter’s debut novel. Inspired by the exploits of the British Royal Navy during during the French revolutionary wars, it sets its story in a different world to ours and adds magic to the mixture. As a fan of both fantasy and of the naval adventure story (though frequently through gritted ...Read More
Paul Di Filippo Reviews Key Lime Sky by Al Hess
Key Lime Sky, Al Hess (Angry Robot 978-1915998125, trade paperback, 304pp, $18.99) August 2024
It has been said that Irish fantasist Flann O’Brien had a penchant for involving the humble bicycle in his surreal fiction, until the vehicle became a kind of numinous totem or idiosyncratic symbol. A few other writers of fantasy have deployed such a technique—recurring enigmatic touchstone with multiple meanings—and now Al Hess joins their ranks, ...Read More
Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Small Wonders, Flash Fiction Online, and Cast of Wonders
Small Wonders 5/24 Flash Fiction Online 5/24 Cast of Wonders 5/29/24
I’ll start off with May’s Small Wonders, a publication dedicated to flash fiction and poetry, which includes Angel Leal’s powerful poem ‘‘Music of the Seraphim’’. A child meets an angel and is filled with a desire for something new – new experiences, a new body, a new place to be – and find their prayers and ...Read More
Alex Brown Reviews The Black Girl Survives in This One edited by Desiree S. Evans & Saraciea J. Fennell
The Black Girl Survives in This One, Desiree S. Evans & Saraciea J. Fennell, eds. (Flatiron 978-1-25032-199-2, $19.99, 368pp, hc) April 2024.
Horror is in a golden age in young adult fiction. Just a few years ago, you could count the number of YA horror novels released each year on one hand. Last year I tracked more than 30 YA books marketed as horror. This year just in January ...Read More
Check out the New Books Video for 7/23/24!
If you have a few minutes, we’ve got the top genre books hitting shelves, IRL and digital, this week! Help us keep doing this weekly round up by liking and subscribing!
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2024 Washington State Book Award Finalists
Finalists for the 2024 Washington State Book Awards, presented by the Washington Center for the Book, have been announced, including titles and authors of genre interest.
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree (Tor) and Jewel Box: Stories by E. Lily Yu (Erewhon) are among the six titles shortlisted in the Fiction category. The Golden Needle by T.J. Carroll (Cumberstone) and Painted Devils by Margaret Owen (Henry Holt) are among three ...Read More
Changes At Gamut
House of Gamut has rebranded and relaunched Gamut Publishing as Ruadán Books, including “All anthologies and novel contracts” previously signed with Gamut. Scheduled titles include anthology 120 Murders edited by Nick Mamatas. Ruadán is open to submissions of short stories, novellas, and novels, as well as non-fiction for their column “From the Writers Desk”.
Gamut also announced the closure of Gamut Academy and Gamut Magazine, with their final scheduled issue
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SHORT TAKES: Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Tomorrowing by Terry Bisson and The Book Blinders by John Clute
Tomorrowing, Terry Bisson (Duke University Press 978-1-4780-3068-3, $15.95, 168pp, tp) May 2024.
Terry Bisson, who died in January, began writing his ‘‘This Month in History’’ column of hilarious microfictions for Locus on April Fool’s Day 2004, and for the next two decades it became as much a fixture of this magazine as The New Yorker’s cartoons or Alfred Hitchcock’s cameos. (He’d actually begun a similar series for Eileen Gunn’s ...Read More
Brown Wins Resnick Award
“When I was Your Age” by Sam Brown is the winner of the Mike Resnick Memorial Award, presented at Dragon Con, held August 29 – September 2, 2024 in Atlanta GA. “What the Cat Dragged In” by Bailey Maybray was first runner-up.
Other finalists were:
- “The Year of Pepsi Nova”, Pete Lead
- “Life in the Old Bones”, Scott M. Sands
- “The Green Ones”, Magda Smith
The annual award is sponsored
Jones Wins Eugie Award
“The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23) is the winner of the 2024 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction for “stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain.”
Other finalists were:
- “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200”, R.S.A. Garcia (Uncanny 7/23)
- “The Year Without Sunshine”, Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 10/23)
- “Even if Such Ways Are Bad“, Rich Larson (Reactor 2/8/23)
- Falling Bodies, Rebecca Roanhorse