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Category Archives: Books

Gravity Lost: A Review

L.M. Sagas won me over earlier this year with the spectacular sci-fi/found family novel Cascade Failure. Today, she’s back with a sequel!

It’s been a few months since the events of Cascade Failure and the Guild crew of the Ambit have been spending their days watching over Drestyn, the agitator who’s quest for revenge led to the events of the first book. While they anonymously leaked a large number of Trust records in the aftermath, their captive still holds many more. So as Jal is recovering from his injuries, Saint, Nash, and Captain Eoan help out with the security shifts that monitor the Guild’s prison cell. Should be an easy detail, but nothing is ever as easy as it should be.

The day that Drestyn is transferred from the Guild station, Saint and Nash are led on a chase through the underbelly by none other than Jal. Turns out that some of Drestyn’s buddies have a plan to break him out, and that starts with kidnapping Jal’s sister. As soon as Jal breaks the news to the rest of the Ambit crew, they set off to find the kidnappers, with Jal’s niece in tow. Our lovable found family of misfits may even have to save Drestyn himself along the way, lest the secrets he holds do more harm.

Like its predecessor, Gravity Lost is a great ride. It’s fun, creative sci-fi with nice modern pop culture nods here and there that help it feel grounded in our reality. It’s a solid and successful follow-up, and helps to better build out the universe that Sagas introduced us to earlier this year. Go check it out for yourself. Gravity Lost was released on Tuesday, 7/23. Thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

The West Passage: A Review

There is a great evil approaching. The last Guardian of the West Passage is dead, and rather than officially naming her apprentice as her successor, she used her last words to give him a single command. “Tell Black it’s coming.”

Kew should have been named as the next Hawthorn of Grey, the new Guardian, the most recent of a long line of people to hold the name and the title designating him for duties not fully understood in living memory. Now he must make the journey from the Grey Tower to the Black Tower in order to pass along his teacher’s message. If he can accomplish this, then he might prove himself worthy of recognition as a Hawthorn, taking the place he has been training for all his life.

Pell is an apprentice to the Women in Grey, an ancient order who exist to provide funerary care to the other people of the city. When Hawthorn is brought to the women for her funeral, Pell briefly crosses paths with Kew and sneaks away with a book that Hawthorn had in her possession.

The first indicator that something is wrong occurs during Hawthorn’s services, when her funerary mask is accidentally broken. Between that and the theft of the book, Pell begins to fear that her actions are bringing time itself out of alignment, with snow beginning to fall in what should be the middle of summer. Rats are pouring out of statues, and none of the women can be bothered to guess if something is truly amiss.

Jared Pechaček has created a somehow vibrant ruined world, reminiscent of Gene Wolfe’s Book of New Sun, blending things both magical and technological and decades or centuries past their prime. Frankly, I love worldbuilding that deliberately hides or doesn’t worry about how everything works, leaving plenty of mysteries in place. A massive palace ruled over by the Ladies (mysterious and powerful giant beings) serves as the setting for the entire novel, and it’s filled with ominous creatures as well as new allies for Kew and Pell as they go their separate ways to set things right.

The West Passage came out on Tuesday, 7/16, and it’s an absolute joy of a novel. It’s weird and truly fantastic, and I can’t wait to see what Pechaček does next. My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

I Was a Teenage Slasher: A Review

Hey, look! There’s a new Stephen Graham Jones book out!

I mean, naturally, I picked it up for review, so here we are.

I Was a Teenage Slasher is the story of Tolly Driver, a 17-year-old boy in the small town of Lamesa, Texas. While not a stunningly popular kid in his school, Tolly is largely unremarkable before everything goes wrong at his classmate Deek’s party. Before that night, he was known mostly for his deathly peanut allergy and for the tractor collision that killed his father. It’s the summer of 1989, and all hell is about to break loose.

See, another student who was trying to fit in with Deek’s gang died during a hazing ritual. In true slasher fashion, he rises from the dead and comes back for a roaring rampage of revenge, meting out justice to all of the other high schoolers who didn’t prevent his death in the first place. In the aftermath of that encounter, Tolly ends up getting some of the killer’s blood into an open cut on his own forehead. Now things are getting weird. Vehicles fail to start when he’s around. The kitchen knife makes an audibly sharp SHTING sound when pulled from the wood block, but only when he does it. Is Tolly Driver the new killer?

I Was a Teenage Slasher isn’t the first time Stephen Graham Jones has tackled horror from the killer’s perspective. This is his wheelhouse, after all. He plays with classic slasher movie tropes much as he did in his Angel of Indian Lake Trilogy. This time, though, we’re dealing with a delightfully reluctant killer who gradually becomes aware of what’s happening to him, but unable to stop himself. After all, he’s not the final girl. No matter what, he’s definitely going to be notable now.

My utmost thanks to Saga Press and NetGalley for an eARC of this one in exchange for a fair review. I Was a Teenage Slasher is out in the world as of yesterday, 7/16/24. Run out and get it. Just… watch your back.

Bury Your Gays: A Review

In which Chuck Tingle goes to Hollywood.

Misha Byrne is a screenwriter, and he’s just locked in his first Oscar nomination. He’s also gay, and executive meddling is on the cusp of forcing him to kill off the two queer leads of his latest TV series. Nearly four seasons of wildly successful X-Files-esque television, and he’s finding his work being subject to one of the oldest tropes in fiction: bury your gays. For Misha, this is particularly egregious, as his favorite childhood show fell victim to the same treatment years before. However, if he doesn’t go along with the studio’s plans, he’ll be in breach of contract and lose his job, and potentially any chance of working in Hollywood again.

Then, things start to get weird at the studio lot. Raymond Nelson, one of the oldest working animators at the studio, is crushed by a piano in an ironic echo of a cartoon death. Not long after, Misha spots a character from one of his horror films while walking out of a bar. This omen warns him that he has only five day to live, a timeline that coincides with the night of the Academy Awards ceremony. Soon, more of his horror characters begin intruding into his life, and he’s forced to face the very real traumas that shaped his career (and are threatening his boyfriend). Will Misha succumb to studio pressure by Oscar night, or will he fall to a twisted version of one of his own creations?

Chuck Tingle is absolutely killing it in the horror genre, y’all. Bury Your Gays is littered with little nods to actual Hollywood staples, all while carefully avoiding name-dropping any specific real world studio. Tingle builds phenomenal tension and intersperses some clever screenwriting aspects between segments of the story. This is a brilliant follow-up to last year’s Camp Damascus, and further solidifies Chuck as a horror writer of note. My utmost thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Bury Your Gays is out as of yesterday, 7/9/24. Go get it.

Unexploded Remnants: A Review

Alice is the last surviving human in the universe, and she’s on the run. When she was exploring the Alta Sidoie market, she found something in a scrap collector’s booth that was far more than met the eye. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t the only one who recognized it. Now she’s being chased throughout an intergalactic portal network by a warmongering alien race that wants to use the weapon-controlling AI she found to attack anyone who has ever wronged them.

Alice fell into the portal network by chance, an accidental bit of access from a world that wasn’t supposed to be able to connect. She was observed by the Archive, one of the unifying forces for good in the universe, and sent back to report on humanity as a whole. Eventually Earth’s conflicts grew to the point where the Archive opted to quarantine the world instead of attempting to keep helping, leaving humans to their own slow self-destruction. Alice, however, was allowed to keep performing work for them. Now alongside her virtual assistant, Bugs, she’s employed as a blend of archaeologist and grave robber for the Archive, trading in favors and information as well as artifacts.

Alice has her hands on the key to one of the most powerful remaining weapons in the galaxy, and the enemy is closing in. The AI is a threat to everyone, but Alice is determined to save Gunn, the being trapped in the heart of the artifact. She doesn’t know who she can fully trust, but she’s going to do whatever it takes to free him.

Elaine Gallagher has packed a tremendous amount of detail into a very small package with Unexploded Remnants. This novella is fast-paced and a hell of a lot of fun. World hopping action and clever characters reminiscent of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and Evelyn O’Connor make for a quick, entertaining read that still manages to provide commentary on weapons of war and how we treat soldiers.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Unexploded Remnants is out today, 6/25/24. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Cuckoo: A Review

Gretchen Felker-Martin is back! It’s been two years since Manhunt dropped, and the world is still reeling from her spectacularly violent, grimy apocalypse novel. Now she’s written an arguably darker tale of queer fear in Cuckoo.

Like its predecessor, Cuckoo is undeniably a queer horror story. The novel introduces us to a group of teens, each of whom has been violently removed from their home and forcefully transported across the country. Their only crime? Being a queer teen in the 90s, for which their parents shipped them off to be changed. When they arrive at Camp Resolution, a desert-based conversion camp, they have nothing but each other, and no idea what they’re about to face. They don’t even know what state they’re in. Far from home and cut off from the outside world, they’ll have to band together to make it out unchanged.

Camp Resolution is, in a word, weird. The educational curriculum is pseudoscience, the physical activities consist of backbreaking labor or myriad household chores (depending on assigned sex), and the counselors are not just prone to violence but actively encourage it. The campers who have been there longer are brutal to the newcomers, and even Pastor Eddie, the leader of the camp, won’t hesitate to beat any of the teens who don’t bow to his whims.

Something darker still lurks in the shadows of Camp Resolution, though. The campers who have graduated from the program are… different. Not themselves anymore (and while some would argue that yes, that’s the point of a conversion camp, Resolution’s strategy relies a lot less on prayer and the Bible). Then, the dreams begin. The same dream. Each camper is digging a hole, and they find their own body buried deep in the earth. Something is reaching out to them, speaking to them… preparing them. Our ragged misfits know that they have to escape the camp, before they too are irrevocably changed.

Gretchen Felker-Martin absolutely nailed the building dread in Cuckoo. This book is just as filthy as Manhunt, and I mean that in the best way of describing her aesthetics and worldbuilding. I was thrilled to find out that her sophomore effort was an incredibly solid piece of horror. Cuckoo is out in the world today. Go get it. Read it. Get scared. Repeat.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Service Model: A Review

I am a relative newcomer to the work of Adrian Tchaikovsky. I first picked up Walking to Aldebaran a few months ago after a recommendation on Bluesky and I loved it, so I leapt at the opportunity to get an early copy of his latest novel, Service Model.

Service Model introduces readers to Charles, a robot valet working in a manor up until the untimely death of his master. Charles is an incredibly skilled robot, programmed to handle all aspects of coordinating with House, the majordomo system of the manor. This facilitates any and all of the Master’s needs. Clothing selection? Check. Travel plans? Check. Shave? Check. One day, however, Charles goes a bit far. Master is unable to give new orders to Charles or House or any of the other servants, and Charles finds that an odd bit of staining is appearing on everything he’s touched in the time since he last shaved Master.

Soon, an investigation is underway, and Charles is ejected from the Manor into the wider world. Unfortunately for him, the outer world is a largely uninhabited wasteland. Fortunately, he has one more thing in his task queue. He sets off to have his malfunctions examined by a diagnostician. So begins his trek across the post-apocalyptic landscape in search of answers and a new Master to serve.

Service Model almost immediately made me think of Douglas Adams, and I can only attempt to describe the protagonist as a mashup of Marvin the Paranoid Android with Wadsworth, the butler from Clue. Our deteriorating valet needs to find out why he acted the way he did as well as what happened to all of the humans. Along the way, he gets into increasingly philosophical discussions about humanity or the lack thereof, with a growing self-awareness. The journey is more important than the destination, after all, and an unexpected companion quickly adds complications to both Charles’ sense of self and his quest.

I absolutely loved reading this book. It’s a phenomenal wandering hero narrative, with elements of allegory reminiscent of The Pilgrim’s Progress. I’m very grateful to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Service Model is out today.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying: A Review

Django Wexler’s latest novel has a mouthful of a title, but it’s an absolute blast.

Davi is tired. She’s been living in a time loop for hundreds of years since she first found herself in The Kingdom, restarting in the same place, the same state of existence, every time she dies. Sometimes, that’s only a few hours (or minutes) into a loop. Sometimes it’s been years. Every time she wakes up in a new loop, she’s greeted by the same old wizard who tells her that it’s her destiny to save The Kingdom. She has tried hundreds of times, and so far, has always ended up the same way: failing to defeat the newly arisen Dark Lord and their horde of villains. What’s the phrase? If you can’t beat them, join them.

This time around, Davi decides, things are going to be different. She’s done fighting the Dark Lord, and is going to use her ability (curse?) of respawning to take the title for herself. It’s going to be hard, though. Subverting your destiny isn’t easy, even when you can take a few hundred tries to get it right. Step one. Kill the old wizard for starters. Step two. Find the nearest band of orcs and gain their trust. Step three. Use that orc band and her own knowledge of the local Guild patrols and fighting tactics to take out a crew and get their gear. Step four. Turn that little orc gang to start building up a proper army, and fast.

Oh, did she mention that she’s only got two months or so to get to the Convocation where the new Dark Lord will be selected? Davi needs to get moving if she’s going to get her tenure as Dark Lord on track, but she has no guarantees that things will end any differently than every time she tried to be a hero. After all, the Convocation is held beyond the edge of the map, as far as the Guild is concerned. She has no experience breaking the standard loop of time, and each day she moves beyond her previous routine is one day further that she’ll have to go if she screws up. She’s headed into unknown territory now, and the fate of her adopted world is at stake.

Wexler’s newest novel is perfect for fans of roguelike games like Hades. It’s an absolutely hilarious and unrepentantly horny book, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Wexler’s writing traces a line between homage and irreverent humor, particularly where Davi’s footnotes are concerned (after a few hundred lives, she’s lost track of some of the details of her own background, and her memories from Earth are slightly scrambled). Even better? This is book one of a series. How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is available next Tuesday, May 21st.

My utmost thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Necrobane: A Review

Daniel M. Ford blew me away last year when I got to read The Warden. At the time, I had said that I was hoping that I would get to spend more time in Aelis’s world soon, and guess what? Necrobane is here.

This book picks up immediately where The Warden left off, so heads up. Here there be spoilers.

Aelis is a necromancer and a noble scion. She’s a child raised in wealth in a large city, trained in magic and combat. In short, she is the antithesis of most of the people that she is, as a Warden, charged to protect. In her efforts to defend the village of Lone Pine, she accidentally activated an unknown number of animated dead of Mahlgren, necromancy-fueled remnants of the last war. While she was able to defeat the handful of skeletons that arose within the chamber she was exploring, she learned that there are far more similar crypts scattered throughout the realm. Now that they’re active, they’re likely to be heading in the direction of her new home. Just as the villagers were beginning to trust the outsider, now she’s got to warn them about an impending invasion of restless dead that are technically only emerging because of her actions.

Rather than leave the people of Lone Pine to fend for themselves, Aelis quickly hatches a plan to seek out a control mechanism that could potentially deactivate the entire enemy force. She narrows down the likely location to a stronghold of a fallen empire and gathers her allies. She may be a skilled and talented Necrobane, able to defeat animated dead with her own magic, but this struggle isn’t a solo venture. Up first, of course, is Maurenia. The half-elf is a skilled soldier and engineer, and her status as Aelis’s lover doesn’t hurt her chances to be invited along. Next is Timmuk, a dwarf merchant and a coworker of Maurenia’s on their last excursion across the frontier of Ystain. Last but not least is Tun, a half-orc woodsman who assisted Aelis on her previous adventure. Tun’s skill as a tracker is invaluable in their journey through the wilderness. Together, they hope to cut off any animated dead before they’re able to even approach Lone Pine. Ideally, they’ll put them down before any tensions between the humans and orcs along the frontier can be strained and reignite a war. Plus, maybe they’ll find some treasure along the way! As long, that is, as the control mechanism actually exists…

Ford’s writing and world-building remain top-notch throughout Necrobane, and it makes a spectacular continuation to the story established in The Warden. The stakes are higher now, and Aelis’s skills are going to be pushed to their limit if the party has any chance of succeeding. I am still wildly in love with this series, and will continue to recommend it for any fantasy fan who enjoys D&D and books like Gideon the Ninth and Legends & Lattes. I know at this point that we’re expecting a 3rd book in Aelis’s adventures in the near future, and I am ready for it.

My utmost thanks (once again) to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for access to an eARC of this book in exchange for a fair review. Today is publication day, so go grab yourself a copy.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In: A Review

Shesheshen woke up early, and is understandably upset. Her hibernation in her lair was interrupted by a trio of would-be monster hunters, and she was only able to kill and eat one of them before the others escaped. Using some of the dead hunter’s remains (and other bits of the ruins where she lives), the shape-shifter is able to build herself a bit of human-like body framework so that she can sneak down into the nearby town to see what’s changed since she was last awake. Borrowed bits of flesh and bone give her body more of the appropriate shape, allowing her to fake her way through some interactions. When her disguise fails in the middle of a festival celebrating her imminent death, she’s chased back out of town. The crowd, including the two survivors of the raid on her lair, pursue her until she falls off of a cliff.

Upon her next awakening, she’s startled by the presence of a human woman who has treated her wounds, wrapped her in blankets, and stoked a fire. The woman, an outsider not from the village, introduces herself as Homily. Before the monster can really focus on what’s happened, she’s being fed soup and entreated to rest by a woman who is clearly oblivious to Shesheshen’s monstrous nature, taking any oddities about her as symptoms of having just fallen over a cliff. Homily loads her into a cart and strikes off back to town. Soon, she’s in Homily’s room at a local inn until she can finish convalescing. A couple of things strike Shesheshen, then. First, the people of the village seem terrified of Homily. Second, she is beginning to feel… feelings. An odd sort of mutual attraction seems to be blooming between Homily and the woman she knows as Siobhan. Homily feels a genuine attraction to the monster she’s rescued, but she has no idea what Siobhan actually is.

As the two are getting to know each other and growing closer, though, the reason for Homily’s presence in Underlook comes to light. She’s the daughter of the Baroness Wulfyre, one of the family that rules the isthmus where Shesheshen lives. She’s also a master monster hunter in her own right, and had come to the village to assist her brother in hunting down the Wyrm of Underlook. Unfortunately for her, her brother Catharsis was the monster hunter that Shesheshen devoured before she and Homily met, and all of her remaining relatives believe that Shesheshen has cursed their line. Now Shesheshen is torn. Does she continue her charade or reveal her monstrous nature to Homily and hope that she can be forgiven for who she is? She’s finally met someone who might be a suitable host for her eggs, but if Homily figures out her identity, siding with her admittedly toxic family means Shesheshen’s death.

John Wiswell has released a brilliant debut novel with Someone You Can Build a Nest In. It’s a delightfully bizarre fantasy romance told from the perspective of a monster, and I’m utterly entranced by it. His descriptions of Shesheshen’s odd morphology and attempts to human are charming and disturbing simultaneously, and the Wulfyre clan (barring Homily) are suitably horrible. All in all, it’s an unconventional love story that will leave you questioning what relationships can be, and whether we can grow to become more than what our parents expect us to become.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and DAW for an eARC of this title in exchange for a fair review. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is out in stores today, 4/2/24. Check it out.