Thought I’d collect a few of the capsule reviews from twitter and Goodreads that I wrote this year. BUY THESE BOOKS!
Flyaway, Kathleen Jennings
Publisher: Tor Books
Order it!
There are many stories tangled in the bramble lined lives of the people and creatures of Flyaway. But as much as the dirt and the scrub and the caves and the sky seek to keep their secrets one thing shines through in this book. Kathleen Jennings has created a work of startling wonder. The prose both lulls you down to sleep with its languorous beauty then swiftly slits your throat with visceral horror. And even as you lay there bleeding out all you can think to do is to turn the next page because the dangers hiding in it are the kind we creep out of safe beds and climb through windows to pursue. The dark glory of the words in this book will haunt me for quite a while and I’m sure if ever I hear their familiar whisper in the dark again I will follow after them with a trembling heart but smiling lips.
Salvaged, Madeleine Roux
Publisher: Ace
“Rosalyn had endured disappointing birthdays before, but never one in ankle-deep corpse sludge.” With that opening line SALVAGED by Madeleine Roux grabs the reader by the helmet and hauls them flailing and screaming up into the air ducts of a brutally engaging world of sci-fi horror.
While at its first body horror-filled quaking steps Salvaged would appear to be a tense nail-biting spiritual successor to such classics as Aliens or The Expanse it quickly shows itself to be much more.
Roux deftly weaves a tale of alien horror and deep space as a skeleton for a much deeper internal story of the ongoing legacy of trauma, invasion, and assault and ultimately what it means to survive and fight back against those seemingly overwhelming forces that think you small, weak and insignificant. Highly recommended.
Wilder Girls, Rory Power
Publisher: Delacorte Press
I stayed up all night reading Wilder Girls because once I read the first line the book wouldn’t let go of me till I finished.
Lyrically beautiful while simultaneously raw and jagged with emotional power this novel is a masterpiece of deep character building and visceral horror. The interiority of the girls in the book unfolds apace with the physical horror of the world and bodies they now inhabit.
Twisting flesh and emotional trauma intertwine together in a pulsing tapestry of immediate horror and haunting longing that will stay with you long after the last word has seared itself into your brain. GET THIS BOOK RIGHT NOW.
Also it has monstrous creatures and a beautiful queer love story if you needed more convincing.
Docile, K.M. Sparza
Publisher: Tor Books
So in the early morning hours today, when your eyes feel like they’re full of cold sand and you start to hear the spiteful voices of birds outside your window, I finished what may be one of the best novels I have ever read.
This book. DOCILE by KM Szpara
This is a book that as I read it, unable to put it down, defied being pinned down and put into a categorical box. It slinks from dystopian sci-fi to raw pulsing erotica and down into spiraling horror.
It is a NOVEL all capital letters. Not bound to anything but the story it reveals one hot held breath at a time. And that story will sink into your brain and stay there long after the last beautifully lyrical word is read.
KM Szpara is a master of cadence, balance and weight. Each section of this book ends with what in any other novel would be the zinger of the whole thing, the big ending quote. But under Szpara’s guidance, the reader sits stunned and dry-mouthed before feverishly turning the page.
GET THIS BOOK.
So while as Docile states THERE IS NO CONSENT UNDER CAPITALISM there are however PREORDERS. Which are how we the readers can help support the authors and publishers who put so much work into bringing us these beautiful and in this case IMPORTANT books.
Magic For Liars, Sarah Gailey
Publisher: Tor Books
From its first line to its last Gailey keeps the reader looking over their shoulder and behind each sentence for clues to this modern magical mystery.
And what more could you want in a book? Oh, you want more? Okay. Magic high school? Check. Hard-drinking P.I.? Check. Dark magic and even darker hearts? Check. Prose that makes you stop and reread it savoring the lyrical economy and heft? CHECK. Yeah...that’s what I thought...
Magic for Liars has all the dark wit and verbal verve of a classic noir but with a protagonist that is both emotionally brittle to the core/astutely capable while somehow eschewing the patina of toxic masculinity that so often haunts this genre.
And more importantly to me A MYSTERY WHERE THE ENDING MAKES FUCKING SENSE! So get your sweaty palms and palpitating hearts over there and preorder this book now! Don’t wait, preorders help artists and publishers more than you can know. So...go on...make my day...
Dead Astronauts, Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher: MCD Books
With Dead Astronauts, VanderMeer returns to his lyrical puzzle box of prose roots. Much like many of the protagonists in this book the words of the world that he builds, line by line, truncated paragraph and unexpected line break by...well you get the point, are at times mystifying and dense. The feeling of having tapped into someone else's fever dream and having to sit still and quiet as the roots of the novel find their way under your skin and into your cells can be one of overloaded stimuli but it is as always a pleasurable drowning. It is a too rare a treat to dip back into VanderMeer's labyrinths of thought and let myself stumble through them never knowing when the tight corridors will open up and drop me into an expanding vista that will take my breath away.