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2024 First Novel Prize Shortlist
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Viking), The Book of Love by Kelly Link (Random House), and Fire Exit by Morgan Talty (Tin House) are all on the longlist for the 2024 First Novel Prize, given by the Center for Fiction “to honor the best debut fiction of the year.”
The longlist and winners are chosen by “a committee of distinguished American writers.” The winner will be announced during the Center’s Annual ...Read More
SF/Fantasy/Horror ReviewsView All
Alexandra Pierce Reviews The Feast Makers by H.A. Clarke
The Feast Makers, H. A. Clarke (Erewhon Books 978-1-64566-081-1, 405pp, $18.95, hc). Cover by Anka Lavriv. March 2024.
The Feast Makers is the third book in the Scapegracers trilogy; there are a lot of spoilers for The Scapegracers and The Scratch Daughters in this review.
As The Feast Makers opens, Sideways Pike faces hardships that fall into two camps. The first is being a butch lesbian high school senior in ...Read More
Charles Payseur Reviews Short Fiction: Cast of Wonders, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, and Lightspeed
Cast of Wonders 4/13/24, 5/5/24 Escape Pod 4/25/24 Strange Horizons 4/29/24, 5/16/24 Lightspeed 5/24
Cast of Wonders’ April included Plangdi Neple’s “Bodies of Sand and Blood”, which follows a young trans boy trying to learn the magic of the men of his people, but who again and again is told he cannot because of his body. And yet at his lowest, he hears voices in the darkness ...Read More
Colleen Mondor Reviews Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley
Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear, Robin Wasley (Simon & Schuster 978-1-665-91460-4, $19.99, hc, 400pp) February 2024. Cover by Micaela Alcaino.
The tourist town of Llewellyn, AKA Wellsie, is famous for the magic that used to be there. Just like Springfield is the town where Lincoln was born, and Roswell is where aliens might have landed, Wellsie is where something happened once. It’s a town on a fault ...Read More
Ian Mond Reviews The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking 978-0-73522-404-9, $35.00, 688pp, hc) June 2024.
In a “Historical Note” to his new novel The Bright Sword (his first adult novel since wrapping up The Magicians trilogy), Lev Grossman remarks that people have been re-working and re-inventing King Arthur’s story for nearly 1,400 years. As he poetically puts it, the legend has “never been told quite the same way twice. Every age and ...Read More
Russell Letson Reviews Beyond the Light Horizon by Ken MacLeod
Beyond the Light Horizon, Ken MacLeod (Orbit 978-0-356-51482-6, £10.99, 336 pp, tp) May 2024. Cover by Duncan Spilling. (Pyr 978-1-64506-066-6, $21.00, 336pp, tp) June 2024.
Beyond the Light Horizon picks up right where Beyond the Reach of Earth (click to see review) ends, with Grant figuring out when he has landed and how he might return to his own time. But his problem is only the beginning of a ...Read More
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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 Eisner Awards
The 2024 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were announced at San Diego Comic-Con on July 26, 2023. Winners of SF/F interest follow.
Best Short Story
- “The Kelpie”, Becky Cloonan (Four Gathered on Christmas Eve)
Best Single Issue/One-Shot
- Nightwing #105, Bruno Redondo & Tom Taylor (DC)
Best Continuing Series
- Transformers, Daniel Warren Johnson (Image Skybound)
Best New Series
- Somna: A Bedtime Story, Becky Cloonan & Tula
2024 Phantastikpreis der Stadt Wetzlar
Phytopia Plus by Zara Zerbe (Verbrecher Verlag) won the €4,000 2024 Phantastikpreis der Stadt Wetzlar, a speculative fiction prize awarded by the city of Wetzlar, Germany.
The other nominees were Endling by Jasmin Schreiber (Eichborn) and Dreizehnfurcht by Wieland Freund (Klett-Cotta).
A public award ceremony is planned for September 2024. For more information, visit the award website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a ...Read More
Gary K. Wolfe Reviews In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran
In the Shadow of the Fall, Tobi Ogundiran (Tordotcom 978-1-25090-796-7, $20.99, 160pp, hc) July 2024.
There are probably hundreds of examples of how the Chosen One motif has served SF and fantasy, and there’s a certain boldness in the way in which Tobi Ogundiran hints at it on the very first page of In the Shadow of the Fall, the first in a two-novella sequence called Guardian of ...Read More
Gabino Iglesias Reviews Greatest Hits by Harlan Ellison
Greatest Hits, Harlan Ellison (Union Square & Co. 978-1-45495-337-1, $19.99, 496pp, tp) March 2024. Cover by Max Loeffler.
What can be said about Harlan Ellison at this point? The man is a legend. Unfortunately, sometimes legends get lost in the folds of time and that makes it harder for newer generations of readers to discover their work. Greatest Hits, a superb collection of some of Ellison’s best short ...Read More
Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks (Flatiron 978-1-25087-861-8, $28.99, 336pp, hc) June 2024.
Fantastical train journeys are pretty much a subgenre unto themselves, and no wonder. There’s a huge amount of imaginative space between, say, Snowpiercer and The Polar Express, or between Miéville’s Railsea and anything else at all – though Sarah Brooks’s debut novel, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, carries a few ...Read More