Donald Maass Literary Agency

Locus: Revenant Gun is a fast, gripping story. Its shifting viewpoints – all seeing some part of the picture, none with a complete view or good insight into other people’s motivations – and potential for betrayals make it feel complex and demanding. At base, though, it’s a thriller crossed with a story about learning to live with consequences you didn’t choose.

It’s a story in part about mortality: it holds a contrast between someone who wants to die and someone who wants to never die, and the costs, to oneself or to others, of taking those desires to extremes. Jedao, like Cheris, is an extremely compelling character – as is, somewhat to my surprise, the robot servitor Hemiole, whose naiveté and determination make an interesting comparison with the other, more jaded characters.

I really enjoyed Revenant Gun, and I sincerely hope that Lee has the opportunity to write many more novels. This is excellent space opera, and I wish there were more like it.

Library Journal: In a collection that follows Side Jobs, 12 stories, including a trio of Bigfoot tales and the never-before-published “Zoo Day,” star wizard Harry Dresden and his associates once again.

John Marcone shows that even criminals have rules when he defends those seeking shelter with him in “Even Hand.” Apprentice Molly Carpenter learns WWHD—What Would Harry Do?—as she searches for vampire Thomas Roth in “Bombshells,” then uncovers the truth of her new role as the Winter Lady in “Cold Case.”

It’s been four years since the last full Dresden novel (Skin Game) was released, so readers will become reacquainted with Dresden’s gritty wit, the Chicago setting, and the not-so-happy endings typical of these urban fantasy tales. Butcher shows there is a dark side, even to those considered heroes. And while these pieces will be familiar to those already acquainted with the series, as many have been previously published, newbies meeting the author’s iconic protagonists for the first time will not be too lost within these pages.

VERDICT: Butcher’s die-hard fans, along with short story fantasy enthusiasts, will find this compilation irresistible.

Tor.com: Martha Wells can always be relied upon for atmospheric novels with great voice and precise, gorgeously descriptive turns of phrase.

In the Murderbot Diaries, Wells’ enormous talent for voice and atmosphere has full reign in a space opera setting—and her deft facility with characterisation makes Murderbot an incredibly appealing character. Self-conscious, awkward, and self contradictory: we can all recognise ourselves in Murderbot’s struggles with acting like a person.

Publishers Weekly: Kowal’s outstanding prequel to her Hugo-winning novelette “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” shows the alternate history that created a mid-20th-century Mars colony.

In 1952, mathematician and pilot Elma York is on vacation with her rocket scientist husband, Nathaniel, when a meteor strikes Chesapeake Bay, obliterating most of the East Coast. Elma quickly realizes that this is an extinction event, and that the only option for humanity’s survival is off-world colonization. In a compelling parallel to our own history, Elma, who is Jewish, fights to have women of all races and backgrounds included in the burgeoning space program, squaring off against patriarchal attitudes, her own anxiety, and an adversary from her past service as a war pilot.

Kowal explores a wide range of issues-including religion, grief, survivor’s guilt, mental health, racism, misogyny, and globalism-without sermonising or subsuming the characters and plot. Elma’s struggles with her own prejudices and relationships, including her relationship with herself, provide a captivating human center to the apocalyptic background.

Readers will thrill to the story of this “lady astronaut” and eagerly anticipate the promised sequels.