Donald Maass Literary Agency

Publishers Weekly: Kowal’s short works are difficult to classify, often poignant or tragic, and always spectacularly written. These 19 tales vary widely. “The Bound Man” spans ages within a dramatic alternate world; “Chrysalis” examines a single segment of an alien life cycle. Characters struggle to sort out difficult interfamilial relationships on a generation ship in “For Want of a Nail.” Readers will sympathize with a teenage girl who is both stereotypically American and undeniably fae in “American Changeling.” Some stories, such as “The White Phoenix Feather,” offer a moment of laughter to lighten the mood, but even within the humor, the writing is serious in execution, style, and timing. Kowal sends readers off on a breathless trip to the stars.

NPR: To read The Traitor Baru Cormorant is to sink inexorably into a book that should not be anywhere near as absorbing as it is — to realize that the white-knuckled grip with which you hold it was provoked by several consecutive pages of loans, taxes and commodity trading. It seems impossible that the economics of a fantasy world should be so viscerally riveting, but they are, and it’s incredible: You think you’re on solid ground right up until you feel that ground closing around your throat.

This is not a happy book. It is not an uplifting book. But it is a crucial, necessary book — a book that looks unflinchingly into the self-replicating virus of empire, asks the hardest questions, and dares to answer them.

Washington Post: Narrated by a young woman seeking revenge, Seth Dickinson’s first novel, “The Traitor Baru Cormorant,” is a fascinating tale of political intrigue and national unrest. Baru Cormorant is just a girl when the Empire of Masks conquers her island. The new rulers create roads and better sanitation, but their strong-fisted policies erode the country’s economy and punish the people cruelly if they don’t adhere to a rigid code of sexual conduct. Baru decides that the only way to fight such oppression is to infiltrate the government. But just how brutal will she have to become to undermine an empire? Dickinson moves the plot steadily along as he explores issues of sexual oppression and colonial power.