Shelf Awareness: In the smart, extraordinary world that A.J. Hackwith has created, The Library of the Unwritten makes for an irresistible waking dream… Clever and full of sly, bookish humor, [it] is a delightful paean to knowledge and its power…. Funny, insightful and wildly magical, The Library of the Unwritten is sure to charm many readers, even those who don’t often venture into fantastical realms.
Publishers Weekly: The 27 intimate, thought-provoking stories of this doorstopper collection span over a decade of Hugo Award–winner Bear’s illustrious career. Though many of these offer glimpses into vast, intricate worlds, all are grounded in deep human feeling and small, interpersonal dramas, as with “Two Dreams on Trains,” which is set in a complex, futuristic vision of New Orleans and focuses on the clash between a mother’s hopes for her son and the boy’s goals for himself. In the emotional standout “Tideline,” a sentient war machine named Chalcedony, who was not programmed to feel emotion, uses her last reserves of energy to scour a beach for sea glass to turn into mourning jewelry in honor of her fallen human platoon. Bear’s protagonists range from machines (the living spaceships of “Boojum”) to the human (the tired homicide cop in “Dolly”) to the monstrous (the discontented vampire of “Needles”), but she crafts them all with huge helpings of empathy and heart. This excellent collection offers readers the chance to immerse themselves in Bear’s singular imagination.
The New York Times: Tamsyn Muir’s GIDEON THE NINTH is a devastating debut that deserves every ounce of hype it’s received, despite the bafflingly misleading marketing around it
Everything I read about Gideon the Ninth before publication seemed to suggest it would be a lighthearted wacky adventure, with much made of the tagline “lesbian necromancers in space”—but I experienced the book as meticulous and moody, full of anguish, haunted by difficult and complex feelings in a wasted universe. Muir marshals a gorgeous cast of characters to delirious effect in a perfectly paced haunted house murder mystery, but it’s less gonzo than it is Agatha Christie writing Gormenghast. Muir is fantastic at both humor and horror, not to mention moving me to tears. I should also note that Gideon the Ninth is not a romance, though queer longing abounds; it’s deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original. It’s honestly perfect as both a satisfying stand-alone and the launch of a trilogy, and I can’t wait until the sequel lands next year.
B&N SFF: Nicky Drayden’s novels are weird—and I mean that as the highest of compliments.
Her genre-blending debut The Prey of Gods landed on the scene in 2017 with the self-same subtlety of a Roman candle stuck up your nose. Artificial intelligence and African folklore, mind control and murder, demigods and dik-diks, The Prey of Gods had has everything. Her sophomore effort, Temper, an Afrofuturist romp through a world in which your social identity is defined by your balance of vice and virtue, continued in the same audacious vein, plus twice the world-building.
Now comes Escaping Exodus, Drayden’s third novel, as pleasantly and characteristically bonkers as ever. Eschewing her established skill at tossing science fiction and fantasy together in a blender, she leans full into her Octavia Butler fineries and drops us aboard a city-size starship carved in the innards of a drifting space beast.
Seske and Adalla’s relationship is compelling and serves as the framework for all the plot to come (including a few wild tangents that complicate matters significantly), but it is this theme of environmental justice that is the novel’s central concern. As Seske learns to lead, she grapples with the devastating consequences of her people’s way of life to the beast that carries them. Adalla, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with the class inequality that fuels the system. These twin threads feel true enough to our own time, and thoroughly modern, while aligning with science fiction’s long history of climate-focused, socially conscious works.
Both threads are also entwined with one of Drayden’s recurring concerns: the construct of gender and the subversion of its norms. Gender fluidity and explorative sexuality are key components of The Prey of Gods. Here, Drayden likewise flips gender roles on their head by crafting a matriarchal society focused on containing the population: families are composed of multiple mothers and fathers but are limited to one child apiece, in a setup that feels reminiscent of Butler’s Xenogenesis series.
In opposition to contemporary daydreams of smashing the patriarchy, Drayden’s society is far from a utopia. It is cruel and rigid: gender norms haven’t vanished, they’ve reversed, with men treated as second-class citizens, considered disposable and deemed unfit for much more than housework and child-rearing. While the situation may sound cathartic to some readers, its reality is troublesome and counter-productive, an inequity sowing seeds of rebellion every bit as much as Adalla’s realizations galvanize the working class.
Life aboard this spacebeast is chaotic, the mess tolerated so long as it’s hidden beneath a certain set of creature comforts. The question before both Seske and Adalla is what to do when the mess finds it way to the light.
While that’s a pickle for the characters, it’s a playground for Drayden, whose specialty is narrative chaos. In a rather stuffed novel, her outsized sci-fi sensibilities enliven the worldbuilding while allowing her characters emotional room to grieve, to fight, and to love, believably and heart-achingly.
However you slice it, Escaping Exodus doesn’t follow the path you think it will, and neither does its author. And that’s the fun of it all.
SFX Magazine: This excellent debut weaves together magic, grave-robbing, and royal scandals….Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga build their world with meticulous care, and the plotting is rich and cunning.… A story and characters to savour, in a world painted in vivid detail.
Publishers Weekly: Polk follows her gaslamp fantasy Witchmark with a superb sequel blending political intrigue, witchcraft, and queer romance…. Polk’s ambitious world-building never encumbers her assured, action-packed pacing, deep characters, and genuine emotion. This delectable treat is a worthy follow-up to her debut.
B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog: There are pleasurable echoes of the cozy apocalypses of Neil Gaiman in The Library of the Unwritten…. The Library of the Unwritten details a fascinating, frenetic world. The library contains multitudes, just waiting to be written.
Booklist: Trimoboli and Zaloga skillfully deliver a debut that uses alchemy to combine scientific logic, magical elements, and a whodunnit that gives off Sherlock Holmes-ian, gaslamp vibes…. [A]rtfully written from dual perspectives but with one fluid style, and will appeal to readers of sf, fantasy, and historical mystery, or those who just can’t choose.
Strange Horizons: Starling plays masterfully with the murky edges of consent and bodily autonomy while carefully inlaying trauma, compassion, loneliness, and a human hunger for connection….One of the many remarkable things about this book is how seamlessly it blends the terrain of the psychological with the terrain that is, well, strictly topographical. Fans of the Gothic will find plenty to analyze here—the association of underground caverns with secrets, of the unmarked grave with unresolved fears, the descent into the subterranean with the descent into mental instability, is an old and rich literary tradition.
School Library Journal: A must-purchase for libraries, as this book will resonate with teen readers who live with depression or other mental illnesses, as well as teens who identify as LGBTQ.