Boston Globe: The point that “Violent Ends” so beautifully makes isn’t just that there are answers we will never have and human actions we will never understand. It also demonstrates this: We cannot 100 percent know the depth of another person’s heart. We cannot know the whys and whats of his soul.
This idea could be sad, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of rendering human beings powerless, it could render them more compassionate. Knowing that the stranger who just bumped you in the hall or that the awkward loner who sits behind you in class each have a story, makes it easier to chose kindness — again, again, and again.
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. 
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Publishers Weekly: 
B&N SF&F Blog: I like my fantasy quirky, irreverent, and constantly working to surprise me. Which is why I loved The Aeronaut’s Windlass, the first volume in Jim Butcher’s new series, The Cinder Spires. […] The best books give us characters who live on in our minds long after the covers have closed. In Windlass, every cast member is fun, funny, and uniquely courageous. You’ll meet aeronauts, soldiers, aristocrats, the half-human “warrior-born,” wizard, and an entire civilization of talking cats, each more epic than the last. At least, according to the cats, whose entire culture appears to hinge on being as arrogant as felinely possible. By the end, an entire family of oddball roustabouts has come together under the steady eye of Captain Grimm, and I can’t wait to follow them on more adventures. 
Publishers Weekly: Christopher (The Machine Awakes) merges pulp SF and crime novels in the pleasing launch of his L.A. trilogy. In an alternate 1960s America, Raymond is a robot PI, the last of his kind. He’s hired to find a missing movie star with secrets as deep as Raymond’s own. Raymond and his computer partner, Ada, would be at home in an Asimovian retro-future, but Asimov’s three laws of robotics are broken with impunity. The pacing, banter, and descriptions are classic noir, yet the stakes are higher, as Raymond learns that future of the free world is in his mechanical hands. The robot detective is morally gray and instantly likable, and the limitations placed on his abilities help maintain a heightened sense of danger and struggle. Genre mash-ups don’t always succeed, but this one will please fans of both gumshoes and laser beams.
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.
Kirkus: A minute-by-minute account of mass murder at a high school by a former student. Four students from a range of different backgrounds at Alabama’s Opportunity High, all of whom have a history with Tyler, the gunman, take turns telling this harrowing story in the first person. They include his sister, Autumn, and her clandestine girlfriend, Sylv, who have only each other for solace as the home lives of both are in upheaval. Tomás, Sylv’s brother, recounts his and his friend Fareed’s desperate efforts to help from outside the school’s auditorium, where their fellow students and teachers are locked in with Tyler as he picks them off one by one. Finally, Claire, Tyler’s ex-girlfriend, realistically agonizes over what to do when she and a few others outside running track realize that the gunshots they hear are coming from inside the school. Grounded in the present, the story makes effective use of flashbacks that lay bare the pain and deception that have led up to the day’s horror. The language can occasionally feel a bit melodramatic, with lines like “we’re fighting for hope and a thousand tomorrows,” but this is a minor side note to this compelling story of terror, betrayal, and heroism. This brutal, emotionally charged novel will grip readers and leave them brokenhearted.
School Library Journal: When a new social network pops up promising to fulfill any need, 16-year-old Kaylee Dunham knows it’s too good to be true. […] Charbonneau delivers a tightly paced thriller packed with enough tension to keep teens hooked until the dramatic finale. Readers will root for Kaylee as she faces down hateful classmates, a mother who doesn’t trust her, and an out-of-control social network bent on turning everyone she knows into a killer. Told through the perspective of multiple students entangled in NEED, this work raises interesting questions about the real-life dangers that could arise from operating anonymously online. Well-defined conflict and plenty of action also make this a good choice for reluctant readers.