Publishers Weekly: Datlow fills this sprawling fourth annual collection with 26 richly envisioned short and mid-length works of speculative fiction from innovative online magazine Tor.com, an independent offshoot of Tor Books. Postapocalyptic futures include alien invaders in Ken Liu’s “Reborn,” earthquakes in Charlie Jane Anders’s humorous “As Good as New,” and a traveling carnival in Seanan McGuire’s “Midway Relics and Dying Breeds.” Adam Christopher’s “Brisk Money” turns traditional noir crime fiction upside-down. Kelly Barnhill’s “Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” and Max Gladstone’s “A Kiss with Teeth” are surprising love stories. Marie Brennan’s “Daughter of Necessity” tells the story of Odysseus’s wife holding down the fort at home, while Kathleen Ann Goonan’s “A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or When You Wish upon a Star” explores the life and times of a female astronaut. Tor.com welcomes longer works shunned by print magazines, a thrill for fans of speculative fiction novellas and novelettes. These uniformly excellent stories are all exactly as long as they need to be, and all the more powerful for it.
Mar 242015
March 24, 2015
Publishers Weekly: Starting his junior year at new school, Adam Higgs is a loser, and he knows it. He barely has any friends, has never been kissed, and has started working at Pizza Hut. After Adam devises a lucrative homework-selling scheme, suddenly he has an adorable girlfriend and is getting invited to the best parties, but this taste of fame and wealth leads him down a path of escalating risk, selling fake IDs and drugs. In chapters often no longer than a few paragraphs, Matthews (who writes adult thrillers as Owen Laukkanen) employs an irreverent narrative that makes it seem as though readers are seeing Adam through the shrewd perspective of a slacker sitting in the back of class (“You probably figured this out already, but, our boy doesn’t get to many parties”). Witnessing Adam’s descent into delinquency is both painful to watch and addictive. 
Booklist: May and Libby came up with Princess X, a katana-wielding cartoon girl with a crown and red Chucks, on the day they met in fifth grade, and for the next several years of their friendship, they wrote enough stories about her to fill a closet. But then Libby and her mother die in a car accident, and May tries to move on with her life, but she can’t shake the feeling that not everything adds up about Libby’s death. Three years later, May notices a faded vinyl sticker that is unmistakably Princess X. Then she discovers a webcomic about her, which includes characters that look alarmingly like Libby and May, and clues that only May can decipher. With the help of her tech-savvy neighbor, Trick, May looks all over (and under) Seattle to uncover the truth about her best friend. Interspersed with Ciesemier’s webcomic-style illustrations, Priest’s YA debut is an engrossing cyberthriller packed with a puzzling mystery, crackerjack detective work, and an eerie, atmospheric sense of place. The unembellished style is a perfect match for the noir-lite tone, and May and Trick, whose banter crackles with energy, rival any team of gumshoes out there. Teens who roll their eyes at adults out of touch with Internet culture will eat this up.
Wall Street Journal: 
Publishers Weekly: Tanzer’s first novel is a splendid page-turner of a Weird West adventure. Elouise Merriwether is a psychopomp, tasked with escorting newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Half Chinese and half English, with a bizarre job that few people understand, she struggles to find a place for herself in 1870s San Francisco, often vacillating between pluck and self-effacement. When her mother asks her to investigate why young Chinese men are going missing after being offered jobs in Colorado, Lou agrees to turn detective, but she’s bitten off way more than she can chew, especially once she runs up against the mysterious Dr. Panacea and his possibly fraudulent Elixir of Life. 
Kirkus: To say I loved this book would be such an understatement. It’s a great, intensely fun, quick read that satisfied my Dresden Files itch in a year during which I’m not sure we’ll get a new novel in the series.
Locus: Karen Memory is a delight, a tour-de-force of historical reimagining and character creation, and a ripping yarn full of surprises, and despite Karen’s opening line, I can’t imagine anyone not liking what she has to tell us.
Library Journal: Fans of Laukkanen’s The Professionals . . . will be delighted with this fast-moving installment. Here it is not the criminals who are intriguing, but rather the victims who turn out to be far stronger and more remarkable than originally anticipated. Recommended for fans of well-written, thought-provoking thrillers.