Asking the Wrong Questions

Readers with an encyclopedia memory of my work may recall that I already wrote about Emily Tesh's second novel, in brief, in a Guardian reviews roundup in May. Strange Horizons were good enough to offer me space to give the novel a more extended view .  In her Hugo-winning novel Some Desperate Glory (2023), Emily Tesh tore through many of the conventions that govern modern, popular SF. Barrelling through a trilogy's worth of plot in a single novel, playing merry hell with time and space, nodding at the familiar structure of the YA novel of self-discovery and self-actualization before thoroughly upending it, the novel seemed determined to confound the reader's expectations at every turn. In one respect, however, Some Desperate Glory hewed closely to the familiar form of a YA adventure. As its heroine, Kyr, uncovered the lies she had been raised on and rebelled against them, the teachers who promulgated those lies inevitably took a background role: sometimes villainous, som...

A Meal of Thorns , from the fanzine Ancillary Review of Books , is one of the most exciting new podcasts of the last few years. A bimonthly critical book club in which host Jake Casella Brookins discusses a work of science fiction, fantasy, or something harder to define with a rotating cast of guests, it's not just an opportunity to go deep into a single work and how it reflects on the genre around it, but an impetus to discover (or rediscover) some great books. In a critical landscape that tends to focus only on the most recent (I'll hold my hand up in that respect), A Meal of Thorns is a great chance to dig into the foundations of the fantastical genres, whether famous or little-known. I was thrilled to be invited to appear on A Meal of Thorns , and after a bit of thought about what I'd like to discuss, realized that it presented a perfect opportunity to revisit a book that I've long felt deserved a second look, Iain M. Banks's Excession . Published in 1996, it r...

The process of putting these posts together is fairly unscientific. When I read a book that seems worth commenting on, I start writing, and if what I end up with is less than a thousand words or thereabouts, it gets placed in a post like this until enough commentaries accumulate that the post feels ready for public consumption. And yet somehow, this recent reading roundup has a surprising thematic unity. These are all books published in the first half of 2025, all science fiction (albeit in some cases a very slipstreamy version of it), and all weird and experimental in either their form or ideas. They're also all books I recommend, especially if you're looking for a sense of what the genre is doing in 2025 that's a little off the beaten path. The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien - Fleeing persecution in their native China, Lina and her father arrive at The Sea, a floating structure moored outside space and time, where every inhabitant looks out and sees a different geogr...

As June wraps up, the third of my reviews from the May issue of Locus appears on the magazine's website. This review discusses Megan Giddings's third novel, Meet Me At the Crossroads . I reviewed Giddings's previous novel, The Women Could Fly , in the Guardian a few years ago, and was very impressed by what I found. Meet Me At the Crossroads , in which mysterious doors appear at various points on the planet, and reveal a strange, simultaneously dangerous and wondrous landscape when they open, is very similar in both its vibe and its quality. Like its predecessor, it is a gentle, slyly humorous fantasy that is primarily interested in how people live in a world where the numinous is possible. [Giddings's] focus in Meet Me at the Crossroads is faith, and how people grapple with the numinous and unexplainable. And sometimes, how they do not grapple with it. Many of the people Ayanna encounters seek to explain and systematize the doors. A faith healer who claims to have ...

If the first of my reviews in the May 2025 issue of Locus was a bit of a downer, the second now comes along to offer a bit of consolation. A Letter From the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall completes the duology begun in last year's A Letter to the Luminous Deep . Set among a society of scientists and academics who live on islands and atolls on a water planet, the two novels are both an investigation of this setting's genesis, and a charming epistolary romance. One of the chief pleasures of these books is their use of language. Among the recent trend for tales about cod-Victorian scientists in fantasyland (a group that includes Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde series and Malka Older's Mossa and Pleiti novellas), Cathrall stands apart for her ability to capture both the mannered formality of her characters' diction, and the charming earnestness that shines through it. "I brought only my scientific journal with me, and I hate to sully it with anxious ramblings o...

I had several reviews in the May issue of Locus , and the first of them is now online . Alex Foster's debut novel Circular Motion joins the increasingly crowded ranks of climate fiction, but with a twist that is both original and bracing. It posits a technology that permits near-instantaneous travel from any point on the planet to any other, and then introduces a cost: the more these transport pods are used, the faster the planet rotates. As a metaphor for climate change, this on the nose but also effective. If our society possessed a technology as revolutionary, as instantly habit-forming, as the transport pods, I think it’s hard to argue that we would not give into denial and short-term amelioration rather than give it up, even in the face of eighteen-, nine-, and seven-hour days. As the novel eventually reveals, there are entire industries designed to encourage such behavior, and even make it seem virtuous. There's been a lot of pushback in recent years at the talking point...