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Recent Reviews
Leigh Bardugo
Rave The Washington Post Bardugo brilliantly explores the wavy line between the supernatural and the divine ... When Bardugo chooses to venture further into the darkness, it’s that much more devastating because of how much fun the reader has been having. In fact, she is a master of anticlimax: She builds apprehension for huge events that do not come to pass, then blindsides the reader with something totally unexpected instead ... A thrilling addition to her canon about oppression and liberation, and anyone interested in this historical period and the themes she’s exploring will find it engrossing.
Natasha Pulley
Rave The Washington Post The Mars House moves as nimbly as its ballet-dancer hero, sidestepping the potential issues with its immigration storyline and pivoting toward something that’s nuanced and fresh. The result is both an epic love story and a deft political thriller, in which lengthy philosophical discussions feel more gripping than the battles in most other books.
Sierra Greer
Rave The Washington Post \"On one level, Annie Bot is a keenly observed portrait of a dysfunctional — even abusive — relationship ... But Greer goes deeper, teasing out the contradictions and vulnerabilities in their relationship and showing us glimpses of the real love that Doug and Annie could have, if he were better and she were free. The ending feels rushed, but there’s a truth to this abruptness: When insupportable situations end, they end quickly. All the best stories about artificial intelligence hinge on identity: Do our memories define us? Do our bodies represent who we are? Annie Bot, astonishingly, finds new ways to ask these well-worn questions. I kept reading Annie Bot way after bedtime, partly to see if Annie could escape from her prison, but also because every few pages there was an observation that made me think about both AI and human relationships anew.\
James Goodhand
Positive The Washington Post What kept me turning the pages of Day Tripper was Alex’s quest to deserve Holly by rejecting the influence of toxic men, including a bully and an emotionally abusive father. This effort to grapple with the legacy of monstrous masculinity is the heart of the book, and it makes The Day Tripper an essential, profound read.
Premee Mohamed
Positive The Washington Post Mohamed excels at telling the stories of ordinary people trapped by dark forces, and she infuses these characters with astounding tenderness and compassion. The Butcher of the Forest shows exactly why Mohamed is one of fantasy’s rising stars.
Hannah Kaner
Positive The Washington Post Takes place in a richly rendered world ... If The Last of Us didn’t slake your thirst for stories of a grizzled fighter taking a tough kid on the road, then Godkiller should be your jam.
Isle McElroy
Rave The Washington Post Fascinating ... Brings new life to the conceit, turning it into an opportunity to interrogate not gender but class ... Takes a sudden turn in its final pages, building toward an ending that’s genuinely moving and redemptive, though not in the way the reader has been expecting. The finale is so good, in fact, that it elevates the entire book, making it one of the year’s most compelling reads.
Mona Awad
Rave The Washington Post Darkly comic and squirm-inducing ... Awad’s prose slithers and shimmies. Ultimately, the disturbing vibes cohere into a fairy tale whose rules and ancient monsters are terribly clear ... Awad brings her story to a powerful conclusion that reaches deep into the mother-daughter relationship, finding a heartbreaking tenderness within.
Temi Oh
Positive The Washington Post A feverishly inventive novel ... The ending doesn’t entirely make sense, and the journey of the too-aptly named Orpheus has overtones of Greek mythology that feel unnecessary. But all in all, More Perfect is nearly perfect.
Yume Kitasei
Rave The Washington Post A rare treat: a totally satisfying whodunnit featuring great clues, twists, reveals and red herrings, along with clever science-fictional concepts ... Asuka is an unusual protagonist: introverted, neurotic, alternately resourceful and paralyzed. I found myself rooting for her way more than I do the supremely competent heroes who usually populate space adventures.
Vajra Chandrasekera
Rave The Washington Post Has an especially fascinating setup ... Chandrasekera builds a dizzyingly complex world, with enough ideas for 10 books, and it’s all entertaining enough that his theme — the dangers of religious extremism paired with racist totalitarianism — sneaks up on you
Djuna, trans. Anton Hur
Rave The Washington Post Dizzyingly subversive ... In true Philip K. Dick style, Djuna serves up enough paranoia and clever ideas to keep you guessing.
Stephanie Feldman
Positive The Washington Post Feldman uses ecological collapse as a backdrop for a chilling tale of alchemy and corruption ... The constant awareness of a world on fire lends an extra layer of dread as a deadly monster stalks Nina, who finds something equally monstrous inside the box she’s trying to steal. But even as Nina uncovers the depths to which some of her former friends are willing to stoop, she also rekindles one friendship that she realizes she threw away too lightly. (It is troubling, though, that the book’s trans character is referred to by her former name and pronoun in pre-transition flashbacks.) Saturnalia is both dazzlingly inventive and full of spine-tingling menace.
Ray Nayler
Positive The Washington Post ... has been described as an eco-dystopian thriller, but it’s something slower and more meditative ... Nayler’s poignant, mind-expanding debut is full of artificial intelligences, with various levels of mindfulness, alongside the mysterious octopus community. The juxtaposition of these nonhuman minds raises big questions about the nature of consciousness.
Karen Russell
Rave Gizmodo Sleep Donation seems kind of trivial at first, almost lulling you into a sense of security that Russell then starts chipping away. The first few chapters are full of infodumps, long expository passages that lard information and bits of backstory onto the reader with the minimum of grace. This is partly the price that Russell pays for starting in media res, but it also feels like the work of someone who hasn\'t read enough genre fare to understand that worldbuilding can be teased out. But once Russell has formed a complete picture of her world, she starts to get more and more inventive with it. The bare details of how the donations work and why Baby A is the perfect donor give way to a frenzy of extrapolation, the kind that marks out the best science fiction. Russell comes up with enough second- and third-order effects of her web of insomniacs and donors to make the whole thing feel both real and ferociously bizarre. By the time she really starts spinning out her plot in earnest, the whole thing carries you away not unlike a frenzied dream ... Russell doesn\'t have the savagery of George Saunders here, and her organization isn\'t nearly as faceless or terrible as his often are. But what she has, instead, is a fantastical quality that makes the eventual knife-twist that much more brutal.
Mark Leyner
Positive The New York Times Book Review Gone With the Mind is a ­blindingly weird novel: a book-length stand-up ­routine in which a man free-associates about his life to a mostly empty room, mixing the philosophical and the scatological with abandon. At times, it seems to be an argument against autobiography, as well as a lament about the impossibility of actually communicating with an audience. But after Leyner gets done slicing the fictionalized version of his life into small and disconnected fragments, the slivers turn out to draw blood...truly absurd and absurdly true.