The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves & China Miéville
(Del Rey, 2024)
Reviewed by Stuart Carter
Hearing about The Book of Elsewhere, my first thought was: “A Keanu Reeves comic being rewritten as a novel by China Miéville?! DUDE! Someone deserves a pay rise at the publisher!” But, my, what a strange chimera of a book this is—as you might expect of a child born of two such different fathers.
In case you didn’t already know, The Book of Elsewhere is an unexpected collaboration between the famous US film star and the famous UK fantasy writer: one known (loved, even?) for his, shall we say, lack of thespian introspection; the other known (loved, even?) for bringing revolutionary politics into contemporary Fantasy.
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Review from BSFA Review 25 - Download your copy here.
This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings
(Hodderscape, 2024)
Reviewed by Leanbh Pearson
This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings is an alternate history of 1920s United States focused on Harlem, New York. Dennings creates a fascinating world of gangsters, jazz clubs, prohibition, illegal alcohol trade, racial discrimination and social tensions. To this backdrop, there is an expertly layered supernatural realm of reapers, which are vampire-like beings originating from historical and unethical medical experiments.
On two opposing sides of the brewing battle between the growing numbers of reapers and humans, is the complex-relationship between two young African American women: Layla Quinn, a reaper, and her former best friend, Elise Saint, the heiress to the wealthy and politically influential Saint Empire.
Blackwater 1: The Flood by Michael McDowell Blackwater 2: The Levee by Michael McDowell Blackwater 3: The House by Michael McDowell
(Penguin, 2024)
Reviewed by Dave M. Roberts
This is the first three of a series of six books, originally published in 1983 all within the space of a few months. Penguin are repeating this exercise publishing the six books, each one a few weeks after the last. With glowing reviews from the likes of Stephen King, Peter Straub and Poppy Z. Brite, it comes with a hefty reputation amongst Horror aficionados.
Firmly entrenched in the Southern Gothic mode, the story opens in 1919 as a devastating flood is starting to subside in the small rural town of Perdido. The titular Blackwater River has flooded out the entire town, and as it retreats the first people making a reconnaissance of the damage to the town find Elinor, an apparent survivor in one of the hotel rooms. It is made subtly clear right at the beginning that there is more to Elinor than meets the eye. It’s not giving anything away to suggest that Elinor is in some way a spirit of the river, and clearly has some significant control over it. It would be no great surprise if the later books revealed that it was Elinor, or at least some aspect of her, that was behind the flood.
Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise
(Titan Books, 2024)
Reviewed by Amirah Muhammad
A.C. Wise’s Out of the Drowning Deep is a compelling, science-fantasy murder mystery, where the mystery is less about the murder that brings a disparate cast of characters together, and more about the machinations of faith taken to its furthest point.
The Bastion, a secluded monastery which seems to have outlived its purpose, is the setting of the next conclave. Rather than choosing a new Pope, this conclave intends to gather religious leaders to hear the Pope’s radical proposal to abolish all established religions. The practicality of the Pope’s proposal pales when Scribe IV, an ostracised automaton who leads the Bastion’s staff, discovered he has been murdered. Scribe IV quickly realises he is at the mercy of the Sisters of the Drowned Deep, who want to conduct their own investigation which would surely send the Bastion and its inhabitants to a watery death. Desperate for help, and answers, Scribe IV sends a call out into the galaxy hoping for a response. The private investigator, Quin, and the divine assistance of the angel named Angel are Scribe IV’s only offers. Together, they mine the histories of the Bastion’s staff, as well as Quin’s personal history as a survivor of abuse and a recovering addict, to find out who murdered the Pope and why. When they find out the truth, the terrible cost of all their choices becomes clear.
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
(Tor, 2024)
Reviewed by Susan Peak
Since 2008, Adrian Tchaikovsky has had 49 books published, with a further three, possibly four, due to be published in 2025. He is a one-man publishing phenomenon, and, remarkably, his writing is consistently high-quality, mostly SF with some fantasy.
Professor Daghdev has fallen foul of The Mandate, a, or the, governing group on Earth, and he has been exiled, along with other dissidents, to a planet nicknamed Kiln. This planet has alien life on it of a very strange sort, which The Mandate has set up as a unit to explore and report back on. Kiln is in effect a prison planet, and the unit is the prison itself.
J.G. Ballard’s 'Crash' by Paul March-Russell
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Reviewed by Paul Kincaid
By the 1960s, the new generation of British science fiction writers who had grown up since the Second World War had come to view their world as a technologized hellscape. This landscape of mechanised death and destruction was usually apostrophized in overlapping triplets of resonant names: ‘Belsen … Buchenwald … Passchendaele’ (Keith Roberts, Pavane, 1968); ‘Gomorrah, Hiroshima and Buchenwald’ (M. John Harrison, ‘Lamia Mutable’, 1972); ‘Cape Canaveral, Hiroshima and Belsen’ (J.G. Ballard, ‘Myth Maker of the Twentieth Century’, 1964). And in their present of the 1960s they saw the end result of that violent past in an alienating landscape of brutalist architecture and motorway intersections. This was the landscape that J.G. Ballard found himself inescapably drawn to explore in a series of controversial works as the decade and the British New Wave drew to their inevitable close.
The Butterfly Disjunct: And Other Stories by Stewart C. Baker
(Interstellar Flight Press, 2024)
Reviewed by Susan Maxwell
In their statement at the back of The Butterfly Disjunct, Interstellar Flight Press align themselves with Ursula Le Guin’s assertion of the need for writers who can “even imagine real grounds for hope.” This collection of short stories may not offer “real grounds” but there is a definite cheerfulness to the tales, despite their grim settings; the undefeated, even kindly, side of dystopia. The stories are loosely linked by the re-use of place or character. While no overall mosaic-pattern or world-view emerges, there is an appeal in the effect of a light being shone through random windows to illuminate brightly but briefly the lives within.
The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories by Francis Stevens
(MIT Press, 2024)
Reviewed by Andy Sawyer
This “Radium Age” collection, edited by Lisa Yazek, features an intriguing novel and a number of short stories by Francis Stevens (Gertrude Mabel Barrows Bennett), “the woman who invented dark fantasy.” The 1919 novel, The Heads of Cerberus is, as Yazek notes, more than dark fantasy. Its multi-generic approach sheds an interesting light on fiction in the early 20th century, when the specialist magazines had yet to crystallise and you were never sure what sort of story you were reading.
It begins with a contemporary crime flavour (someone breaking into a house discovers it’s his old friend’s), adds a touch of fantasy (a mysterious powder secreted in a statue seems to have magic powers), and turns into an ingenious dystopian SF novel as our characters are flung into a future Philadelphia. There’s a touch of Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) in the way this future is extrapolated from Stevens’ present, but the explanation of what the powder is and what might actually be the relationship of 2118 Philadelphia to that present returns to something which might be outright fantasy or a premonition of the many-worlds theory. Stevens may be having her generic cake and eating it here, but she devours it with gusto. So should the reader. While the stage-Irish muscular giant, Trenmore, embodies the cliché inherent in genre, there’s a moment of heartbreak for one of the minor characters as explanations are wound up that can easily be overlooked.
Red Dwarf: Discovering the TV Series: Volume I: 1988–1993 by Tom Salinsky
(Pen & Sword Books, 2024)
Reviewed by Andrew Openshaw
Red Dwarf: Discovering the TV Series by Tom Salinsky takes readers on a detailed journey through the early years of one of Britain’s most enduring sci-fi comedies. Covering the series from its debut in 1988 to 1993, Salinsky’s book is both a homage to the brilliance of Red Dwarf and a nuanced critique. He balances reverence for creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor with an unflinching look at the series’ imperfections and quirks. This first volume brims with insight, humour, and a wealth of behind-the-scenes anecdotes, making it an essential read for fans and newcomers alike.
Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh
Ghosts are a classic horror fiction trope. We expect them to be creepy, terrifying, and somewhat unhinged, so much so that it can be hard to do something inventive with ghosts. Nuzo Onoh writes a fantasy novel set in 1977 Nigeria, which draws on the emotive elements of possession stories in African folklore to create Ibaja-La, the spirit world where dead brides gather. Here, brides of all faiths and cultures who have met untimely deaths become Ghost-Brides, waiting for the chance to possess a living bride and have their dream wedding. Most of the Ghost-Brides that 11-year-old Bata encounters are friendly if tragic, but as she spends more time among them, she begins to recognise that the vengeful Ghost-Brides pose a serious threat to living brides in their determination to possess them.
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