Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 2023.02


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Rose of Jericho: Eerie, beguiling fantastical Americana

Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian

Rose of Jericho (2025) is a sequel to Alex Grecian’s wild and vivid Americana fantasy Red Rabbit. Several characters from that book appear here, as the action shifts from the 1880s Midwest to Ascension, Massachusetts, where people who die aren’t staying dead.

This review contains spoilers for Red Rabbit.

In the village of Ascension, Clarissa Sinclair is dying of cancer. Her self-centered, uncaring husband sent her to their summer home,


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The Salt-Black Tree: Magical cars are cool

The Salt-Black Tree By Lilith Saintcrow

The Salt-Black Tree came out in 2023, three months after Book One of THE DEAD GOD’S HEART duology. Three things are obvious. One: This was written as one longer book. Two: it would have worked better if it had been published that way. Three: Magical cars are cool.

Book Two opens with a repeat of the final chapter of Spring’s Arcana. After finding another part of her arcana as the emerging goddess of spring,


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An Instruction in Shadow: Goes down smoothly

An Instruction in Shadow by Benedict Jacka 

An Instruction in Shadow is Benedict Jacka’s follow up to An Inheritance of Magic, his tale of modern-day magic and family intrigue set in London. The main character remains likably engaging, the magic intriguing, the family history labyrinthine, and if the story doesn’t perhaps progress quite as much as one would prefer, it all results in a smoothly enjoyable read.

Stephen Oakwood is continuing to hone his “drucraft” while working at locating magical wells for a big drucraft company,


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Wicked Problems: Save the world, or fix the world?

Reposting to include Bill’s new review.

Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone

Save the world, or fix the world? Can we do either? These questions underlie the second book in Max Gladstone’s CRAFT WARS series, Wicked Problems. Other things are happening in this 2024 installment, too, and the ending, while anticipated, is a gamechanger for everyone involved.

In Book One, Dead Country, Craftswoman Tara Abernathy took on a student, the orphaned and traumatized Dawn.


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Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands: Complications abound and danger stalks our heroes

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

This review of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands contains spoilers for Book One, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Heather Fawcett’s second book, published in 2024, advances the adventures of scholars Emily Wilde and Wendell Bamblely as they prepare to embark on a perilous quest. It also introduces some new characters to the mix, and I’ll be interested to see if they appear again in the third book of the series.


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The Book That Broke the World: Enjoyable throughout its entire length

The Book That Broke the World by Mark Lawrence

It’s funny that as I was reading Mark Lawrence’s The Book That Broke the World (2024), I kept thinking how it was much more action/plot oriented than its predecessor, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, which in my head I recalled as far more character and theme-driven. Then, in preparation for writing this review, I went back and read my review of book one and saw that I’d noted how the action “quickens at a relentlessly breathless rate.” So maybe it’s a balance thing?


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The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles: Come for the mystery, stay for the great characters

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

On Jupiter, known as Giant, Mossa, an Investigator, and Pleiti, scholar and instructor, are on a new case, involving the disappearance of a student. As Mossa explores, she finds not one, but seventeen university students, faculty and staff have gone missing. What the two sleuths will uncover in 2024’s The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, by Malka Older, will destabilize Pleiti’s already-shaky faith in the university system, and her life’s work, even further.

These novellas are a pure pleasure to read.


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The Truth of the Aleke: A fantastic read

The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi

The Truth of the Aleke is Moses Ose Utomi’s sequel to his fantastic The Lies of the Ajungo, which I said in my review was “as close to perfect a modern parable as I’ve read in some time.” I’m happy to report that if the follow-up isn’t quite as “perfect,” it’s nonetheless a fantastic read, and one that makes me oh so eager to see how Utomi wraps up this loosely connected trilogy set in the Forever Desert.


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What Feasts at Night: This Easton outing is less creepy, more scary

What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher

Alex Easton, protagonist of T. Kingfisher’s 2023 novella What Moves the Dead, is back with a second adventure in 2024’s What Feasts at Night. Joining Easton is loyal batman Angus and the unflappable British mycologist Miss Potter. This go-round, Easton and company face less of the science and more of the supernatural.

Alex Easton is Gallacian by nationality (a small imaginary country somewhere in central Europe). Easton is a “sworn soldier,” anatomically female but living as a man as part of the military.


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Spark of Destiny: It’s a treat to read some old-fashioned steampunk

Spark of Destiny by Gail Z. Martin & Larry N. Martin

Steampunk as a fiction genre has nearly disappeared. It’s become much more of a fashion or costume statement; or subsumed completely into alternate history. I understand the reasons; and expect the various sub-genres to ebb and flow like everything else. It was still a nice treat to read 2023’s Spark of Destiny by Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin, a genuine steampunk adventure.

Here’s an incomplete list of what I expect in steampunk:

  • alternate European or North American history (or other locations—this is just what I mostly see);

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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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