Next SFF Author: A.M. Stanley

Previous SFF Author: Michael A. Stackpole

Series: Stand-Alone

These are stand alone novels (not part of a series).

The Devil in Silver: Monsters in the maze of a poisonous mental health system

The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle had The Devil in Silver published in 2012. The book is set earlier than that; around 2010/2011. Starting with a Greek myth of Theseus in the labyrinth, LaValle layers horror after horror, and maze after maze, onto this scary, dread-inducing story that looks hard at the nature of powerlessness and the systems designed to keep people that way.

Pepper is a big man—that’s how he’s described in the early sentences of the book. He lives in Queens.

The Carnivale of Curiosities: A complex carnival story with an antihero protagonist

The Carnivale of Curiosities by Amiee Gibbs

This carnival book completely satisfied. 2023’s The Carnivale of Curiosities, by Amiee Gibbs, is set in 1880’s London. It’s a slow-burn, late-Victorian-styled literary novel, filled with magic, lies, secrets, and revenge plots, all centered around Ashe and Pretorius’s Carnivale of Curiosities, and its leader, Aurelius Ashe, who can grant anyone nearly any wish… for a price.

Unlike other circuses and carnivals of the day, Ashe uses real magic and many of his “freaks” have magical powers. Some are simply unusual-looking people,

The First Bright Thing: I wish I liked this book more

The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson

Published in 2023, J.R. Dawson’s The First Bright Thing is a solid entry in the subgenre of magical carnivals, joining The Night Circus, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bacchanal, and Mechanique, among others. Once again, good versus evil plays out in the center ring, against the backdrop of big tops and midways. Dawson adds one new ingredient to the mix,

Daughters of Chaos: Try this if you crave beauty and strangeness more than story

Daughters of Chaos by Jen Fawkes

Daughters of Chaos, by Jen Fawkes, came out in 2024. This literary feminist novel plays with layers, offers interesting characters and exquisite descriptions. The germ of the story is a fascinating real-life situation during the American Civil War. The city of Nashville, Tennessee, was occupied by Union troops. The military governor of the occupation grew concerned for the strength of his army and the security of the occupied city when Union soldiers began to get sick from syphilis.

The Book of Elsewhere: An interesting experiment with moments of wonder

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves & China Miéville

You, he thought as it drew back its right left fist, its agglomerated fistmass, on a farrago of an arm, on a stitchwork welter of a shoulder.

2024’s collaboration between acting icon Keanu Reeves and prose icon China Miéville delivers lots of thrills. The Book of Elsewhere, which follows the adventures of a nearly-unkillable warrior, is based on a character created by Reeves in his comic book, BRZRKR.

Orbital: A moving elegy to our environment and planet

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital (2023) will, for some people, barely qualify (if that) as a novel, leaving them crying “Where’s the plot? Nothing happens!” And you know, I can’t argue with them. If you define a novel as a series of plot steps from a to b to c such that change occurs, then yes, Orbital probably won’t squeeze in under that definition. Its focus is less on “what is happening” and more on “what am I feeling about what is happening?” or “What am I thinking about while things are happening?” And if you’re looking for conflict or fleshed out and distinctive characters who are different at the end than when we first meet them,

The Voyage Home: Powerful, in a quieter fashion

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

Amongst the flood of Greek myth retellings over the past number few years, three authors have stood out to me. Two are Madeline Miller and Claire North, the first for her fantastic Circe (not to mention the brilliant The Song of Achilles from a decade earlier) and the second for her excellent and just-concluded SONGS OF PENELOPE trilogy. The third is Pat Barker and her WOMEN OF TROY series,

Mother of Rome: An uneven book

Mother of Rome by Lauren J.A. Bear

Lauren J.A. Bear’s first novel, Medusa’s Sisters, was a sharp feminist retelling of the well-known Greek tale. For her second book, Bear has left the Greeks behind and moved on to the Romans, giving us in Mother of Rome a sort of prequel to the Romulus and Remus Found Rome story. Though I found Mother of Rome to be more uneven than Medusa’s Sisters,

The Spite House: First class cursed-house horror

The Spite House by Johnny Compton

Spite houses are real and I went down a shallow rabbit hole preparing for this review. With his 2023 novel, The Spite House, Johnny Compton takes on the concept of a house built solely to irritate and harass nearby landowners, and morphs it into something original and scary.

Eric Ross and his two daughters, Dessa and Stacy, are making their way through Texas, trying to keep under the radar. They have the normal concerns a black family in Texas would have,

The Militia House: A cursed house reveals the horror of war

The Militia House by John Milas

2023’s The Militia House is the debut novel of John Milas. Set in Afghanistan in 2010, it follows a team assigned to a Landing Zone as they are drawn into an abandoned Russian-invasion-era “militia” house close to their base. The sense of dread grows as the story continues, veering into a surreal world, but as in real life, the greatest horror may simply be war.

Our first-person narrator is Corporal Loyette, and his team consists of Johnson, Blount and Vargas.

Next SFF Author: A.M. Stanley

Previous SFF Author: Michael A. Stackpole

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