Locus Online

Metallic Realms , Lincoln Michel (Atria 978-1668058671, hardcover, 320pp, $28.99) May 2025.

Is it possible to be both savage and loving towards the object of your attentions? Cruel to be kind? Passive-aggressive? I guess what I am trying to delineate is nothing other than that old cliché, a “love-hate relationship.” If we acknowledge this oft-encountered, paradoxical mélange of emotions that a person may hold, then I think we have a ...Read More

Black Brane, Michael Cisco (CLASH Books 978-1-96098-861-4, $17.95, 170pp, tp) July 2025.

Given my passion for the absurd, I’m almost em­barrassed to admit I’ve never read a novel or short story by Michael Cisco. It’s not as though I’ve just discovered his work – I’ve been aware of Cisco go­ing back more than two decades, starting with the publication of his third novel, The Golem, which I purchased ...Read More

Volatile Memory, Seth Haddon (Tordotcom 978-1-25036-468-5, $21.99, 176pp, hc). July 2025. Cover by Zoë van Dijk.

Seth Haddon’s Volatile Memory is a fantastically embodied novella. Bodies – whether and how they can be altered, how they impact on identity – are at the heart (sorry) of the story. Which shouldn’t be a surprise given that one of the central characters is disembodied, and the other is a trans woman ...Read More

Kitemaster, Jim C. Hines (Arc Manor/Caezik 978-1-647-10160-2, $24.99, 260pp, hc) May 2025.

The first thing you need to know about Jim Hines’s wonderful new fantasy Kitemaster is that it involves huge sailing ships – think Spanish galleons – that can fly. They are controlled by the kitemasters of the title, who include protagonist Nial Sarnin. New to the calling, she promptly catches the attention of the crew of the kiteship ...Read More

This Is Not A Ghost Story, Amerie (Morrow 978-0-3586-5308-0, $27.00, hc) June 2025.

In the opening pages of This Is Not A Ghost Story, a Black man called John finds himself in a mysterious building surrounded by a mysterious sea. He is amnesiac and has no sense of time. He watches objects float past in the water, everything from a laptop to a wardrobe to what might be ...Read More

Welcome back for another week of the best new book releases of the week! We’re excited to tell you about our picks for the top releases in the SF, Fantasy, Horror, and YA fields! We post regularly and we’d hate for you to miss out, so consider subscribing to our YouTube channel to keep up-to-date on future releases! We here at Locus thank you for all the support you give ...Read More

Bright Dead Star, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean 978-1-64524-265-9, $45.00, 448pp, hc) July 2025.

Zoetrope Bizarre, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean 978-1-64524-309-0, 104pp) July 2025.

“Maybe I am simply an unreliable narrator,” muses the narrator of “Build Your Houses With Their Backs to the Sea”, one of the 25 tales collected in Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Bright Dead Star, and it’s something worth keeping in mind while reading many of ...Read More

khōréō 5.1

“Cypress Teeth” by Natasha King in khōréō 5.1 is a brief tale full of gorgeous prose about a mortal preparing to make a bargain with a forgotten god who was exiled to the swamps of Louisiana by the Devil. “The Significance Cofactor” by H.H. Pak is effectively told from the perspective of tourist from the distant future temporarily inhabiting the body of a perfectly ...Read More

The Bewitching, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey 978-0-59387-432-5, $29.00, 368pp, hc) July 2025.

From early in her career, Silvia Moreno-Gar­cia has shown an almost scholarly interest not only in Mexican legends and folklore, but in horror as a genre, especially the Lovecraf­tian tradition that she and Paula Stiles alluded to with Innsmouth Magazine and a series of anthologies – all of which demonstrated, among other things, that women have just ...Read More

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Vintage) has won the second annual Inside Literary Prize, which was celebrated at a ceremony held at The New York Public Library.

The Inside Literary Prize, launched in 2024 by Freedom Reads, is “the first-ever US-based literary prize awarded exclusively by currently incarcerated people.” The winner was selected by a jury of 300 incarcerated individuals from 12 prisons across six states and territories. ...Read More

The shortlist for the 2025 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic was announced on June 21, 2025.

The winner, who will be announced in the fall, receives a ...Read More