This review was first published by Booklist on January 15, 2021.

When Joseph Bridgeman was a teenager, his younger sister, Amy, vanished while under his supervision. She was never found and the loss tore his family apart. Twenty years later, in the midst of crippling depression, a hypnotherapy session unlocks a strange new ability: Joe discovers he can travel back in time. If he can figure out how this power works, maybe he can save his sister. Time travel is used to tell an intimate, personal story here: a tale of grief and guilt and what a loving brother will do to heal the wounds of the past. But there are moral quandaries posed by changing history and Jones doesn’t shy from that. The novel, originally self-published in 2015, offers an ending that isn’t as neat and happy as readers might expect: there’s a cost to getting what you want. Jones’ version of time travel is compelling; though the mechanism remains secret, the rules of time travel are clear. It’s a compelling set up for the next in the Downstream Diaries series.

This review was first published by Booklist on December 1, 2020.

Hail, Star of Indrana, seeks to broker peace between the Farian and the Shen, a task made unimaginably more difficult when she meets the Farian gods and discovers they’re not what everyone has long believed. Now, an ancient, dangerous enemy is hunting them down. To preserve peace and save her empire, Hail must discover the truth behind centuries’ worth of lies and avert an all-out war. But the cost might be more than she can bear, just when she was hoping to finally put violence behind her. What makes Hail such a likable character is her obvious love for her compatriots. What makes her admirable is her unwavering commitment to doing what’s right, even when it’s not at all clear what the right choice is. The story is a compelling mix of action and politics, but Wagers’ strength is crafting character-driven science fiction, and it’s on full display. Everyone, including the villains, are complex and compelling. Relationships, both old and new, are rich. Wagers offers a well-earned, heartfelt, and hopeful conclusion to the Farian War series (which began with There before the Chaos, 2018).

This review was first published by Booklist on September 1, 2020.

Zoey Ashe, still unsure how to manage her father’s massive criminal empire after the events of Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (2015), receives a disemboweled corpse in the mail. Online trolls accuse her of being a cannibal and threaten to attack her home. A rival is growing a private security empire, which may or may not be involved in murder. When her beloved cat, Stench Machine, goes missing, Zoey is ready to tear the city apart to get it back. This may be Wong’s most timely and topical work to date, featuring incels, trolls, and the rise of private security. Wong’s trademark imagination and humor remain but it’s his grounded sense of humanity that elevates this work. Zoey is a good person in bizarre circumstances, doing her best to make the world a better place. Wong knows what makes people tick and his vision of humanity isn’t rose-colored. But he’s also fundamentally an optimist: there are solutions to the problems humanity faces. Not always neat or tidy, not always clean, but readers will feel that they—like Zoey—can stumble through.

YA/General Interest: Futuristic Violence in Fancy Suits won an Alex Award, so teen fans may come looking for its sequel.

This review was first published by Booklist on September 1, 2020.

**STARRED REVIEW** Paolini’s first foray into adult science fiction doesn’t do anything by halves. This is a massive work of space opera with a deep history and complex mythology, epic in scope and packed with action. Kira Navárez, a xenobiologist exploring a new planet, stumbles upon a piece of alien technology that upends human-settled space and sends her on a quest across the galaxy in the company of a scrappy group of traders and a possibly insane superintelligence, all in the middle of an interstellar war. Humanity’s first contact with aliens could spell extinction: the stakes don’t get any higher than this. The concepts in this book aren’t all that original, but the book is not derivative: this is Paolini’s love letter to the genre. The skills honed in his YA fantasy series, Inheritance (Eragon, 2003), are on full display here in his vibrant world building, especially in the mythology of the alien tech. Paolini populates this universe with a large cast of interesting and relatable characters, and mostly avoids reductive good guy/bad guy dynamics, lending the story a sincere emotional depth. Highly recommended for fans of James A. Corey’s The Expanse series and for fantasy fans willing to try space opera.

HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Paolini’s first novel since 2011 is a major departure, and those who grew up on his Inheritance series will be eager to see what he does in a novel sans dragons.