This review was first published by Booklist on April 1, 2025.

**STARRED REVIEW** This dark fantasia of magical realism is set in a city split in two, one version stuck in perpetual winter, one in unremitting summer, both cut off from the rest of the world. The mystery of how it happened is inextricably knotted up with the conflicts in the town’s most powerful family. Two cousins separated by the split must unravel the mystery, defy authority, and find their way back to each other. This is one of those novels that’s impossible to describe without reducing its magic. It’s strange and eerie, familiar and alien, compelling and off-putting, deeply rendered and mysterious, meditative and unexpectedly comforting. It feels more like a modern fable than contemporary fantasy. It’s an examination of family, conflict, and love, and how people and places imprint on each other, a kaleidoscope of time and atmosphere. The world and characters are equally complex and believable, and both are essential to the story. Readers must be willing to suspend disbelief for the premise and accept that there really isn’t a full explanation for what happens. But if they allow themselves to immerse in it, the experience is quite wonderful. Recommended for fans of Seanan McGuire and Stephen King’s fantasy work.

This review was first published by Booklist on February 1, 2025.

Life isn’t going so well when Dalton Greaves gets recruited by the alien Unity coalition to be a “ground pounder”—someone who makes first contact with newly discovered, sentient species. Competition for first contact comes from the Assembly, a different coalition of aliens. When Dalton makes contact with the minarchs—a tentacled, insectoid, predatory species—things don’t go at all to plan. He and his partner end up stranded on the minarch planet along with an Assembly “stickman” and get caught up in local political conflicts. Dalton becomes the fourth consort of the minarch queen, forms an unexpected truce with his Assembly enemy, and lands in a fight for his life. Ashton (Mal Goes to War, 2024) excels at creating compelling characters. Especially impressive is how believable his different alien races are: each has its own culture and motivations, and they all make sense. The conflicts that drive the action arise from the miscommunications between them. Speculative fiction is a lens for us to reflect upon ourselves in interesting ways, and this is ultimately a delightful examination of what it means to be human.

This review was first published by Booklist on November 1, 2024.

**STARRED REVIEW** Nieva’s debut expands his O’Henry award-winning short story into a full novel. The result is a dystopian fever dream that’s equal parts poetic and profane, beautiful and splattered with gore. In the year 2272, the polar ice caps have melted, Patagonia is a tropical archipelago, Antarctica is the new Caribbean, terraforming technology is used to create paradises only for the rich, and global corporations make fortunes off of pandemics. Dengue Boy is a mutant mosquito, born to a human mother, who is ostracized as child and grows up to wreak destruction. His foil is El Dulce, an entirely self-centered tween who helps smuggle contraband through Patagonia, whose only real interest is getting his hands on a prime video game console, and who comes face-to-face with a primordial force beyond reckoning. Furthermore, there’s a hallucinogenic video game that breaks the concept of time and causation. Dengue Boy is a trip. It’s a cry of rage against the inhumanity of corporate greed, a mourning for the destruction of our climate, a warning of the dangers we’re unlocking from the thawing ground, and a heartbreaking loss of hope for the future of mankind. It’s a pessimistic and transformative experience that is powerful, challenging, rewarding, and difficult to sit with.

This review was first published by Booklist on November 1, 2024.

The NeoG is set to hand control of the Mars Orbital Station to local Martians—a major step in granting Mars independence. Maxine Carmichael is on site to supervise when the station is hijacked by a group with unclear motives, sowing discord between the NeoG and the Free Mars activists. With Max, Sahib, and several civilians taken hostage, Nika leads a team on the ground to figure out what’s going on, avert disaster, and bring their people back alive. What ensues is a violent fight for survival amidst political intrigue. Wagers refers to this newest NeoG novel (after The Ghosts of Trappist, 2023) as “Die Hard in space.” This is accurate, though it sells the story short. There are deep themes explored here: the brutality of long-standing conflict where everyone is harmed and the psychological cost of violence. The novel is weightier and darker than its predecessors, notably more grim while retaining innate hopefulness. As always, the heart of the story is the emotional support and vulnerability the characters grant one another. It’s the only thing that can heal wounds this deep.