Tor.com content by

Martin Cahill

book reviews

Memory and Humanity in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Thu Feb 27, 2020 3:00pm 1 comment 4 Favorites [+]

If you were to try and name a master of modern short fiction in science fiction and fantasy, Ken Liu would have to be among those contending for the title. Winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, in addition to a plethora of translation work of Chinese science fiction and fantasy, a previous short fiction collection, as well as multiple novels and other work across different media, Liu is prolific writer, and an insightful and incisive one.

Having already published The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Liu is back with The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, a short fiction collection featuring a never before seen novelette, an excerpt from his next novel The Veiled Throne, as well as a whole host of recent stories. And while The Paper Menagerie focused more on family, history, love, and the fantastical, The Hidden Girl is more laser-focused on issues of science fiction—the future, climate change, artificial intelligence, and more.

book reviews

A Debut With Music and Heart: Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

Tue Jan 14, 2020 1:30pm 2 comments 1 Favorite [+]

A man in a distant world races through his entire life, falling in love with a woman he only sees for one night every fifteen years. A captain of a clunker starship travels back and forth through time and space for a contract, so desperate to carve out her own future, she ends up leaving her past behind her. A brilliant engineer is caught between being in love and building a home for the human race, and regrets her decision for her entire life. A young boy appears suddenly from the sky, crashing to a strange planet from out of nowhere; he cannot speak, but expresses himself through music, his story found in the bittersweet song of a flute. While these threads all seem to tell a different story, trust me, they don’t. Debut novelist Simon Jimenez takes each of them, and weaves them together to build The Vanished Birds, an intricate, affecting, haunting, and beautiful science fiction story that spans time, space, and lives.

Reader, I cried.

book reviews

Sisters Against the World: City of Stone and Silence by Django Wexler

Thu Jan 9, 2020 3:00pm Post a comment 3 Favorites [+]

When we last left Isoka, aboard the mysterious ghost-ship Soliton, she had managed to rally the denizens of the ship to her side, gain a better understanding of her second Well of magic, (Eddica the Well of Spirits), and managed to keep the majority of people safe from the threat of the Vile Rot. Now, Soliton sails onward, to colder climes, with no one knowing where they’re headed. Isoka, called the Deepwalker and now defacto leader for her exploits in Ship of Smoke and Steel, works with her girlfriend Meroe (a royal mage-born exile with the ability to heal), and the rest of the crew to prepare for the worst. But no one is prepared to land on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere, filled with strange beasts, the undead, and a warlord intent on consuming Isoka and all she can do.

book reviews

Worth Fighting For: The Killing Light by Myke Cole

Tue Nov 12, 2019 2:00pm 1 comment 2 Favorites [+]

Winter comes, and three communities come together to make an army of the people, as Heloise, the Queen of Crows, the Armored Saint, seeks change everything about the world she lives in. Tragedy after tragedy, bittersweet victory after tremendous loss, she finally finds herself at the head of a group of people all seeking to put an end to the death grip the tyrannical Order holds on the world. Part foreign army seeking to put down aggressors, part traveling community seeking peace, and part citizens sick of falling prey to the terror and oppression of those in power, each in their own way look to Heloise to lead them. Some see her as a holy figure, a Palantine, a saint sent by the Emperor to guide them. Others see a revolutionary who stood up for them, so that they may stand for her. And others still a weak, scared young woman in a war machine, barely holding it together. As the Sacred Throne trilogy ends, Heloise will find out exactly who she is, and what it is she is meant to do. If she can survive what the world throws at her.

In this final volume of his epic fantasy trilogy, Cole brings us a story that simultaneously celebrates the elements of grimdark fiction that were a staple of fantasy in the early 2000s, while also working to interrogate them rigorously.

book reviews

Trolls and Troubles: Unnatural Magic by C. M. Waggoner

Wed Nov 6, 2019 2:30pm Post a comment 2 Favorites [+]

Onna Gebowa is a talented mage in her small town of Coldridge-on-Sea, and has spent her life preparing to go to the Weltsir University, to study magic and become a great magician. Tsira is a reig, a troll of her clan (with some human lineage) born to leadership, power, and guidance for the day she inherits her mother’s clan. But not everything goes according to plan. Onna finds herself spurned from the University, and Tsira finds herself on her own, each of them seeking their own way forward, a way to become who they’re meant to be, while navigating a world desperate to make them who they think they should be. But when Onna finds apprenticeship in the most unusual of places, and Tsira befriends and nurses a wounded soldier back to health, each of them suddenly finds a new path forward, as well as a new threat to combat. Someone in their world is murdering trolls. With blood on the wind, Onna and Tsira each must do their part to find the murderer, ultimately together, and each work to keep their newly forged lives and friends safe from harm.

In brief, Unnatural Magic, a debut from author C. M. Waggoner, is utterly delightful.

book reviews

Taking the Chosen Path: Fate of the Fallen by Kel Kade

Mon Nov 4, 2019 1:30pm 2 comments 1 Favorite [+]

A chosen one sets off on the road, accompanied by a stalwart companion or two, destined to combat a great darkness or evil, due by prophecy or folly to rise again. We know that story. What we don’t know is what happens when that chosen one is slaughtered on his first night out, his companions splintered, his fate taken from him before he can even take a step toward fulfilling it. As Fate of the Fallen opens, we see the charismatic, strong-willed, tempered Matthias fall to a monster on the road. The mage who was to guide him realizes how futile it is to even attempt to fulfill the prophecy now; with the death of Matthias, it seems the fate of the world is fated to fall.

The only one who says no, who refuses this inevitability, is Matthias’s lifelong friend and now, reluctant hero, Aaslo. Taking up the mantle of his friend, Aaslo is determined to spread the word of the fall of the Lightbane, and to do his best to step into his friend’s role, or failing that, at least warn the world of the war against darkness to come. With that Kel Kade’s Fate of the Fallen takes off, wandering and meandering through a world on the brink of war, though what final shape it will take, no one seems to quite know.

book reviews

Myths & More: The Mythic Dream, edited by Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien

Fri Sep 6, 2019 1:30pm Post a comment 8 Favorites [+]

They started with fairy tales. Then, they moved into the worlds of machines and magic. And now, after their first two anthologies won Shirley Jackson Awards, they venture further, into the world of myth. For their newest anthology, The Mythic Dream, recent Hugo winners Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien revisit myths of our past and explore how they can teach us about our present and future. With an incredible line-up of authors, Wolfe and Parisien have crafted another gorgeous anthology, full of stories that speak to the heart of why these tales have persisted for centuries, why they resonate with people of all times, and what they still have to teach us.

Interviews

The Adventure Zone Creators Travis McElroy, Clint McElroy, and Carey Pietsch on the Leap from Podcast to Graphic Novel

Wed Jul 10, 2019 1:00pm Post a comment 1 Favorite [+]

Cover art by Carey Pietsch

This time last year, an extraordinary alchemy occurred: Through meticulous plotting, a lot of enthusiasm, intense collaboration, and gorgeous artwork, The Adventure Zone DnD podcast became a graphic novel. Itself a spin-off of the McElroy brothers’ podcast My Brother, My Brother, and Me, The Adventure Zone has taken on a life of its own; their first campaign spans 69 episodes, the first 6 of which were adapted into their very first graphic novel last summer, The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins.

After garnering huge acclaim (and hitting the NYT Bestseller’s List), it was only a matter of time before a second graphic novel would arrive. The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited! publishes July 16th, returning to the world of Magnus, Taako, and Merle—this time they’re seeking a Grand Relic hidden somewhere on the eponymous locomotive, where it seems foul play is at hand…

I had the chance to sit down with Clint McElroy (Merle Highchurch, Dwarven Cleric), Travis McElroy (Magnus Burnsides, Human Fighter), and Carey Pietsch (Human Illustrator), to talk about the success of the first graphic novel, how their collaboration translates the podcast to the page, and what they loved most about Murder on the Rockport Limited.

book reviews

Family, Food, and Futures in The Sol Majestic by Ferret Steinmetz

Tue Jun 11, 2019 3:00pm Post a comment 2 Favorites [+]

Kenna is starving.

He has been for a while now. And if his parents cared for anything as much as they care for their Inevitable Philosophies, the highly specific and highly amorphous guiding lights they’ve dedicated their lives to, maybe he wouldn’t be so hungry. But traveling the stars in cramped transport units, unable to fend off bullies who steal his highly-processed nutrition crackers, Kenna arrives at Savor Station so hungry, he’s almost willing to steal to live. And then he stumbles upon the line for The Sol Majestic. A restaurant so renowned, so grand, it holds reservations years in advance, its mysterious owner Paulius hosts a contest every night: one table, free of charge, for anyone who can answer a riddle. When Kenna stumbles upon the right answer, his life is forever changed—the doors to The Sol Majestic are opened to him, an entry to a world he never thought he’d ever see.

book reviews

A Rollicking Tale of Revenge: Sam Sykes’ Seven Blades in Black

Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:00pm Post a comment 4 Favorites [+]

Over the course of his first six books, Sam Sykes has worked very hard to illustrate his vision of what fantasy fiction can be, focusing not just on epic battles between magic users, but also on the price they pay, and what the horrors they see can do to their heart, mind, and soul. He shows us not just the heroes of an age working together to vanquish a great evil, but also the horrendous friction that can result from a half-dozen very different people working together, and the sense that maybe that there’s more to the story behind that great evil than one might suspect. And there’s not just the sweat and steam of flirting between protagonists on display, but also the agonizing heart-pain of loving someone who you fear you’ll never understand, and who is just as scared that you’ll leave them before they have a chance to open up.

For Sam Sykes, fantasy is much more than what we’ve come to expect; it has to have some nuance, some damn heart, while also presenting the reader with massive, magical battles that are so intense that they make you feel as if you’re about to fly out of your seat.

If you agree with that thesis statement, then Seven Blades in Black, Sykes’s newest novel in his Grave of Empires series, is categorically for you.

book reviews

A Stunning Debut: Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire

Tue Mar 26, 2019 2:00pm 7 comments 5 Favorites [+]

In this stunning debut, Mahit Dzmare is the latest in a long line of free peoples who have had to live under the influence of the one of the largest imperial powers in the known galaxy: the Teixcalaanli Empire. The vast Empire is a source of culture, poetry, fashion, literature, oration, ethics, and more, whose influences spread across their many systems and beyond, like arrows of sunlight streaking into the dark of space. And while very few are able to stand up to and apart from the Empire, Mahit’s people on Lsel Station remain independent, though they exist next to and within the grasp of the Empire, aided by an ambassador on the surface of the Teixcalaanli capital—a planet simply called “The City,” heart and jewel of the Empire.

When a sudden call for a new ambassador comes to Lsel Station, Mahit is chosen and hurriedly given her imago, the tiny piece of technology that gives her access to an old memory-self of Yskander, the former ambassador. The imago integrates Yskander into her neurology, so that he’ll always be in her mind in order to help and advise her. The only problem: the imago hasn’t been updated in years, and both Mahit and Yskander are in the dark as to the current situation within the City, and what happened to current-day Yskander. Only upon landing does Mahit learn what’s happened: Yskander is dead…and with that revelation, her imago goes silent.

book reviews

Instruments of Our Own Destruction: Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett

Tue Jan 29, 2019 11:00am Post a comment 1 Favorite [+]

Vigilance, a new novella by Robert Jackson Bennett, is a love story between America and its guns—and as with all toxic relationships, someone’s going to get hurt.

In a near-future America undergoing a fast, steep decline—a nation where the young have left for safer and brighter ports, while an older generation hangs on by its fingernails to the old vision of what America could be—a right-wing news organization has found the exact thing to prey on their fear. This America, much like our own, is both fascinated by and numb to the horrors of mass shootings: people are still willing to watch the coverage, and not yet sick of it enough to turn away from the brutality. So John McDean, one of the lead marketers for Our Nation’s Truth television network, has turned shootings into a reality TV show: Vigilance.

book reviews

Hidden Depths and Dangerous Waters: Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:00pm Post a comment 4 Favorites [+]

Django Wexler is an accomplished fantasy writer, as evidenced by his epic fantasy series The Shadow Campaigns, as well as his middle grade series, The Forbidden Library. Between those two series, he’s shown that he can write complex, complicated characters of all ages while also tackling larger issues woven around weighty themes such as war, family, love, and more. With his newest novel, Ship of Smoke and Steel, Wexler flexes those powerful muscles once more, and ventures forth into the realm of Young Adult fantasy with a world that’s built around brutal magic, flexible morality, complicated feelings, and the difficulties of growing up when all you’ve ever been is a weapon.

book reviews

Community, Revolution, and Power: How Long ‘til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin

Tue Nov 27, 2018 1:30pm 6 comments 5 Favorites [+]

What started out as the topic of an essay written back in 2013 has now become the rallying cry behind multiple award-winning writer N. K. Jemisin’s first short story collection, How Long ’til Black Future Month? Following on the heels of her third Hugo win in three years for The Broken Earth trilogy, Jemisin’s new collection is an encapsulation of her artistic vision, from the start of her career to where she is today.

How Long ’til Black Future Month? illustrates time and again that Jemisin’s skill isn’t limited to novels, nor is it limited to worlds of epic fantasy; her short fiction shows that Jemisin just has talent, and it shines no matter the world.

fairy tales

Over the Garden Wall is A Sweet, Strange Journey into The Unknown

Fri Nov 9, 2018 11:00am 3 comments 5 Favorites [+]

If you’ve ever seen Over the Garden Wall, chances are you’ve seen it more than once—it’s a show that rewards repeat viewings. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a bit hard to explain—it’s an Emmy award-winning animated miniseries that first aired on the Cartoon Network in November, 2014. It’s weird, and beautiful, and not like anything else you’ve ever seen, and features the voice talents of Elijah Wood and Christopher Lloyd, along with John Cleese, Tim Curry, singer Chris Isaak, and opera singer Samuel Ramey, among others. I recently rewatched it, as I tend to do every November. Here’s why.

Everyone in my family dies in November.