SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

worked on before his law firm let him go produces four cases that might have motivated a double frame-up. The most promising of them is also the most puzzling: Chris’ work on behalf of the citizens of Metuska, Pennsylvania, whose properties were being seized by the local government under the rules of eminent domain. Since the city paid top dollar for the properties and seemed to make no use of them once they were confiscated, Andy can find no reason for the municipal misbehavior. It’s a good thing that his mystification redoubles his commitment to the case, because Chris needs all the help he can get. The climactic revelation, as in all of Andy’s best cases, is both headshakingly incredible and deeply satisfying.

Not many dogs, even less about Christmas, but this holiday package still delivers the goods.

THE STRANGER VANISHES

Staub, Wendy Corsi Severn House (224 pp.) $29.99 | Oct. 4, 2022 978-0-7278-5017-1

An innkeeper in a Spirit-filled little New York town hopes a 19th-century diary will help her find the whereabouts of a missing guest. Juneteenth marks a year since Bella Jordan came to Lily Dale with her young son, Max. The cottage community isn’t the sort of place she thought she’d end up after the sudden death of her husband, Sam, but it turns out to be the perfect spot to heal and renew herself. While most of the community is involved in the woowoo—think clairvoyance and natural healing—Bella’s job as the local innkeeper keeps her engaged in the community without obliging her to draw on a connection to the town’s capital-S Spirit. Not that she doesn’t feel some sort of connection to Spirit, but she’s not yet ready to open herself to it. When Max spends his first night away from home at a sleepover with mischievous neighbor Jiffy, Bella’s left alone to welcome an unanticipated visitor to the inn. Lemuel is a soft-spoken Black man whom Bella implicitly trusts when she sees his gentleness with her cats, Chance and Spidey. Even though her boyfriend, local vet Drew Bailey, has discouraged Bella from opening the place to guests when she’s alone, she’s not worried when she offers Lemuel the Seaside Room for the night. But the next day, Lemuel has vanished without a trace except for the satchel he’s left behind. Worrying overnight about Lemuel’s disappearance, Bella wonders if the old diary in his bag might have clues. As Bella reads the diary, the thoughts of a young woman in the 1800s, she begins to wonder if a link to the past may provide answers about her missing guest.

While the mystery of the moment suffices, the real treat is the slow-growing development of the characters.

science fiction & fantasy

THE ATLAS PARADOX

Blake, Olivie Tor Books (416 pp.) $27.99 | Oct. 25, 2022 978-1-25-085509-1

In the second of a series of fantasy thrillers that began with The Atlas Six (2022), new initiates of a secret magical society confront a web of dangerous conspiracies. Atlas Blakely, Caretaker of the Alexandrian Society, collected his latest crop of initiates with the secret intention of using their magical talents to create a wormhole into the multiverse in search of a better world. His former ally, the time traveler Ezra Fowler, believes that Atlas’ quest will destroy their current world, and in an effort to stop him, he has kidnapped one of Atlas’ prospective initiates (and Ezra’s ex-girlfriend), Libby Rhodes, trapping her 30 years in the past. Meanwhile, the initiation ritual intended to unite the remaining group has only succeeded in driving the already contentious initiates further apart. As Ezra embarks on an uneasy alliance with the Society’s rivals and a furious Libby struggles for the knowledge and resources she needs to return to her present, the initiates pursue various arcane researches, try to understand why the library archives are denying them certain books, fight among themselves, and confront a number of threats from both inside and outside the Society headquarters. Although all of this sounds thrilling (and it is), the series is still primarily concerned with the interior of the characters’ heads (a situation complicated by the presence of two telepaths and an empath). These are broken, self-obsessed people who can’t stop either ruminating over their perceived flaws or pretending they aren’t there while simultaneously being annoyed by, poking at, and/or exploiting the flaws of their compatriots. The author highlights the dangerous selfishness of these behaviors with minor character Belen Jiménez, a Filipina undergraduate whom Libby meets and takes considerable advantage of in 1989 Los Angeles. Belen believes Libby (who’s supposed to be the most moral member of the Atlas Six) is a sympathetic friend who can boost her academic career; that misapprehension brutally alters the course of Belen’s life. The success of the book hinges on whether or not the reader finds these often unlikable protagonists sympathetic in spite of themselves, or at least interesting specimens of psychological damage.

An often riveting yarn if you buy into the premise.

BINDLE PUNK BRUJA

Mesa, Desideria Harper Voyager (400 pp.) $17.99 paper | Sept. 13, 2022 978-0-06-305608-4

One bruja—a witch—takes on the underbelly of 1920s Kansas City. Luna Alvarado leads a double life; when she visits her family’s boxcar, she’s Luna, half-bruja with only the gift of charm, but in the city, she’s Rose Lane, reporter by day and proprietress of the speak-easy the River Rose by night. Luna’s abuela has powerful earth magic, and some of that power has passed down to Luna—enough to influence men through a kiss, but nothing more, possibly because of her White father. If his blood has diluted her Mexican magic, it has also granted her the ability to pass as White, an opportunity her mother insists she seize, even if it means growing apart from her family. Luna also has ambitions of her own: She wants to manage a thriving jazz club, no husband necessary. As Luna takes chance after chance in pursuing her dreams, she becomes ever more entangled with mob factions, rich men who keep secrets, and even the Ku Klux Klan. Tense action and scheming inside and outside the bedroom are interspersed with reflections on Luna’s identity and the inequities of the time that leave so many in the shadows. While the plot and characters are engaging, some dialogue is hampered by overwritten accents that, rather than establishing the setting, verge instead toward parody. Clunky voices aside, the friends and family surrounding Luna are a joy to meet—if she can find it within herself to let them in.

Good flapper fun, if a bit rough around the edges.

THE GOLDEN ENCLAVES

Novik, Naomi Del Rey (432 pp.) $23.99 | Sept. 27, 2022 978-0-593-15835-7

After graduating from her monsterinfested high school, a young witch determined to overcome her inclinations toward dark magic finds that she alone can stave off wizarding society’s collapse. After spending the last four years of her life locked up in the Scholomance—a school carved from interstitial space where mages’ children go to hone their craft—Galadriel “El” Higgins returns to the real world heartbroken. Following their run through a gauntlet of monsters in a grisly graduation rite, her fake boyfriend–turned–true love, Orion, shoved her through the Scholomance’s magical exit and did not follow. Fearing that Orion has been eaten by a maw-mouth—a creature that hopelessly traps its victims in a painful, never-ending dying process—El sets out to end his suffering forever. Getting back into the fallen Scholomance requires a huge supply of mana, as does killing a maw-mouth, and so El must first journey to the world’s most powerful wizard enclaves in search of allies. This globe-trotting adventure quickly turns into a slog, however, as triumphs and tribulations flatten under the weight of exposition and poor pacing. Much of Novik’s attention here feels severely misplaced. Rare moments of tension resolve too quickly for readers to feel their impacts, and the novel founders as El continues the infodumping habit previously seen in A Deadly Education (2020) and The Last Graduate (2021), sucking the narrative pacing dry with long-winded explanations that touch on everything from other characters’ motives to her own powers. We learn a lot about one interesting character only to have her promptly disappear from the story for good. El’s two sexual encounters with a female frenemy serve no purpose in developing either the characters’ individual stories or the narrative as a whole. An enemy El assures us is “an evil monster” earns her redemption with little to no explanation, and everything readers already know—from the way El memorized her friends’ phone numbers to the purpose and value of mana—is bound to be reiterated again and again.

A high-concept adventure that doesn’t think its readers are clever enough to get it.

THE STARS UNDYING

Robin, Emery Orbit (528 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 8, 2022 978-0-316-39139-9

Love, politics, and immortality set against a backdrop of interstellar empire. Altagracia Caviro Patramata is out to take her sister’s throne. Of course, Gracia believes the throne is hers, or ought to be—her twin sister, Arcelia, has never been pious or political enough to appear interested in becoming the Oracle of Alekso and bearing the Pearl, the supercomputer that grants the ability to hear the voice of their planet’s God. But Arcelia seized the throne after their father’s death, and now Gracia has no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of Matheus Ceirran, a military commander from the powerful Ceian empire who’s arrived on her planet chasing a rival from the empire’s civil war. When the would-be queen meets the commander, the attraction is immediate, and their affair begins just as quickly. But for Gracia, the aspiring leader of a religion, to become involved with the commander of a staunchly antireligious empire is no simple matter, and their relationship will ultimately change the fates of both their worlds. There’s a grand, bloody, romantic, complicated story here, but the reader is often missing information that would elucidate the characters’ goals and motivations. Gracia in particular is an interestingly tricky narrator, confessing to lies and withholding information. When the shape of the story does become clear, it’s epic, posing interesting philosophical questions and including many welldrawn, complex characters. Clearer stakes from the start could