What I'm Reading: Booklist's Annual Spotlight on SF/F/H Issue

Friday, I highlighted the lists and bonus content in the August 2023 issue of Booklist, the spotlight on Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.

Today, I am focusing on the 3 reviews I have this in this issue that is bursting with Superlative Fiction. All three titles are high demand and perfect for a general public library audience. I loved them all individually, but what I want to say about them as a group is that all three books approach Horror from a  different angle. Taken together these three books show how broad the genre is from the way the stories are told, to  the subgenres and tropes they explore, to the chill they leave you with after you turn the final page.

As usual, I have my draft reviews to which I have added extra appeal info, more readalikes, and my three words.

STAR

The Dead Take the A Train

Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

Oct. 2023. 400p. Tor Nightfire, $28.99 (9781250867025); e-book (9781250867032). 
First published August 2023 (Booklist).

Kadrey, Urban Fantasy mainstay, and Khaw, a Horror rising star, team up for a cinematic and immersive “eldritch whale”* of a duology opener. Julie, 29, is starting to feel the aches and pains of her job, using her small, magic packed body to help keep NYC clear of monsters. She recovers with booze and drugs, barely making enough money to cover the rent. But when an old flame, the head of “Excision” for one of the top Wall Street firms, comes asking Julie for help she starts a chain of events that threatens to eat** up the whole world in its wake. Told with dark humor, excellent world building that never sacrifices the fast pace, an engaging narration with multiple points of view that allows the characters to fully develop, from Julie and her ragtag team of flawed but sympathetic friends to villains both human and otherworldly, action sequences that are as fun as they are visceral, and a scathing rebuke of capitalism, this is an original, thought-provoking, and entertaining title that will call to readers from multiple dimensions***. For fans of Sandman Slim combined with the Cosmic Horror of The City We Became by Jemisin and Sister, Maiden, Monster by Snyder.

Further Appeal: I often include notes to my editor about specific words she cannot remove because since I only get 200 words for a star review, I have to make them count. I often remove these notes when I publish the drafts here on the blog, but these are not spoilers and I think including them gives you more information about who would enjoy this book. So here are the comments to pair with the *'s above:

*a phrase that is used toward the end of the book. I knew I wanted to use it in the opening lines right away.

**”eats” is key. One of the monsters is “the mother who eats.”

***cosmic horror humor but also an appeal statement because it will appeal to MANY

This story will appeal to a lot of reader for so many reasons, but like Kadrey's Sandman Slim's series does. The  awesome cast of severely flawed characters are a huge part of that. There are a core team you want to root for, and they are all interesting and distinct.

The language here is also a highlight. Great turns of phrase, lines you want to reread, but this has become Khaw's signature as an author. 

Here are some more notes I took while reading:

• Excellent world building without sacrificing plot– just slightly askew from “normal” NYC.
• Engaging narration
• Fast paced, action packed
• All five sense are employed here. It is gory and squishy and smelly and awesomely done. Nothing is gratuitous.
• A satire of wall street greed and capitalism in general
• Books and research play a part in the story
• Spells, witchcraft, magic, immortal powerful beings PLUS eldritch horror– lots of it.
• Tyler is an awesome villain
• The monsters are so creative and unique.

This book (and its planned sequel) will bring new fans to Cosmic Horror because this is cinematic, fun, action packed, with great world building, characters, humor and lots of great fight sequences.

The violence and gore are very much present and you can smell, taste, touch, hear and see all of it. It works, It is all necessary. The extravagance of the gore is key to the story telling. 

Three Words That Describe This Book: Great characters, Action packed, Cosmic Horror

STAR
Last to Leave the Room
By Caitlin Starling
Oct. 2023. 320p. St. Martin’s, $29 (9781250282613); e-book (9781250282620). First published August 2023 (Booklist).

Starling’s latest is her most original, compelling, and terrifying novel yet, a tale that signals her growth as a writer and is sure to bring the attention of even more readers. Dr Tasmin Rivers is a brilliant scientist, leading a top-secret experiment, deep underground, for a large corporation in San Siroco. During their research, her team discovers that everything within the city limits is slowly sinking 27 mm a month, except Tasmin’s basement, which is sinking even faster. Or is it stretching? As she becomes more obsessed with the happenings in her own home, Tasmin loses track of time, her team, and the danger facing the city, until the day a door appears in her basement, out of nowhere, and through it walks her exact, physical double. What follows is a thought provoking, creative, and compelling novel, one that relentlessly squeezes unease out of the reader, palpably closing in around them and Tasmin, presenting a cautionary tale so deeply unsettling that it is best described as a depiction of existential dread itself. For fans of the liminal space where science fiction and cosmic horror overlap such as in Kingfisher’s The Hollow Places or Moreno’s This Things Between Us.

Further appeal: Here is a note I took immediately after finishing this novel: A mixture of her last two big 5 novels. I see bits and pieces of the ideas and narrative choices of both, but I also see tremendous growth here as it is better than both individually but she needed to write those to pull this one off. For context, here're my thoughts on those two novels: The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence.

More notes: 

• I feel like this book is existential dread explained in a novel. Like it is the definition of it. 
• No one does claustrophobia on the page better than Starling.
• Narrative restraint enhances the dread

Finally, the POV never switches off of Tasmin which is KEY to why the story works. I noted a point just about half way through (page 165 in my print ARC) where a key change in the plot begins to happen, but the narrative restraint Starling showed in keeping the point of view ONLY with Tasmin makes this book a star. It allows the unease, existential dread, and claustrophobia to rise above the plot itself.

Three Words That Describe This Book: Breathtakingly Original, Claustrophobic, Existential Dread

Further Readalikes: I would add Klara and the Sun and Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro as well as Dark Matter by Crouch. I left that last one out of the text of the review because while the doppelganger issue and the questions of who is the original and who is the copy are here in this story, it is not the main thrust AND that book is more thriller paced, but it is worth noting. Finally, Wonderland by Zoje Stage is also a great readalike here.

Nestlings
By Nat Cassidy
Oct. 2023. 304p. Tor Nightfire, paper, $18.99  (9781250265258); e-book (9781250265241). First published August 2023 (Booklist).

Keep for blog.

Cassidy (Mary) returns with another engrossing and disturbing Horror novel, this time focused on New York City real estate, antisemitism, new parenthood, grief and, oh yes, vampires. After years of trying, Ana and Reid welcomed daughter Charlie, but her birth put Ana in a wheelchair. Every day that first year was a struggle, that is until their name comes up in a housing lottery, landing them an apartment in the luxurious, famous, and mysterious Deptford. However, it is immediately clear that Reid and Ana do not belong there, and their discomfort escalates, getting more terrifying with each passing day, even as Charlie gets more comfortable. Cassidy builds the intense atmosphere, characters, and his fascinating vampire lore without sacrificing the pacing, masterfully working important details into the action and shifting the point of view when necessary. As a result, readers will be snared in a web of intrigue as Ana and Reid fight for their family and, ultimately, their lives. A visceral story that will entertain readers from start to finish, coating them in dread even as it plays with their minds and pushes their limits much like The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Hendrix and What Kind of Mother by Chapman.

Further Appeal: Before I say anything else, I need all of you to make sure you read the moving afterward  at the end of this book. Seriously. It is important and adds even more emotional and terrifying depth to this already emotional and terrifying story. Just don't miss it.

Okay but back to my notes as I read this book:

• GREAT ending. I hate when I am enjoying a book at the ending sucks. That is NOT the case here. This book sticks its landing. Realistic ending on many levels. There really is no way for the characters here to “win” but there is a resolution that makes a lot of sense within the framework and history of the sub  genre of “vampire menace”
• A cosmic touch as well which I liked because vampires would have a similar attitude when it came to humans as the elder gods would. It is not explicit but it is there.
• As much as about grief as it about vampires
• The Jewish frame here is literal and existential. The phrase "We do not belong here," is one Jews know and feel all of the time and throughout history. As a fellow Jew, I got it immediately, but again, that afterward, he explains it well.
• Excellent taking the scary vampire trope and looking at it through a Jewish lens. Usually is is framed with Christian imagery and language. Also he comments that the vampires go back way before Christianity and that true. What goes back further? Judaism. It would make sense to look at our history for some answers. Also the matrtiarchal nature of Judaism makes sense here too. I loved it as a Jew, but I also want to point out that it is important representation into a subgenre that has been told from mostly a Christian frame and for far too long. Everyone of every identity can use the vampire to invoke fear.
• Speaking of the long standing vampire trope, I love how the “true story” behind the “vampires” is revealed to be that we humans got it mostly correct. That would make sense that if there were vampires living among us, we would have some of it correct but not all. I loved that part. It honors the tradition of the trope.

I have written a lotbut I promise you, I have worked hard to give nothing away here. One of my notes was that this book deserves more than the 170 words I am allowed, so I made sure to give them here.

Three Words That Describe This Book: Jewish frame, vampire menace, immersive dread

Further Readalikes: Cassidy cites The Tribe by Bari Wood as helping him write a clearly Jewish horror novel.  Cassidy is part of an exciting explosion of Horror with a conscious and specific Jewish frame. Other recent tiles of note that I would include here are Midnight on Beacon Street by Emily Ruth Verona (for which I will have a review in the January issue of Library Journal) and Zachary Rosenberg's Long Shalom and Hungers as Old as This Land. Rosenberg will be featured on the Hour blog during the month of October as well.

There are a lot of vampire books right now, scary vampire books. Get ready.

Also I would consider the Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Tremblay as well.