M. J. Locke : Up Against It

In Up Against It a 25th-century asteroid-based community is beset by a confluence of disasters: a critical resource hemorrhaging accident, a takeover threat by the Martian mob, a rogue artificial intelligence in the asteroid’s systems — the list goes on. It explores both the fragility of human life in a hostile environment, and life’s pluck

Conrad Williams: Use Once, Then Destroy

Williams brings a number of good, and often slightly contradictory, tricks to bear in this collection of 17 stories spanning a dozen years of his career: His prose juxtaposes lyrical, even pastoral imagery with the ugliness of urban decay. The book is full of description like, “There was a moon low in the sky, like

MaryJanice Davidson: Undead and Unwed

What I liked best about Undead and Unwed is that neither Davidson nor her heroine take the proceedings too seriously. Betsy reacts to joining the ranks of the undead with sass and irreverence not totally dissimilar to Buffy’s response to learning that she is “The Slayer.” In fact, I almost wonder if that might have

Stacey Jay: Undead Much

I thought You Are So Undead to Me was fluffy in a fun way, but by the end of Undead Much, I was mostly just annoyed — enough so that it makes me retroactively question my response to the previous book. This time around, what impressed me most was the density of repurposing elements from

Jon Krakauer: Under the Banner of Heaven

Krakauer’s creepy, gripping book uses a brutal double murder committed by Mormon fundamentalists as a vehicle for exploring the convoluted history of Mormonism, with a special emphasis on the Mormon church’s ambivalent relationship over time with polygamy and with direct personal revelation. (I never knew, for instance, that although Joseph Smith practiced polygamy himself, he

Lee Irby: The Up and Up

Small-time hood Frank Hearn makes it out of Irby’s previous Prohibition-era caper novel 7,000 Clams with his skin fundamentally intact and the love of a really terrific dame, but (no spoiler, really) without enough scratch to give her the kind of life he wants to. So in this sequel he goes straight and tries to

Robert Sheckley: Uncanny Tales

Uncanny Tales comprises 16 short stories of uneven quality from the final two decades of Sheckley’s career. “Magic, Maples and Maryanne,” is a fine cautionary fable of magic and morality with an almost Jonathan Carroll-like vibe. “The New Horla” (the title is a reference to a classic Guy de Maupassant short) is grimly gripping in

Diana Peterfreund: Under the Rose: An Ivy League Novel

I was a little hard on Secret Society Girl, so I’m happy to report that Under the Rose addresses both major defects I complained of in the first novel: less heavy-handed telegraphing of evolving plot points, no deus ex machina. Amy Haskel’s breezy narrative voice is if anything even more assured, and the novel was