After her breakout YA success with These Violent Delights, Chloe Gong has delivered her first adult urban fantasy novel.
Immortal Longings is set in San-Er, a gritty, overpopulated metropolis where citizens are offered a yearly chance for fame and fortune – they can sign up to a Hunger Games-esque battle to the death. The two main characters, Calla Tuolemi and Anton Makusa, both have separate, conflicting motives to fight in the games, but they still team up to navigate their new sea of deadly enemies.
The heart of Immortal Longings is the sci-fi element of body jumping. This is a pretty common practice in San-Er, which leads to some really interesting world-building setups. Like ‘How do you treat your birth body when you know it could be invaded at any second?’ Or ‘How do you perceive gender if you are constantly swapping your physical form?’
Chloe Gong takes advantage of this fascinating concept and uses it both to develop the world and strengthen the characters.
Anton and Calla are based on the Shakespearean personas in Anthony and Cleopatra, so their relationship is layered and full of rivalry. Each character is prickly and unwilling to back down, so it is fun reading when their personalities clash. Also, the twisting, turning plot was a highlight of the book for me. It felt like every chapter introduced a new game-changing revelation. The action was well written and fast paced, but still easy to follow. The only issues I ran into were the massive info-dumps of history and lore that took up whole pages. This narrative choice felt a little clunky to me.
For fans of Chloe Gong and epic, Shakespearean drama, this latest offering is an absolute winner!
Reviewed by Rachel Denham-White
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chloe Gong is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Secret Shanghai novels, as well as the Flesh and False Gods trilogy. Her books have been published in over twenty countries and have been featured in the New York Times, PEOPLE, Forbes and more. She is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she double-majored in English and International Relations. Born in Shanghai and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, Chloe is now located in New York City, pretending to be a real adult.
This Spells Trouble is an exciting middle-grade fantasy set in the land of Dravinia. The story centres around Winston, the apprentice to the bumbling wizard Faramond, as he faces a series of dangers in the magical world.
Winston’s relationship with the wizard Faramond, who is both his mentor and carer, is often funny. Faramond is an inept, often cruel guardian for Winston, but Winston is decidedly smarter than his master, both in magic and in life. There are lots of outlandish situations thrust upon our young hero; carts become infused with giant chicken legs, so that they might run faster; Winston becomes embroiled in a union scandal; and a giant snake with an acerbic wit antagonises Faramond with riddles.
Readers interested in dragons, knights, wizards, and epic quests will find them all here, though played with in unique and sometimes subtle ways. For example, when Winston first encounters the dragon Griffid, the dragon is sleeping and has no real interest in eating people. He’s curt, communicates telepathically, and seems too apathetic to really pose a threat to anyone.
The tale moves at a satisfying clip which makes This Spells Trouble an exciting fantasy story, with a strong plot and distinctive and funny characters which can entertain even a much older reader.
Reviewed by Savannah Hollis
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sean McMullen is an Australian science fiction author with 26 books and more than 100 stories published in over a dozen languages.
His latest novel, Generation Nemesis, grew out of his story The Precedent, which was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It is a powerful but ultimately optimistic novel of climate change revenge, and was published by Wizard’s Tower Press in November 2022.
His collection, Dreams of the Technarion, was published by ReAnimus Press in 2017. It contains ten of his recent stories, plus a history of Australian science fiction from 1837 to 2017, Outpost of Wonder.
Sean became a science fiction professional while an undergraduate, singing in a SF opera staged by the Victorian State Opera. Around now he was also earning money from fantasy, singing ballads in Melbourne’s folk clubs. His career as an author took off when he won the writing competition at the 1985 World SF Convention. All the while he had a day job in scientific computing at the Bureau of Meteorology.
Paul has been short-listed for many awards and has won the Inaugural Peter McNamara and the A Bertram Chandler awards, both of which were for lifetime achievement in science fiction, and the Aurealis and William Atheling awards. In 2022 he was awarded the CBCA’s Leila St John Award for services to Victorian children.
His last fantasy series was The Warlock’s Child (six titles) in collaboration with Sean McMullen. His last anthology is Rich & Rare, comprising almost 50 contributors including Shaun Tan, James Roy, Leigh Hobbs, Gabrielle Wang, Justin D’Ath, Scot Gardner and many others. Paul’s latest books are James Gong — The Chinese Dragon and Tarni’s Chance, illustrated by Jules Ober. His book, Slaves of Quentaris, features in 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Die (UK, 2009).
In The Surviving Sky, Kritika H Rao has created a science fantasy world that is utterly unique and fascinating. Iravan and Ahilya live in Nakshar, a floating city (or ashram) engineered out of plants, which hovers above the volatile planet surface. Iravan is an architect in charge of controlling and levitating the city through a power called ‘trajection’, and Ahilya is his wife, who desperately tries to solve the puzzle of the destructive ‘earth rages’.
The book contains some outstanding characters. As a married couple who have drifted apart over the years, Ahilya and Iravan’s relationship is very messy. We get an in-depth look at each character making selfish decisions designed to hurt the other, but both feel realistically human. Ahilya’s frustration at the class divide between her architect husband and herself is very compelling to read.
The complex plot can be quite challenging. Even with a glossary, the story revolves around dense imaginary concepts, based on everything from natural sciences to Hindu mythology, religion and philosophy. This isn’t the sort of book I could just speed through at my own pace, I had to sit with the story and mull it over to get the full experience.
But this is definitely not a criticism, as unpacking the inner workings of ‘trajection’, and the politics between architects and non-architects were some of my favourite elements. Rao convincingly writes about a civilisation that has existed with a millennium’s worth of history, and I wanted to learn so much more by the end of the book, as the climax incorporated some killer plot twists!
Good thing it’s the first entry in the upcoming ‘Rages’ trilogy.
Kritika H. Rao is a science-fiction and fantasy writer, who has lived in India, Australia, Canada and The Sultanate of Oman. Kritika’s stories are influenced by her lived experiences, and often explore themes of consciousness, self vs. the world, and identity.
For his whole life Bill ‘Girly’ Smith managed to keep the secret that he was a woman and not a man from everybody. Quite the accomplishment, considering for most of his adult life he was a jockey.
At the age of 76, while bending down to take his shoes off, he knocks his head on the corner of the nightstand and ends up in hospital. Much to his chagrin; his age, condition, and frailty, force him to be admitted. He finally gives in to the nurses, no longer able to keep his secret when forced to remove his old clothes for a hospital gown.
However, the hospital staff keep his secret, and one nurse, who at first thought he was a cantankerous old ‘man’, takes a bit of a shine to Smith. Unfortunately, Smith is quite ill, and growing frailer by the day. Nurse Bannon wants to find some family or relatives before it is too late. This proves more difficult than she thought. There seems to be only one person Smith wants to see. Catherine is the only human being who Smith has ever loved.
The narrative is broken into four parts, covering different times and locations throughout Smith’s life. My favourite parts being when Smith was a child. We find out where his love of horses comes from. Why he prefers their company to people and why he was forced to conceal that he was born a female. And we meet Catherine.
Smith’s life was not an easy one. He lived through two World Wars, the Spanish Flu, and the Depression. He spent three decades as a Jockey. Terrible injury, even death, a possibility with every race.
Based on a true story, Mr Smith to You makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read.
Meet the two groups of witches in Olivie Blake’s One For My Enemy, the drug-dealing Anotova’s, and the crime syndicate Fedorov’s.
Both families are bitter rivals and have been trying to subtly destroy each other’s business, wealth, and magical influence for many decades. But when Lev Federov and Sasha Anotova meet each other at a bar and instantly fall in love, it’s only a matter of time before the knives come out and the two families go into full-scale war.
This book is fast paced, imaginative and full of memorable characters. Blake fully embraces her inspirations, namely Romeo and Juliet and the Russian folktale of Koschei the Deathless and Marya Morevna. She uses these classic stories to craft the relationships between Federov sons and Anatova daughters, leading to an engaging core theme of taut, troubled, and tragic love. Sasha and Lev are adorable together, (especially through Blake’s choice to convey their dialogue through cutesy text messages), even if their romance moves a little too fast to be realistic.
Blake focuses on five or six leads but introduces several other ancillary characters halfway through the story, who are instrumental, but unfortunately are minimally developed. For a book involving political intrigue between rival boroughs of New York witches, there is very little world-building outside of the two main families. I would have really loved some ‘what, when, why, how’ details on how New York developed into this alternate world.
Despite these potential drawbacks, Olivie Blake has delivered a high-stakes, witchy romance, which will captivate fans of her earlier work and those who enjoy a good love story.
Poseidon, angered by the actions of Odysseus, places a curse on Ithaca. Three hundred years later – when this narrative begins – the curse still haunts the island. Each spring equinox 12 (mostly) young, innocent women find fish-like scales growing around their neck. Each is dragged to the edge of the sea, hanged and thrown to the waves in order to placate the sea god and save the island from the tsunami Poseidon unleashes should the sacrifices not happen.
Leto is one of the chosen. She’s the daughter of the last Royal Oracle and has been scraping together an existence since her mother disappeared. As the noose is put around her neck, her eyes pierce Ithaca’s Prince Mathias as he gives the order for the women’s sacrifice. Afterwards the women wash ashore at Pandou and Leto’s eyes open: she’s not dead, but she’s not the same, either.
Melantho, who has lived on Pandou for three centuries, has greeted the 12 women each year and buried them on the island. Melantho has the power to change, utilising the power of the sea; Leto now has the same power. She and Melantho must kill Ithaca’s prince to stop the curse, but there are several obstacles to overcome first. T
They escape from Pandou and gain access to Ithaca by Leto impersonating the Athenian princess Mathias is to marry. Once there, Leto finds it’s not easy to kill someone who is both handsome, kind and is also trying to find out how to stop the curse. Melantho and Leto find love with each other, but the secret Melantho has been hiding threatens to derail them.
Lies We Sing To The Sea is a beautifully written novel that riffs on – and subverts – Greek myths.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Paul Collins has written many books, mostly for younger readers through to young adults. He is best known for his fantasy and science fiction titles: The Jelindel Chronicles and The Quentaris Chronicles ─ co-edited with Michael Pryor ─ (Paul wrote: