Reviews

Life, both animal and vegetable, from the Garden of Eden—the literal Garden of Eden—is still around and scattered throughout the modern world. That’s the premise of Birds of Paradise: that the rose of Eden has been forever blooming through the ages, that “Owl” and “Pig” and “Rook” survive in perpetuity, and that Adam, full of scars and old bullet wounds, can still remember the garden if he stretches his mind to its limits.

What might, in the wrong hands, be elevator-pitched as just another space opera starring a prefabbed complement of misfits (a cyborg, a test-tube baby, a crablike alien, a few wayward humans) is really a triumph of worldbuilding, plot, and tension.

Lucy Holland’s historical fantasy novel Song of the Huntress takes us back to the English West Country that was also the setting for her previous novel, Sistersong, in an epic, gender-swapped reimagining of the story of King Herla, leader of the Wild Hunt.

Elizabeth Ryder’s review of CL Lauder’s “The Quelling” critiques its complex world and winding plot, which obscure ethical questions about bodily autonomy amidst bodysnatching alien dynamics.

Set in near-future Japan, the novel opens in a typical hardboiled noir style. It’s a real page-turner, with an unrelenting pace and high stakes.

A Spoonful of Malaysian Magic, brings together twelve fantasy short stories by contemporary Malaysian writers