While my esteemed colleague Drew Broussard has already made a cooler, wider-ranging version of this list, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite books this year to combine crime and mystery tropes with futuristic or fantastical settings. The following titles are a bit of a grab-bag, given the vast scope of their purview, featuring conniving fairies, rebellious sex robots, sentient trains, secretive communities, nasty little magicians, and more. Thanks, as always, for reading!
Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup
(Del Rey)
Holmes and Watson get a new twist in this fantastical noir set in a mysterious empire in which nothing is as it seems. The high, thick sea walls of the outer rings of the empire were built to withstand the colossal titans that swim in from the ocean depths to exact a ruinous chaos, and now, the walls have been breached. It’s up to a misanthropic genius and her new sword-wielding assistant to find the culprits who wish to destroy the empire, and in so doing, stop the empire’s own steady decline. Perfect for those who loved China Mieville’s Perdito Street Station and Kraken, but wished there was more camaraderie and crime-solving.
Sarah Brooks, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands
(Flatiron)
This book is steampunk perfection! The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands takes place on an enormous train barreling through a landscape known as the “Wastelands” on its way from Beijing to Moscow at the turn of the 20th century. Outside the train, strange creatures with knowing eyes and too many mouths regard the iron beast and its fearful passengers. Inside the train, a powerful company tries to preserve order and cover up past mistakes as various travelers try to discover the truth behind what happened on the disastrous previous journey. Brooks brings a Mieville-esque mentality to her novel, with some terrifying creepy-crawlies and an even more terrifying capitalist conglomerate.
Donyae Coles, Midnight Rooms
(Amistad)
Never. Eat. What. The. Fairies. Give. You. Especially if it’s as disgusting as what’s consumed at the wedding feast in this atmospheric gothic (complete with strong folk horror elements). Donyae Coles’ plucky heroine is surprised to receive a later-in-life proposal from a mysterious gentleman. Their connection is genuine, but his family is off-putting, his manor house is crumbling, and for some reason, he keeps getting her drunk on honey wine while feeding her bloody meat and little cakes. Read this one if you, like me, just finished rewatching The Magicians and need to fill its gossamer-winged void.
Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall
(Del Rey)
In Micaiah Johnson’s magisterial epic, two cities in a dystopian future are poised for conflict across the barren desert between them. The people of Ashtown are grimy, gritty, and have hard-won respect through violence; the people of Wiley City are pale, rich, soft, and have built their riches through exploitation of the Ashtowners and the denizens of the desert. When bodies start piling up in Ashtown, Johnson’s narrator is tasked with discovering what unearthly forces could cause such extreme injury, and come to terms with her own difficult past. This one reads like Mad Max: Fury Road was written by Phillip K. Dick and N.K. Jemison.
Olivia Gatwood, Whoever You Are, Honey
(Dial Press)
Olivia Gatwood’s new novel juxtaposes community solace against dystopian futures in a seaside neighborhood near San Francisco. Two women living in an old cottage befriend their new neighbors, the wealthy and beautiful couple that have purchased the glittering glass home next door. The husband is a successful and handsome entrepreneur, but he pales next to the flawless perfection of his wife, who the neighboring women soon suspect is neither human nor free.
Vincent Tirado, We Came to Welcome You
(William Morrow)
Vincent Tirado’s YA thrillers have already made a big splash, and their adult debut confirms a writer at the top of their game. In We Came to Welcome You, a queer couple is granted a rare opportunity to purchase a home in an exclusive planned community. Soon enough, the town’s promises of inclusion start to sound a lot like threats to participate or else. What secrets are the residents hiding? And what dark agenda drives the town’s strict and bizarre policies? The answers are both completely shocking and extremely logical.
Jenna Satterthwaite, Made For You
(Mira)
Jenna Satterthwaite’s novel is a cutting and creative take on reality television and artificial personhood. Her heroine is the first “synth” to compete on a reality dating show, and only the third to exist publicly in the world. Her romance is fairy-tale perfection, but her marriage is decidedly less so, and when the husband she worked so hard to win goes missing, suspicion falls immediately on his robotic partner. Will she be able to prove her own innocence, and will the world finally accept her autonomy and sense of self?
Alexis Henderson, Academy for Liars
(Ace Books)
Alexis Henderson once again proves herself one of the most virtuoso voices crafting genre fiction today with this dark academia romance. An Academy for Liars reads a bit like if Octavia Butler had written the Magicians, with a strong social justice message that forcefully reckons with the long history of stolen talent and cultural appropriation. A perfect story for those who enjoyed RF Kuang’s Babel or Elisabeth Thomas’ Catherine House.
S.E. Porter, Projections
(Tor)
What a compelling and creative story. In Projections, a boy kills a girl in the mid-19th century in upstate New York. The girl becomes a ghost, the boy becomes a magician, and he takes her along with him to a magical city in which she screams, forever, tethered to his soul and stripped of her energies to fund his despicable enterprises. The magician continues to kill, over and over, telling himself he seeks a perfect love; the ghost, meanwhile, slowly begins to discover her own powers, and may just be able to finally stop him. Emotionally evocative and visually stunning, Projections is the kind of novel that makes you long for a high-budget adaptation.
S. B. Caves, Honeycomb
(Datura)
In this high-concept psychological thriller, six strangers congregate in an old mansion to test a strange new drug with world-changing implications. Caves uses the intriguing set-up for an action-packed meditation on obsession, celebrity, and the behavior of groups. It also reads as a send-off of reality television, with eager investors watching the bloody results of their experiment as it goes increasingly haywire.
