The Vengeful Dead by Darcy Coates (Napier, IL: Poisoned Pen Press, 2025), 396 pp.  For those who have been following the “Gravekeeper” series, begun with The Whispering Dead (2021): Kiera, who had been found escaping from she didn’t know whom and, for that matter, couldn’t remember why or even who she was, gradually, over the series, discovers that she can see and talk to ghosts, and that, because of this, she is a mortal enemy of Artec, a corporation that was growing rich by selling energy by torturing captured ghosts.  In the course of the series, she develops a cadre...

The 2026 Philip K. Dick Awards nominees were recently announced.  The award ceremony will take place on 4/3/26 at 7:00 pm PDT and can be live-streamed on YouTube.  The nominees are:

SUNWARD by William Alexander (Saga Press)

OUTLAW PLANET by M. R. Carey (Orbit)

CASUAL by Koji A. Dae (Tenebrous Press)

THE IMMEASURABLE HEAVEN by Caspar Geon (Solaris)

UNCERTAIN SONS AND OTHER STORIES by Thomas Ha (Undertow Publications)

SCALES by Christopher Hinz (Angry Robot)

CITY OF ALL SEASONS by Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley (Titan Books)

Review by Abe Ziesing

Dave Hutchinson: “Do you believe in miracles?”

Me: “I do now!”

2025 was a year filled with plenty of mediocrity when it comes to new genre SF released within the calendar year – with a scant couple of exceptions - that I got a chance to read, anyway.  There was Tchaikovsky’s SHROUD with its crazy world-building and Nayler’s award-worthy WHERE THE AXE IS BURIED that come to mind.  One under-the-radar small press release left them all in the dust; in fact, it blew away everything SF that I read all year, and that includes some heavy...

Review by Abe Ziesing

A book about the dust bowl, the Great Depression, the New Deal, and wrongs done to Native Americans? This sounded underwhelming and boring to me but I’d read Karen Russell before and had faith regardless, and boy was that faith justified.  Very quickly you’re immersed in a rich tapestry of gritty hardships, dusty landscapes and tempestuous weather through the four chapter-rotating viewpoints of our protagonist conglomeration.  There’s Harp, a lonely wheat farmer who’s crop is mysteriously doing better than all his peers’; Aphodel, Harp’s firecracker of an adopted niece, a quirky teen that uses her love...

Here is the complete list of Nebula Award finalists for this year:

Nebula Award for Novel

• Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory, Yaroslav Barsukov (Caezik SF & Fantasy)
• Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
• Asunder, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom)
• A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
• The Book of Love, Kelly Link (Random House; Ad Astra UK)
• Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia UK)

Nebula Award for Novella

• The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom)
• The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler (Tordotcom)
• Lost Ark Dreaming, Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Tordotcom)
• Countess, Suzan Palumbo (ECW)
• The Practice...