Fantasy

Upcoming: THE FRANCHISE by Thomas Elrod (Tor)

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“The Truman Show meets Game of Thrones in this epic tale of a studio-owned Fantasy world.” While the cover is arresting (that green…), that pitch is what hooked my attention. Long-time readers of CR will know how much I enjoy reading about Hollywood and behind-the-scenes books. So, coupling this with an interest in fantasy fiction (even if it has been waning, recently), means Thomas Elrod‘s upcoming The Franchise is of considerable interest. Really looking forward to giving this a try. Here’s the synopsis:

A land filled with magic and dragons and wizards and warriors.
Thousands of people live and work within its borders — fearful of their enemies and loyal to their king.

The classic fantasy world of The Malicarn has been brought to life on the big screen in a series of epic movies, almost entirely populated by characters in total belief that their sham fantasy lives are real.

A fan-favorite actor finds himself doubting the studio’s work, but the world of The Malicarn has an almost unstoppable momentum, and bringing freedom to a population who already believe themselves to be free won’t be as easy as he thinks.

All the world’s a stage.
Meet the players.

Thomas Elrod’s The Franchise is due to be published by Tor Books in North America on May 12th, 2026.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, BlueSky

Upcoming: CHILDREN OF STRIFE and GREEN CITY WARS by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Adrian Tchaikovsky has to be one of the hardest-working authors in SFF. Not only that, his novels are consistently excellent and varied — he writes across seemingly all speculative genres, offering up many twists and original takes on classic and new tropes. I wanted to quickly spotlight two of his novels coming out in 2026, highlighting just a bit of this breadth of interest and imagination.

CHILDREN OF STRIFE (Tor UK / Orbit)

The far-future. After Earth fell, ark ships had hunted for a new home. They sought lost worlds terraformed in Earth’s forgotten past. A ship crewed by maverick humans, spiders and a spectacularly punchy mantis shrimp captain is about to rediscover one such world, and an ark.

Then human crewmate Alis wakes to discover that she, her captain and the ship’s intelligence are the only ones left on their ship. But what happened to those who left to explore the ark . . . and the world below?

This is the fourth novel in the Children series, which started with the Clarke Award-winning Children of Time. I’ve read the first two books in the series, and loved both. Hopefully, I’ll manage to get around to reading Children of Memory before Strife is published. Really looking forward to this. Children of Strife is due to be published by Tor Books in the UK (March 12th) and Orbit in North America (March 17th)

Also on CR: Review of Children of Ruin

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GREEN CITY WARS (Tor Books)

Down these mean streets a beast must walk…

Meet Skotch. Racoon, P.I.―Yours for a few buttons as long as the job isn’t too illegal, whatever that means.

A mouse has gone missing. Normally this wouldn’t raise any hackles, nor any alarms, but this mouse has something that everyone seems to want, though nobody appears particularly eager to say what that something is.

The fee is good―perhaps too good. Certainly not something Skotch can easily turn down.

If only Skotch can work out where the mouse is hiding, what he’s hiding, and why his secrets are upsetting a lot of animals caught up in the Green City wars.

This upcoming noir novel has a fantastic pitch: “Philip Marlowe meets Redwall.” The cover for the North American edition, featured above, is pretty great, but it’s that pitch that cemented my interest in reading this. Really looking forward to this one. Green City Wars is due to be published by Tor Books in North America (June 23rd, 2026) and in the UK (June 25th).

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, BlueSky

Excerpt: THE UNIVERSE BOX by Michael Swanwick (Tachyon)

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Next year, Tachyon Publications are due to publish The Universe Box, a new collection of 21 superb short stories by Michael Swanwick. To whet readers’ appetites for the collection, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt from the title story. First, here’s the synopsis:

Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction’s most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend. With two stories original to this collection, Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling.

In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves), sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.

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Upcoming: NO MAN’S LAND by Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey / Gollancz)

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Next year, readers will finally be able to read No Man’s Land, a new novel from Richard (K.) Morgan — the author of, among others, Altered Carbon. I’ve been a fan of the author’s work ever since Altered Carbon appeared on the shelf in my local bookstore in 2002 (probably the Waterstones in Durham or Cambridge).

Thus far, I’ve very much enjoyed his science fiction novels (the Takeshi Kovacs series and stand-alones) more than his fantasy work (A Land Fit for Heroes series). This new novel looks like it’ll offer something a little different; and, despite the fact that it features the fae (which I’ve found uninteresting in pretty every iteration I’ve read), I find myself very intrigued by the premise and setting:

The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars — and maybe it would have been, had an even greater, otherworldly foe not risen to extinguish the conflict. Overnight, as guns blazed in France and Flanders, village after village in the quiet British countryside was swallowed by the Forest. And within the Forest lurk the Huldu — an ancient fae race, monstrous in their inhumanity, who have decided that mankind’s ascendency over the world can endure no longer.

Enter Duncan Silver. Scarred by the war, fueled by a rage deeper than the trenches in which he once fought, Duncan is determined to show the Huldu that the world is not theirs for the taking. Armed with a deadly iron knife and a cut-down trench gun filled with iron shot, Duncan will stop at nothing to return the children the Huldu have stolen to the arms of their families. No matter how many Huldu he may have to slaughter along the way.

But when he is hired by a mother to return her four-year-old daughter, Miriam — taken by the Huldu six months past and replaced with a changeling — all hell breaks loose. Miriam is a pawn in a much bigger game for dominance than Duncan ever expected, and several long-buried secrets from his past are about to be violently resurrected.

Richard K. Morgan’s No Man’s Land is due to be published by Del Rey in North America and Gollancz in the UK, on March 24th.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, BlueSky

Excerpt: LETTERS FROM AN IMAGINARY COUNTRY by Theodora Goss (Tachyon)

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On November 11th, Tachyon Publications are due to publish a new collection of short fiction by Theodora Goss: Letters From an Imaginary Country. To mark the occasion, and give readers a taste of what’s in the book, CR has been provided an excerpt to share with our readers. Here’s the book’s synopsis:

Roam through the captivating stories of World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award winner Theodora Goss (the Athena Club trilogy). This themed collection of imaginary places, with three new stories, recalls Susanna Clarke’s alternate Europe and the surreal metafictions of Jorge Luis Borges. Deeply influenced by the author’s Hungarian childhood during the regime of the Soviet Union, each of these stories engages with storytelling and identity, including her own.

The infamous girl monsters of nineteenth-century fiction gather in London and form their own club. In the imaginary country of Thüle. Characters from folklore band together to fight a dictator. An intrepid girl reporter finds the hidden land of Oz—and joins its invasion of our world. The author writes the autobiography of her alternative life and a science fiction love letter to Budapest. The White Witch conquers England with snow and silence.

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Excerpt: AUDITION FOR THE FOX by Martin Cahill (Tachyon)

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Martin Cahill‘s next novel is Audition for the Fox, a story of tricksters, acolytes, and found family. It is due to be published by Tachyon Publications next month. To celebrate the upcoming release, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt to share with our readers! First, though, here’s the synopsis:

A trickster Fox god challenges a quick-witted (but underachieving) acolyte to save herself by saving her own ancestors. But are Nesi and her new friends from the past prepared to defeat the ferocious Wolfhounds of Zemin?

Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.

Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

Continue reading →

Quick Review: VERMINSLAYER by David Guymer (Black Library)

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Gotrek Gurnisson once again faces off against one of his oldest foes…

Greywater Fastness – an industrial canker in the heart of Ghyran. Foundries and metalworks pump soot and fire endlessly into the skies of the Realm of Life. Dusty streets hide peril at every turn, and attacks by the Dreadwood Sylvaneth hamper the city’s relentless encroachment.

Gotrek Gurnisson barges into Greywater Fastness seeking answers as to why his Fyreslayer rune is mysteriously waning. But finding them in the stronghold’s clogged and blackened arteries may prove far more difficult than first thought, and with skaven warlocks building something deep underground – something that will cement their place in skavendom forever – Gotrek begins to wonder if he might instead find that which has eluded him these past ages – his doom.

In Verminslayer, David Guymer returns to writing Gotrek Gurnisson. Still wandering the Mortal Realms, the slayer is newly companion-less, and finds himself in an industrial city threatened by the evil machinations of the always-bizarre, incomprehensibly-competent Skaven. I enjoyed this. Continue reading →

Excerpt: SEVENTHBLADE by Tonia Laird (ECW Press)

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Tomorrow, ECW Press is due to publish Seventhblade by Tonia Laird, “a fast-paced, anti-colonial action-adventure fantasy”. Pitched as perfect for fans of N. K. Jemisin and Rebecca Roanhorse, I think it should appeal to a number of CR readers. To mark the publication, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt to share (Chapter 1). Here’s the synopsis:

After the murder of T’Rayles’s adopted son, the infamous warrior and daughter of the Indigenous Ibinnas returns to the colonized city of Seventhblade ready to tear the streets asunder in search of her son’s killer. T’Rayles must lean into the dangerous power of her inherited sword and ally herself with questionable forces, including the Broken Fangs, an alliance her mother founded, now fallen into greed and corruption, and the immortal Elraiche, a powerful and manipulative deity exiled from a faraway land. Navigating the power shifts in a colonized city on the edge and contending with a deadly new power emerging from within, T’Rayles risks everything to find the answers, and the justice, she so desperately desires.

Loaded with complex characters and intricately staged action, and set in a fragmented, fascinating world of dangerous magics and cryptic gods, Seventhbladeis a masterful new fantasy adventure from a bright emerging Indigenous voice.

And now, on with the excerpt…

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Excerpt: IF WISHES WERE RETAIL by Auston Habershaw (Tachyon)

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If Wishes Were Retail is the debut novel by Auston Habershaw, due to be published in a couple of weeks by Tachyon Publications. It is the story of “an enterprising young woman and a clueless genie just try to make a living”, offering an interesting spin on the genie story. To introduce readers to the characters, we have been provided with an excerpt to share with CR readers. Here’s the synopsis:

A pop-up at the local mall meets Aladdin in this cozy, chaotic, and deeply funny debut novel where an enterprising young woman and a clueless genie just try to make a living.

Alex Delmore needs a miracle. She wants out of her dead-end suburban town, but her parents are broke and NYU seems like a distant dream.

Good thing there’s a genie in town ― and he’s hiring at the Wellspring Mall.

It’d help if the Jinn-formerly-of-the-Ring-of-Khorad knew even one thing about 21st-century America. It’d help if he weren’t at least as stubborn as Alex. It’d really help if her brother didn’t sell her out to her conspiracy theory-loving, gnome-hating dad.

When Alex and the genie set up their wishing kiosk, they face seemingly-endless setbacks. The mall is failing and management will not stop interfering on behalf of their big-box tenants.

But when the wishing biz might start working, the biggest problem of all remains: People are really terrible at wishing.

Continue reading →

Very Quick Review: MAKING HISTORY by K. J. Parker (TorDotCom)

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How to manipulate history and (maybe) get away with it

A group of scholars must do the impossible for a ruthless king. The cost of refusal, of course, is death.

History isn’t truth, it’s propaganda.

Seeking war with his neighbor, the tyrannical ruler of Aelia convenes several of his kingdom’s professors for a chat. First citizen Gyges only just invaded Aelia a few years back and, naturally, his public image can’t take the hit of another unjustified assault.

His totally sane solution? Simple, really. These scholars must construct a fake ancient city from scratch to verify Gyges’s apocryphal claims.

Now these academics must put their heads together to make history. Because if they don’t, they’ll lose their heads altogether.

In a country ruled by a usurper king, history can be a powerful tool for cementing authority and power. To do a decent job of manipulating the past, it’s important to turn to the people who know the most about it: historians. In Parker’s latest, excellent novella, a group of historians are (quietly) threatened by their new king into creating a new history that supports his authority and mandate. Continue reading →