Author name: trishmatson

Educated as a physicist yet living as a journalist, Trish Matson is an award-winning writer and editor whose ever-expanding list of interests includes a lifelong love of SF/F, plus wordplay, libraries, games, music, dancing, audio drama, and podcasting. She’s listed as TrishEM on various fora, but you can find her most easily on Twitter.

Cover of Obstetrix, by Naomi Kritzer, featuring a hypodermic needle against a pink background.
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Book Review: Obstetrix, by Naomi Kritzer

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Naomi Kritzer has been publishing speculative fiction since 2003 and has won about 10 major awards since 2014. In 2024 I strongly recommended her book Liberty’s Daughter. Her latest work, Obstetrix, has been published today, and while it’s too close to today’s world to really call it science fiction, I can say that it’s a tense, exciting, and heartfelt thriller, with a strong and empathetic female protagonist, with a plot setup drawn from some ugly realities of modern society that seem to be getting worse. Technically a novella, although it’s being published as a short book, it’s a great fast read, and it illustrates some very important themes. From the publisher’s summary: Doctor Liz has just been acquitted for performing the last abortion in North Dakota when she’s kidnapped.They’re not just any kidnappers, but a fundamentalist cult, deep in the rural west, without respect for law or decency, and in desperate need of an OB/GYN.Guarded, isolated, without access to the outside world, Liz … is very aware of what happened to the last obstetrician they kidnapped.She must escape, and bring help to the girls trapped at the compound, if it’s the last thing she does.

Cover of Heart of the Nhaga, by Lee Young-Do, featuring a bronze-skinned, bearded, long-haired man holding a bow, with a double-bladed sword on his back, with bridges in the foreground and background; wind is blowing hard, and a tower is leaning or toppling.
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Book Review: The Heart of the Nhaga, by Lee Young-Do (translated by Anton Hur)

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Lee Young-Do has been a renowned epic fantasy novelist in Korea for decades. His series The Bird That Drinks Tears originally appeared as an online serial in 2002 and was published in four volumes in 2003. Wikipedia calls the first book in the series Nhaga Who Extract Their Hearts, but the English translation of this novel by Anton Hur that’s being released June 2 is called The Heart of the Nhaga. I was very entertained in puzzling out the worldbuilding, the characters and the plot. I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters, but it was intriguing following them and their interactions. In some ways, it reads sort of like a fairly traditional journey-quest fantasy, or sword and sorcery with extremely low-level sorcery, but in some ways, it’s a pretty wild trip. Readers who are looking for a different kind of fantasy novel, especially anyone getting tired of romantasy, may want to consider giving this a try.

Cover of Murder at World's End, by Ross Montgomery, featuring a manor house on a cliff, with stars and Halley's Comet above, and ocean waves below.
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Book Review: Murder at World’s End, by Ross Montgomery

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Murder at World’s End (2025) is a mystery, not speculative fiction, but it involves scientific thinking (and hysteria) of 1910, when Halley’s Comet came relatively near to the Earth, and this novel also strongly reminds me of several works of science fiction; therefore, I think it’s worth reviewing here. There are a few points that annoy me a little, but on the whole, I find it quite enthralling, and I look forward to a planned sequel. (But don’t worry, the plot here resolves without leaving the reader hanging.)

Cover of Shoeshine Boy and Cigarette Girl, by P.A. Cornell (cover art by Kim Herbst), featuring a dark-haired young man in a cap with a shoeshine kit and a smartly dressed blonde with a cigarette tray; they are looking over their shoulders at each other, with a futuristic cityscape behind them.
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Review: Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl, by P.A. Cornell

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If you’re in the mood for a quick, cozy, elegantly crafted story, Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl, by P.A. Cornell, may be right up your alley. It’s highly stylized, so this novelette certainly won’t be to everybody’s taste, and the speculative elements could be removed without altering the retro-futuristic near-noir romance plot much, but it also has a great deal of charm. It also has a female protagonist you can cheer for, a smart one, who knows what she wants and takes action to get it. Additionally, it has a male co-protagonist who is, unfortunately, a sap. He’s a fool for love, but also foolish in other ways, not only trusting the wrong people but taking terrible risks with his own partner’s trust. After I lost most of my patience with him, fortunately, the book focused almost entirely on her.

Cover of And Side by Side They Wander, by Molly Tanzer, featuring a woman's silhouette (with an art-museum filling) superimposed on a male silhouette (with circuitry filling) in front of mushrooms.
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Book Review: And Side by Side They Wander, by Molly Tanzer

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Molly Tanzer, whom I first became aware of through her new Jirel of Joiry story for New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine, has previously won recognition for her fantasy novels and steampunk historical fiction. Her new novella, And Side by Side They Wander, is her first longform publication in science fiction/space opera, but I certainly hope she continues writing in this genre, too! She explores interesting questions in an open-ended way, but neither the philosophizing nor some interstitial reminiscences slow down the interstellar art-heist plot significantly. This story goes down easily while leaving the reader hungry for more.

Cover of Nonesuch, by Francis Spufford. A giant hand holds up a woman with a 1940s hairstyle, coat, skirt, and heels above a city skyline. The background is a blend of orange, pink, and yellow.
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Book Review: Nonesuch, by Francis Spufford

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I really liked Francis Spufford’s last book, Cahokia Jazz, as stated in my 2024 review, so I was very happy when my library app acquired his latest novel, Nonesuch. The protagonist, Iris, is fascinating, and it’s great fun to watch her machinations and verbal fencing; the setting, London during the so-called “Phoney War” and initial stages of World War II, has long held great interest for me; the book is full of lovely, lyrical descriptions, along with dread and occasional action scenes; and not only are there magic and time travel, but also, fights against fascists, and arguments that are sadly more relevant now than I would have believed possible 10 years ago. However, there’s a giant caveat: The comp that instantly leaps into my head after finishing it is Blackout, by Connie Willis. Not just because it’s set in World War II and there’s time travel involved; oh no: Nonesuch ends with the dreaded words, To be continued. If you hated the way that Blackout concluded with a cliffhanger, I need to warn you about this. Nobody warned me that this book was the first part of a duology — or maybe a series, but I really hope not, since the second book needs to go ahead and fix what went wrong at the end of Nonesuch, if that’s even possible. Please!

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