‘Welcome to an enchanted world’: The best Sci-Fi and Fantasy out now – Gifted and
Gifted and Talented by Olivie Blake (Tor £22, 512pp)
Welcome to Olivie Blake Land, an enchanted world (or hand-stitched hellscape) of corporate boardrooms, posh sex, designer grapes and architecturally significant mansions.
Now watch the beautiful and the damned meet their come-uppance amid delicious dollops of bitchy chat and fabulously constructed setbacks.
Magic and tech add an electric sparkle to this dynastic showdown as three ill-matched siblings meet to find out about their tycoon father’s last will and testament.
There are histories to uncover, profanities to express and the most delightfully weird powers to be negotiated as the answer to the big question looms: which one of these hugely unsuitable but engaging characters will get the business?
Salka: Lady of the Lake by Francesca Simon (Faber £12.99, 272pp)
Francesca Simon, of Horrid Henry fame, has taken a step into fairyland.
She’s given us a meticulously crafted and exquisite fable where otherness and wonder collide with the harsh realities of boring old life.
And it’s a relief to read a story where fairies aren’t double-dealing psychopaths but beautiful creatures from another world who bring joy and abundance.
That’s what Salka, a water sprite, offers when she marries Owain, a handsome village boy.
But fat cattle and rich harvests aren’t enough to quell his neighbours’ voices. If anything, they make things worse for poor Owain, who’s bet the farm on a future with Salka and risks losing everything.
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud (Dead Ink Books £10.99, 208pp)
North American Lake Monsters is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Quality is quality; great writing is great writing and true horror, whispering to you in this elegant, devastating and unflinching collection, is unmistakable.
Above all, horror stories rely on physical detail. Ballingrud avoids technical tricks and splurgy prose but pulls us into every single moment – noting the colour of a predawn sky or hearing the crackle of a burning vampire.
Ordinary people in straitened circumstances do terrible things. A boy finds a vampire living under his home, but the horror lies in what he’s thinking.
A woman meets a man carrying the skins of new identities in his suitcase, but it’s what she does with hers that devastates.