Book Reviews

By Becky Chambers
10/13/26
480 pages
$32
Harper Voyager

‘As You Wake, Break the Shell’

Becky Chambers has built a career proving that science fiction’s true final frontier isn’t deep space but deep feeling. How can something as vast as space be the setting for something so cozy and comfortable? How does she balance her deeply character-driven stories while still tickling the sci-fi traditions that keep us nerds happy? I’d call her a magician, but that’s a different genre.

Set on a fractious, resource-starved planet called Fortune, the novel braids two timelines around Signy, a quietly rebellious botanist, and Cora, a space pilot whose symbiosis with her living ship is both wondrous and a creeping liability. The structure cuts between a present tender peace and the perilous past that led to their almost salvation.

Chambers’ prose remains my favorite part of her works. Sharp and soothing with a melancholy accent — it’s so lovely. While time-skipping is not a new narrative gimmick, it works so, so well here, acting as an argument that intimacy is always assembled retroactively, one fragment at a time. That’s an excellent word for this book, intimate. I ached and cried and cheered and never wanted it to end. ♦ — Review by Julie Goodrich

By Freya Marske
9/15/26
464 pages
$28.99
Tor Books

‘Bodies of Magic’

Usually, if a book has “everything,” I’m more than a little skeptical. It’s difficult enough to pull off one genre, let alone several. Yet Freya Marske has managed to make a medical-fantasy-dark-academia-murder-mystery sing with all its twining threads. This book was an absolute joy to read. It was surprisingly philosophical at times and a delicious mystery that kept me up way too late. 

At the Academie in the Blue City, healing magic is a licensed trade, and the licensing exam is a five-day gauntlet for five randomly chosen students. When our intrepid scholars stumble on a corpse during their first day of testing, they are suddenly forced to face much more than an exam. Power, class, institutional corruption and their own ambitions are all at play in this twisty tale.

This is a book about institutional rot and the isolation of medical workers, making clear parallels to our current health care crises. Yet, the world still has a lived-in feel and a brilliant cast of characters rendered with real granularity and distinct personalities. There are explorations of ambition, resentment and grief in between the drama, and the mix is handled so deftly. This is a dazzling example of mixed-genre storytelling. Don’t miss it. ♦ — Review by Julie Goodrich