Harare Review of Books

544 pages.

First published on Dec. 20, 2022 (Apex Book Company)

Horror, SFF.

It’s taken me months to finish reading this compilation of stories from Apex Magazine, because there was SO MUCH (48 stories!) to read and enjoy.

Some featured authors include. Tlotlo Tsamaase (with the wonderful Dreamports, which explores body tourism and privilege), Carson Winter (In Haskins, a tale about an incredibly creepy town, exploring gender roles), Marie Croke (To Seek Himself Again, a great queer story), Norris Black (An Incident at Hellpoint Prime, about—ugh—skin thieves), Joelle Wellington (Cottonmouth, a truly unnerving genre crossover with an enslaved ghost), Alix E. Harrow (Mr Death), Rachel Swirszky (Wake Up, I Miss You, which is a moving and unexpectedly upside-down story), Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Samsāra in a Teacup, which delighted me with AI as reincarnated people who inhabit things like tea boilers and brooms), Nina Munteanu (Robin’s Last Song, a wonderful and hopeful tale with climate change, a Blind protagonist, genetic modification, birds, and loads of cool science), and Stephanie Kraner (Hank in the South Dakota Sun, about a sentient train (!!), which I have never come across in my reading).

There is so much to please all kinds of tastes: science fiction and fantasy and all the gradation between, horror, simple speculative fiction, gender-benders and all kinds of queer stories, explorations of death and grief, Indigenous Futurism, Afrofuturism, and even a story about an AI god-figure in Godmother, by Cheryl S. Ntumy.

I loved the diversity of writers and that in the stories they presented. There was so much amazingly imaginative and inventive work! I know I’ll be going back to my favourite stories over and over.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Apex Book Company for access to this fantastic ARC.

Apex Magazine is an online magazine that publishes fantastical fiction.