Fantasy Cafe

Women in SF&F Month: Week 2 Schedule & Week in Review

2026-04-05T15:42:05Z

The fifteenth annual Women in SF&F Month continues with three new guest posts this week, starting tomorrow with an essay and book giveaway (with one print copy for a US reader and one digital copy for someone outside the US). Thank you so much to last week’s guests for a wonderful start to the month!

The new guest posts will be going up on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, but before announcing the upcoming schedule, here are last week’s essays in case you missed any of them.

All guest posts from April 2026 can be found here, and last week’s guest posts were:

“Finding hope — writing in hard times, the ‘punk’, and envisioning better futures” — Lorraine Wilson (We Are All Ghosts in the Forest, The Salt Oracle) discussed the difficulty of being creative with everything going on in the world and shared some methods that have helped her continue to write and find the light.
Elaine Ho (Cry, Voidbringer; “Harmony“) wrote about a question she explores in her dark political fantasy novel: “Why do post-colonial societies perpetuate the same crimes as their oppressors?”

And there are most guest posts coming up, starting with one accompanied by a book giveaway tomorrow! This week’s essays are by:

April 6: Samantha Mills (Rabbit Test and Other Stories, The Wings Upon Her Back)
April 8: Shay Kauwe (The Killing Spell)
April 10: Veronica G. Henry (The People’s Library, Bacchanal)

The post Women in SF&F Month: Week 2 Schedule & Week in Review first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Women in SF&F Month: Elaine Ho

2026-04-03T15:20:26Z

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is artist and author Elaine Ho! Her illustrations, which can be found on her website and Instagram, include “Bones to the Wind” from the eponymous book cover jacket, “Harmony” from the Gen Con 2024 program cover, “Wall of Roses” from Uncanny Magazine Issue 46, and scenes from her debut novel. Her dark political fantasy book released late last year, Cry, Voidbringer, explores “how identity is reshaped under empire” and the question “Why do post-colonial societies perpetuate the same crimes as their oppressors?” I’m excited she’s here today, where she is discussing the latter of these topics.

About Cry, Voidbringer:

In a broken system, do you save yourself or fight for the people you love?

With the godspower waning, the queen of Ashvi has had to find another way to bolster her fight against her imperialist oppressors. The solution: wrenching children of other cultures from their homes and conscripting them into service.

Hammer was one of those children. Now, she’s a jaded soldier waging Ashvi’s perpetual war, thinking only of her own survival. But when she accidentally rescues Viridian, a child with rare and potentially devastating powers, her priorities shift. The girl appears to be the answer to the queen’s prayers—the perfect weapon to restore her kingdom’s ancient borders, even if the colonized cities they reconquer don’t want her version of liberation. Can Hammer protect Viridian from the system that broke her . . . before the girl’s power is unleashed on the world?

Cry, Voidbringer is a gripping saga of how far one will go for freedom and control—and how easily it can all be taken away.

Arguably we live in a post-colonial world. The cruelty of the colonial era is well documented—Amritsar, Mỹ Trạch, the Banda Islands. But those who have unburdened ourselves of European power have a dichotomy of shame and pride when discussing our colonialist past.

There is an anger reflecting on this part of our history. It’s a deeply human part of us: a need to make sense of our suffering, and if there isn’t, then it is unjust. We’ve invented entire religions to exact revenge. We comfort ourselves that criminals will get their due on a spiritual plane beyond human sight.

This anger is wholly justified: a rape of one’s homeland, an invader stealing all and leaving little for us, being relegated to a second-class citizen of the very land we were born in. We learn these horrors and we find community who share this grief with us. We collectively go “never again”, and a national identity is birthed from the spume of this national humiliation.

But shame is a funny thing. It’s an admittance of weakness, and in a post-colonial world where we’re already poor and vulnerable, weakness is an open invitation for further subjugation. To protect ourselves, we erase this part of our history. We pretend this colonial past didn’t happen. We go back to “the good ol’ days”, whatever that is, and one can arbitrarily pick any point in history and romanticize it. Oh, let’s pick 600AD, because that was the era where we were in power before the Europeans came. A great, glorious time, when we had all this land and all these countries, and we were the kings that oppressed others.

What results is a refusal to acknowledge that colonization has affected people, in the way they view themselves in relation to each other, and their relationship to the land they live on. The narrative doesn’t allow for that. It ruins the fantasy that the oppression never existed. To keep this lie alive, we wind up using the tools of our oppressors to construct a memory of a past that most likely never existed. This dream must discard the true cost of war. After all, if your romanticized history meant your country won every single battle, then fighting shouldn’t be too hard, right?

We’ve lost institutional memory in this post-colonial world. War has spawned countless pieces of literature documenting the savagery and fruitlessness of it, and yet we never learn. I see genocide after genocide, war after war, fought over the same reasons as a thousand years ago, but now with better guns and better bombs. We joke that time is a flat circle. It’s true. We fall into the same mistakes over and over again for a simple human reason: we cannot look weak, because someone, somewhere, will hurt us again.

Is there a solution to this? I don’t know.

I’m not holding out hope for it.

Elaine Ho is an award-winning Asian American illustrator and author. She bounces between the US and Singapore, belonging to both and neither. Ho’s work primarily explores themes of identity and home, while also being drawn to the broken and the beautiful. She originally received a degree in psychology before pivoting into art full-time. Find her work at artofelaineho.com.

The post Women in SF&F Month: Elaine Ho first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Women in SF&F Month: Lorraine Wilson

2026-04-01T14:55:53Z

Women in SF&F Month 2026 officially starts today with a guest post by Lorraine Wilson! Her short fiction includes “Bathymetry” (winner of the British Fantasy Award) and “Mhairi Aird” (published in the British Fantasy Award–nominated anthology Nova Scotia: New Speculative Fiction from Scotland, Volume 2). Her first novel, This Is Our Undoing, won the SCKA for Best Debut and was a finalist for the Kavya Prize as well as the British Fantasy Awards for Best Novel and Best Newcomer. Her latest novels are the science fantasy books We Are All Ghosts in the Forest and The Salt Oracle, the latter of which is a finalist for this year’s British Science Fiction Association Award and a Locus Recommended Reading List selection for Science Fiction. I’m thrilled she’s here today with her essay “Finding hope — writing in hard times, the ‘punk’, and envisioning better futures.”

About We Are All Ghosts in the Forest and The Salt Oracle:

The internet has collapsed, leaving the world haunted by digital ghosts that infect books, people and nature itself. Blending climate fiction, folklore, and a smidge of the spooky, these two critically acclaimed science fantasies are standalones in the same eerie future.

BSFA Longlisted WE ARE ALL GHOSTS IN THE FOREST follows a healer whose carefully solitary life on the edge of the woods is upturned when a scarred and silent teenage boy is left in her care, and a mysterious digital plague spreads unrest across the land.

Current BSFA finalist, THE SALT ORACLE, is a locked boat murder mystery with a dash of second chance romance and a post fall-of-civilisation dark academia. A giant floating college has been built around an uncanny girl who can commune with the digital ghosts of the sea, but is she a monster, or a victim?

Finding hope —
writing in hard times, the ‘punk’, and envisioning better futures
– Lorraine Wilson

This is a hard time to be a creative. The tech companies are stealing our work in order to burn the world faster while they line their pockets with economic lies. The publishing industry is starving its mid-list, investing in narrower and narrower genre-brackets, and stripping publishing houses for parts. And the world — oh the world — it is so full of darkness and hurt and injustice. How, amidst all that, do you sit at your computer and create beauty?

It feels frivolous to write about imaginary people having imaginary crises when there is just so much work to be done to fix everything that is broken, and we all (the non-politicians, non-millionaires) individually have so little ability to create that change. We are fiddling while Rome burns, or shouting our own name into an abyss filled with weeping. It feels self-indulgent if you are writing about anything other than world events, and futile if you are. And yet we have all seen the quotes from wiser women than me saying that in difficult times, writing matters.

‘Books are a form of political action,’ Toni Morrison said. ‘Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.’ Ursula Le Guin said, ‘Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art — the art of words.’ She also said this: ‘I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.’

So who am I to disagree with such icons? And I don’t disagree, but I do think the gap between believing these statements to be true, and having the necessary creative energy to do the work is wide and hard to cross. Particularly for those of us writing around the socio-political issues that are so overwhelmingly in our news — far-right violence, the dismantling of democracy and human rights, the climate crisis — thus making our work not escapist, not something we can compartmentalise away from the real world. And it is particularly hard again for those of us who are struggling to stay afloat within publishing — financial hardship, insecurity and industry disinterest are not, funnily enough, conducive to creativity.

So how do we, as authors who are trying to speak to the hard times, and envisioning change, guard the flame of our creativity when the world seeks to blow it out?

I have always said to my daughter that whenever something terrible is happening, we must ask ourselves what is within our capacity to do, and then we must do it. Whether that’s donating, signing petitions, marching, uplifting other voices, or just being in community with others, there is almost always some small direct action we as normal citizens can do even for issues that are not on our doorstep. I think finding that small direct action frees up a lot of the mental energy consumed by powerlessness — it allows our brains to let out a breath of relief and say ‘right, I’ve done something, so now what else can I do?’ And it becomes easier for that next something to be art.

So then, once we come to the art, we can use that powerlessness we feel, along with the anger and the desperate hope, to fuel our writing. Having done something tangible, the intangibility of art-as-resistance feels more deeply nurtured and nurturing. With my most recent two books — We Are All Ghosts in the Forest, and The Salt Oracle — I was very consciously exploring the power of individual choices, and individual compassion. I was looking at community, and what it takes to build community and hold it together in the face of apocalyptic world events. That exploration was a way of reminding myself that I believe in community as the force that can resist the megalomaniac destructiveness we are surrounded by. I don’t believe in heroes or chosen ones, but I do believe in normal people – just look at the Twin Cities, and the awe-inspiring power of a community brought together against hate.

Recently though, I have taken a break from novel projects to focus on short fiction. Partly because publishing is brutal and I needed to step away from the fear of failure, but also partly because I wanted, with everything going on in the world, to take some time to focus on generating hope on the page. Not just hope within dystopian worlds, but actively hopeful futures.

Anger and catharsis for our fears are extremely important in our fiction, and I will die on the hill that we need those narratives just as much as we need escapism, hope or joy. But having written several books that contemplate those fears head on, I wanted to do something different. Genre-labels like ‘solar-punk’ and ‘hope-punk’ have been drifting around the SFF conversations for a while now, but intentionally diving into those narrative forms meant I had to have a good think about what they are really doing. The key word, to me, is the ‘punk’. We are fond of appending that word to pretty much anything that’s a bit edgy, but if this is me trying to do as the great Le Guin bid me — envisioning larger realities — then my stories need to be doing more than that.

Punk, to me, is a political stance. It is active movement against the status quo, a dismantling of hegemonic structures of power, ownership and personhood. And not just that — it isn’t enough to resist exploitative systems; to be truly envisioning freedom, we need to be creating something better. It is also not enough to be cosy or gentle or free from conflict — that is escapism, not hope, and it definitely isn’t punk. If I wanted to write ‘hope-punk’ then I needed to be saying ‘this is who we might be, this is how we’d get there, this is why it matters.’

This mini-project has taken me to speculative climate mitigation work, collective restoration and future folklores. It has been a powerful exercise in testing my storytelling skills, my imagination, and my capacity to dream better realities that are still tangibly linked to where we are now. But it has also done something unexpected — it’s made me better at looking for the light.

I thought I was already quite good at looking for the people doing the good work, at believing that there is always someone creating a light in any darkness. But in specifically seeking to create that light in my stories, I’ve found myself seeing it in more places than before. In some ways, that only adds to my general frustration at the people in power — the solutions are right there. It would, bluntly, be so damn easy to fix all of the horrors facing us, the only thing in our way is the greed of rich men.

But it has also been rejuvenating — this retraining to look for solutions rather than pending disaster. In remembering freedom, I have found it in more places than I thought, and I will be carrying that determined, eyes-wide-open hopefulness back into my novels. There is so much I cannot influence, but I can do this.

It is a hard time to be a creative. But we are creatures built on storytelling, and anyone who has hung on in publishing for any length of time is stubborn down to their bones. So we build community, we tell stories that shape hope out of ashes, and we don’t give up until that hope becomes truth.

A conservation scientist and third culture Scot, Lorraine lives by the sea writing stories influenced by folklore and the wilderness. She has a PhD from the University of St. Andrews and is the author of several books, most recently the connected science fantasies We Are All Ghosts In The Forest and The Salt Oracle. Winner of two British Fantasy Awards and the Society of Authors ADCI Literary Prize, her books have also been finalists for the BSFA, BFA, Kavya and Saltire Awards, and twice winners of the SCKAwards. Lorraine has been stalked by wolves, caught the bubonic plague, and befriended pythons, but she now sticks to herding cats.

The post Women in SF&F Month: Lorraine Wilson first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Introducing Women in SF&F Month 2026

2026-03-30T18:29:56Z

This April will be the fifteenth annual Women in SF&F Month here at Fantasy Cafe, starting on the 1st! For the last several years, this month has been dedicated to highlighting some of the many women doing wonderful work in fantasy and science fiction, and the site will be featuring guest posts by some of these writers throughout April. There will be new posts appearing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout the month, and there will also be a book giveaway next week (with one print copy for a US reader and one digital copy for someone outside the US!).

As always, guests will be discussing a variety of topics—the stories and narratives that help them see the world around them more clearly, the ideas and types of characters they explore in their work, the questions and points they keep in mind when writing, the power of asking “What if?” when creating fiction, the ways they find hope and continue to get words on the page, and more. I’m excited to share their essays with you this month, and I hope that these both give you some things to think about and help you find some new authors and books to read.

The Women in SF&F Month Origin Story

In case you are unfamiliar with how April came to be Women in SF&F Month here: It started in 2012, following some discussions about review coverage of books by women and the lack of women blogging about books being suggested for Hugo Awards in fan categories that took place in March. Some of the responses to these—especially the claim that that women weren’t being reviewed and mentioned because there just weren’t that many women reading and writing SFF—made me want to spend a month highlighting women doing work in the genre to show that there are a lot of us, actually.

So I decided to see if I could pull together an April event focusing on women in science fiction and fantasy, and thanks to a great many authors and reviewers who wrote pieces for the event, it happened! I was—and continue to be—astounded by the fantastic guest posts that have been written for this series. And I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who has contributed to it.

If you’ve missed the series before and want to check out some of the previous posts, you can find some brief descriptions and links for the past few years on the following pages:

This Week’s Schedule

I’m looking forward to this year’s Women in SF&F series, which starts in a couple days! There will be guest posts on Wednesday and Friday with more to come on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout April. This week’s guests are as follows:

April 1: Lorraine Wilson (The Salt Oracle, We Are All Ghosts in the Forest)
April 3: Elaine Ho (Cry, Voidbringer; “Harmony” and More Artwork)

The post Introducing Women in SF&F Month 2026 first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Michael Swanwick Guest Post and Book Giveaway

2026-03-07T19:14:30Z

I’m thrilled to have a guest post by science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick to share with you today—and to be giving away a copy of his new SFF collection! His previous work includes the World Fantasy Award–winning novella “Radio Waves” and the additional stories collected in Tales of Old Earth; the collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow, which includes the Hugo Award–winning short story of the same name; and the Nebula Award–winning novel Stations of the Tide.

His latest book, The Universe Box, is described as containing “tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend.” Containing an introduction by the author and 19 short stories total—including two brand new ones!—this came out in trade paperback and ebook earlier this month. More information on the book and how to win a copy is below, along with the essay “A Thumbnail History of Twentieth-Century Fantasy” by Michael Swanwick!

About THE UNIVERSE BOX:

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.

[STARRED REVIEW] “Five-time Hugo Award winner Swanwick (Stations of the Tide) swirls together myth and science in this wildly inventive collection.
—Publishers Weekly

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction
“Starlight Express”
“The Last Days of Old Night”
“The Year of the Three Monarchs”
“Ghost Ships”
“The White Leopard”
“Dragon Slayer”
“The Warm Equations”
“Requiem for a White Rabbit”
“Dreadnaught”
“Grandmother Dimetrodon”
“The Star-Bear”
“Nirvana or Bust”
“Reservoir Ice”
“Artificial People”
“Huginn and Muninn—and What Came After”
“Cloud”
“Timothy: An Oral History”
“Annie Without Crow”
“Universe Box”

A Thumbnail History of Twentieth-Century Fantasy
by Michael Swanwick

Every history of fantasy I’ve read—and there are far from enough of them—starts at some carefully-chosen literary work in the distant past and proceeds to trace a line of influence and inevitability from that point to the present moment.

But I was there. I saw it happen. And I’m here to tell you that they all got it wrong.

Fantasy was born the day a neolithic spear-fisher exclaimed, “Did you see the size of the one I missed?” held hands apart, and on impulse doubled the separation. In that instant, storytelling was born. Fantasy has been an essential element of it ever since.

But modern fantasy—by which I mean fantasy as a thing apart, a genre—began the day the Ace Books legal-but-unauthorized edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the streets. The excitement this caused cannot be exaggerated. Editor David Hartwell reported that entrepreneurs laid down blankets on Harvard Square piled high with pyramids of paperbacks and sold them all the same day.

I was in high school, but my sister Patty, attending nursing school in Manhattan, sent home a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. I stayed up all night reading it. The next day, I launched a long, quixotic attempt to write the stuff myself.

Not coincidentally, I began frantically searching for more books like the trilogy.

As did every publisher in New York City.

Nobody, it transpired, was writing like Tolkien. So publishing houses reissued early twentieth century fantasies. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, and Robert E. Howard’s Conan books rose from the grave. In a drugstore spinner rack in Richmond, Virginia, I saw a paperback cover obviously meant to evoke the trilogy. It was E. R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses. I asked my mother for a loan so I could buy it. To my intense embarrassment and the visible amusement of the pharmacist, Mom examined the book to make sure it wasn’t smut.

The gold standard of these reissues was Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy line, edited by Lin Carter. Carter was a terrible writer, but a reader/fan possessed of a deep knowledge of forgotten fantasy. He restored to print 65 books, including Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique, Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist, several James Branch Cabell volumes, and Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword. More regrettable (but how many fantasies were there to be mined from the past?) were works by George MacDonald and William Morris better suited for scholars than readers. A generation of writers was kindled by them.

They were not, however, numerous enough to satisfy compulsive readers. So, many writers (again, me included) shifted loyalty from fantasy to science fiction.

This was not the betrayal it looks like.

Long before Tolkien, there were natural fantasists with no market for their work. They found workarounds. Some wrote Arthurian fantasies, which could be sold as historical novels. Others wrote romantic novels involving ghosts or time travel. Many found science fiction.

Alien worlds could look a lot like the lands of fantasy. Mars could substitute for Faerie.

Writers like C. L. Moore and Leigh Brackett wrote adventures which began with a brawny Earth hero riding away from the (never shown) spaceport on his eight-legged horse. Suddenly, an eight-legged snake causes the horse to rear, throwing its rider and losing his zap gun. From which point, he has to smite with sword and fist native Martians who are too proud to use Earthian firearms. Though not too proud to stab him in the back.

This sounds dismissive. But, often, the fantasists driven into SF by market forces were superbly talented. Science fiction learned from them. They, in turn, took from science fiction lessons which later, when they felt free to leave, they took with them. This was what Theodore Sturgeon would describe as syzygy—an exchange of genetic material without the intent of offspring.

Then came Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara.

Though criticized at the time as a slavish imitation of Tolkien, it was what publishers had been lusting after for years—proof that high fantasy could be created by living writers. And it made money. A lot of it.

At the same time, the broad scope of Lin Carter’s Adult Fantasy line meant that by comparing sales figures, it was possible to discover exactly what fantasy readers wanted. The numbers confirmed that the more like Tolkien’s work a book was, the better it sold.

A predictable result was the rise of the multi-volume fantasy series. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time ran to fourteen volumes, three of them, sadly, written after his death. And it was far from the longest such.

Meanwhile, any emerging writer who could slap together a plot involving dragons, elves, or other recognizable fantasy tropes could get published, even if the result wasn’t very well written. They didn’t have to be solemn tales of war and destiny either. I vividly remember a fantasy editor bragging about how much money she was making with what she condescendingly called “silly little fantasies.”

This is not to say that there weren’t artistically ambitious fantasists forty years ago. There were. But their work could be easily lost in a flood of merely publishable books.

For the first time in human history, there were enough fantasy books to satisfy even the most devoted reader. Some bookstores even put fantasy and science fiction on separate shelves, a division that resulted in many ironies of placement. (Where does Anne McCaffrey belong? Or Jack Vance?)

Earlier, if you will grant me permission to go back a decade or two, Dungeons and Dragons remade everybody’s expectations of fantasy. A Dork Tower cartoon made fun of how little magic there was to be found in The Lord of the Rings, imagining its gamers using Gandalf as a battering ram in response to that lack. Magic underwent an Industrial Revolution because gaming required lots and lots of the stuff to be playable. And this bled into fiction. In my own The Iron Dragon’s Daughter and its sequels everyone employed magic as casually as we do technology. To understand the literature, full credit must be given to the game.

Which is not to say that commerce trumped art. In the early 1980s, whenever I found myself chatting with newmade fantasists, I did my best to promote literary ambition, citing writers like Greer Gilman and Tanith Lee, whom they invariably admired. I have no idea if I made any difference at all. But with or without me, the fantasy realm expanded to include pretty much anything you can imagine. High or low, here or there, go to the store and you could find what pleases you.

Which brings us to the end of the century.

In the quarter century since then, fantasy has undergone further transformations. People of color, who long felt excluded from the genre, took their rightful places within it, often at the very front. Writers from other continents found a warm welcome in North America. Natural historical novelists (remember the natural fantasists who took refuge in science fiction?) found a safe haven in fantasy. And then…

But that is a story best left for a later essay. Perhaps to be written by you. But if not, then surely by somebody who loves fantasy with a passion equal to yours.

Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed science fiction and fantasy short-story writers of his generation, having received an unprecedented five Hugo Awards in a six year period. He is also the winner of the British Science Fiction and World Fantasy Awards. Swanwick’s stories published in such collections as Gravity’s Angels, Tales of Old Earth, and Not So Much, Said the Cat, have also appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including OMNI, Penthouse, Amazing, Asimov’s Science Fiction, New Dimensions. Swanwick’s novels include The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, a New York Times Notable Book, the Nebula Award–winner Stations of the Tide, the Darger & Surplus series, Dragons of Babel, and City in the Stars. His work has also been translated into more than ten languages. Swanwick lives in Pennsylvania.

Book Giveaway

Courtesy of Tachyon Publications, I have one finished copy of The Universe Box to give away!

Giveaway Rules: To be entered in the giveaway, fill out Fantasy Cafe’s The Universe Box Giveaway Google form, linked below. One entry per household and the winners will be randomly selected. Those from the US are eligible to win. The giveaway will be open until the end of the day on Friday, March 6. The winner has 24 hours to respond once contacted via email, and if I don’t hear from them after 24 hours has passed, a new winner will be chosen (who will also have 24 hours to respond until someone gets back to me with a place to send the book).

Please note email addresses will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winner. Once the giveaway is over all the emails will be deleted.

Note: The giveaway link has been removed since it is now over.

The post Michael Swanwick Guest Post and Book Giveaway first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

February 2026 Virtual Book Recommendations

2026-02-20T20:28:12Z

If you missed the first of my 2026 book recommendations events with the Ashland Public Library last night, you can catch the video on Youtube here. While last year’s program focused on both fantasy and science fiction, I’m primarily focusing on fantasy book recommendations this year. (But if you’re looking for more science fiction books this year, Elizabeth Bear has you covered!)

For the first book recommendations event of the year, I recommended a couple of epic fantasy books, a novella involving Faerie, an alternate history with dragons, and time travel in a secondary world (surprisingly, since I think this is only the second book I’ve really enjoyed involving time travel after Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred!).

For more on these books and/or further related reading, you can also check out the following:

The Tethered Mage/Swords and Fire Series by Melissa Caruso
- Why I love the Swords and Fire Trilogy
- Review of The Tethered Mage (Swords and Fire #1)
- Review of The Defiant Heir (Swords and Fire #2)
- Review of The Unbound Empire (Swords and Fire #3), with some reflection on what makes a good ending
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar Book Review
The Scarlet Throne by Amy Leow
- Favorite Books of 2024 (featuring The Scarlet Throne)
- “Villains, Grey Areas, and What Women Can and Cannot Be” by Amy Leow
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, featured in Favorite Books of 2025
To Shape a Dragons Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
- Favorite Books of 2023 (featuring To Shape a Dragon’s Breath)
- Moniquill Blackgoose on Indigenous Media Representation

These book recommendation events are quarterly half-hour long discussions taking place on Zoom on the third Thursday of the month, and the next book chat will be from 6:30 to 7:00 ET on May 21. You can register for the next virtual book recommendations event here.

The post February 2026 Virtual Book Recommendations first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

February 2026 Virtual Fantasy Book Recommendations Event

2026-02-12T19:52:51Z

One week from today, I’ll be doing the first quarterly virtual book recommendations event with the Ashland Public Library in Massachusetts of this year. Unlike last year, I’ll primarily be focusing on fantasy books instead of fantasy and science fiction. There may still be the occasional science fiction recommendation, but I’ll mostly be featuring fantasy and author Elizabeth Bear is focusing on SF recommendations this year (and just did her first event last night!).

I’ll be sharing these fantasy book recommendations on Zoom from 6:30 to 7:00 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, February 19, and if you want to join us live next week, you can register here.

If you want to see it but can’t make it, I will be posting the video later. You can keep up with each video at this link, and last year’s recommendations event videos can be seen at the following links:

The post February 2026 Virtual Fantasy Book Recommendations Event first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Review of Masquerade by O. O. Sangoyomi

2026-02-10T17:46:22Z

Masquerade
by O. O. Sangoyomi
368pp (Trade Paperback)
My Rating: 7/10
LibraryThing Rating: 3.84/5
Goodreads Rating: 3.9/5

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Masquerade, O. O. Sangoyomi’s debut novel, is a rare instance of a book I read without really knowing what to expect. I believe it first came to my attention when it became a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards for Debut Novel, and after that, I saw some readers mention they enjoyed it. I knew it was loosely based on the myth of Persephone, that it promised politicking in a reimagined fifteenth-century West Africa, and that it likely crossed genres, having been recognized by awards for both fantasy and historical fiction (though it was more often categorized as the latter). Yet I didn’t know which elements were speculative, what the characters and their arcs were supposed to be like, or if the relationship inspired by Persephone and Hades was at all romantic or had a happy ending.

As it turns out, I had fun discovering these aspects without having too much prior knowledge of Masquerade, so I’m going to preface this review with something that may sound a bit odd: maybe you don’t want to read this review if you’re interested in reading this novel.

Maybe you just want to know the short version, which is that:

I rather enjoyed the story and eagerly turned the pages
I loved the themes and ending
I found the protagonist and her characterization frustrating

This means my feelings on this one are a bit complicated, but I ultimately thought Sangoyomi did some interesting things in her standalone debut novel, making it one that lingered a bit more than most books after I finished it—though part of the reason for that is just how vexing it is to read a book that’s so close to being great but has some aspects holding it back.

If you want the detailed version, keep reading.

Masquerade is a novel set in Medieval West Africa that is largely historical but also a bit speculative since Sangoyomi adjusted her setting to fit the themes she was exploring related to women living in a patriarchal society (as mentioned in this interview at Grimdark Magazine). Historically, Yorùbá blacksmiths were revered for their mystical-seeming ability to transform metal, but the author made this the profession of women in her story to examine how female artisans would have been viewed with suspicion and accused of witchcraft for the same abilities. It’s not a straightforward retelling of the story of Persephone and Hades and does not include the underworld or literal Greek deities, but it is sometimes classified as magical realism due to some otherworldly aspects involving some of the Yorùbá pantheon. (These parts are brief but consequential.)

This novel is similar in feel to a lot of modern fantasy with its first-person narration from the perspective of a young woman who must contend with being taken from the life she’s always known and thrust into an unfamiliar royal court with cutthroat, potentially deadly politics. Òdódó, a blacksmith and the daughter of one, is drugged and abducted at the command of the king of Yorùbáland, who decided he must have her as his wife after he came across her singing and working at her forge in Timbuktu. She is thrilled by the prospect of exchanging her days of toil for luxury, but she soon discovers that many of the king’s allies are against his marrying a “witch”—and she has much to learn and needs to change if she wants to continue to hold on to her new position.

In many ways, Masquerade is a novel about women’s lives in a patriarchal society: the struggles they face, the ways in which they feel like they need to turn on each other for their own survival, and their inability to be seen as individuals. Òdódó’s journey is largely about discovering how she can use misconceptions and being underestimated to her advantage, and I loved her story in general: the twists and turns and seeing just how far she was willing to go to hold on to the life she’d decided she wanted. However, it was difficult to believe in her as a character when she vacillated between overlooking the most obvious clues and being the smartest person in the room.

The most frustrating part of that is that I don’t think it would have taken much to make her someone I could believe in as a character. It didn’t seem like it was trying to be a book with especially complicated politics or characterization, so I wasn’t expecting labyrinthine plotting or a deep dive into personality from it. It also examined some ideas related to the duality of humanity, such as how someone can both care for someone and treat them horribly, as shown through Òdódó’s relationships with both her mother and her eventual husband, and it also showed Òdódó as someone who had feelings for the king and good moments with him while also being aggrieved by the way he treated her at times—so I didn’t expect the protagonist to be one dimensional in her skills and outlook, either.

Because of that, I was willing to believe there were reasons for a lot of the parts that struck me as odd at times, like how quickly Òdódó got over the fact that she was abducted and embraced her new role. It might have helped to get more of a sense of what her life was like before she was kidnapped to better illustrate why she would have been so glad to leave her old life behind, especially since a big reason I thought she’d be eager to leave it behind didn’t end up applying, but I could certainly understand how living as a queen would be preferable to toiling at a forge.

It also seemed a bit discordant to me at first that someone like Òdódó—a common woman who would have been treated as such—didn’t seem to fully grasp how a lot of people might hate their king and conqueror, but she’s also only nineteen years old and was probably rather sheltered in her community of female blacksmiths. Although we don’t see a lot of her life before her abduction, the first chapter showed that her over-protective mother didn’t like for her to wander the city alone and punished her for talking to strange men. When there were things I would have expected her to be more disturbed by or give more consideration to, I was also aware that her youth and upbringing could account for some obliviousness and naivete.

Between those reasons and the fact that she wasn’t the type of character whose narrative always clearly laid out all her thoughts and feelings, I think I would have found her journey perfectly believable if just a couple of things had been tweaked. For one, it would have helped if it had leaned into her being someone who took everyone at their word, at least earlier in her story. It came close to doing that, but there was one person she should have known very well whose words she did not take as truth and was shocked to discover didn’t react to everything the way she expected. This does work with her sometimes overlooking things that don’t fit with what she wants to believe, though, so that’s not the bigger problem for me.

The larger issue is that there is one scene that made her look smarter than everyone else in the room that followed closely behind her not seeing what should have been obvious (though that could fall into that category of her trying to see what she wanted to believe). I think the intent was for her to have a different perspective given some recent experience, how men in power tend to handle their problems, and what she was beginning to learn about how to best handle court in her position (and to illustrate that even when she had ideas and input, her soon-to-be husband got all the credit). Yet it just didn’t make sense that she was giving sound advice no one else had apparently considered to a room full of people who had a lifetime of experience and the success in their field to show for it, all while she’d only had introductory instruction in their area of expertise. It stood out since it didn’t seem like she was even supposed to be some sort of mastermind, just someone capable of learning how to use the strengths she had to her advantage. Simply removing or toning down this one part would have done a lot to make her a character I could believe in as someone young and inexperienced who just needed some time to acclimate to her new situation.

Aside from my frustration about some character inconsistency, I really enjoyed this story for its readability, setting, and overall arc with a perfect ending, and I loved what the author did with the alternative history of the blacksmith guild and its women. (And for those wondering, no, it does not have a romance by definition.) Yet there was enough done well in this debut that I am interested in checking out Sangoyomi’s second novel, a young adult dark academia book titled Dreamweaving, which is the opening installment in a contemporary fantasy series scheduled for release later this year.

My Rating: 7/10

Where I got my reading copy: It was a Christmas gift.

Read or Listen to an Excerpt from Masquerade

The post Review of Masquerade by O. O. Sangoyomi first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Strange Horizons Roundtable on Influence

2026-01-26T18:00:05Z

This week is the 2026 Strange Horizons Criticism Special, which includes a new essay and review every day, a podcast, an editorial, and a roundtable: “Giving Permission: A Roundtable on the Obscurity of Influence” with Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Charles Payseur, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, and me. You can read the entire discussion here.

Here’s a bit about the overall premise from the preamble:

“We were seeking to identify a score or so authors who defy easy classification, whose unique style and/or creative philosophy have influenced other writers (and are recognized as such by other writers) in perhaps subtle and oblique but demonstrable ways—even if they did not establish a ‘school’ or ‘distinct group of self-defined disciples.’”

I had a lot of fun with this: both thinking about unique works and influence and seeing what everyone else in this wonderful group thought and recommended. My to-read list kept growing while working on this, so be prepared to add more books to yours!

The post Strange Horizons Roundtable on Influence first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

Guest Post by Fantasy Author Katie Hallahan

2026-01-20T21:42:14Z

I’m delighted to have a guest post by Katie Hallahan to share with you today! She is the author of McKenna Ellerbeck, a contemporary fantasy series starting with The Twice-Sold Soul, which is described as a “queer fantasy romance set in a magical high school reunion” for “fans of Buffy and Charmed.” The second and newest book in her series, The Twice-Wanted Witch, is out in trade paperback and ebook today—and you can read more about some of her favorite recent fantasy books with bisexual and queer characters below!

About The Twice-Wanted Witch (McKenna Ellerbeck #2):

When secrets are what protect you, can the truth really set you free?

It’s been six months since McKenna Ellerbeck killed her second Archdemon, saved Arcadia Commons, and earned a spot on the Witches Council.

Things should be good, right?

Instead she’s overworked, underpaid, disrespected by her fellow Council members, all while fighting demons on a regular basis and suffering through having her mother as a roommate. At least she has her friends–minus Bastien, her ex who told her to get the hell out of his life months ago.

When her friend Brooke is put on trial with the Council and may lose her magic, with Bastien reappearing to lead the charge, McKenna readily volunteers to represent Brooke. Then just when McKenna has hope there’s more to Bastien’s involvement and that they might reconcile, he goes missing, leaving a trail of clues and mystifying secrets: a strange new spell he’s working on with an unknown partner, a secret demon research project, a ring filled with corrupted magic, and a literal demon hiding in his closet.

With an epidemic of demon-induced blunt honesty sweeping the town, hints of another Archdemon making plans to invade, her mom’s mysterious and possibly criminal old flame showing up, time is running out for McKenna to find Bastien, figure out who’s keeping which secrets, how dangerous they are, and decide whose side she’s on: the powerless or the powerful.

Bisexual favs: Books with great bisexual and queer rep
By Katie Hallahan

It’s more clear than ever that books with representation of all identities are essential. Whether it’s centering people of color, queer identities, the gender spectrum, disability rep, or more, everyone deserves to be seen and deserves to be the hero. It’s arguably even better if this hero’s identity isn’t the focus of the book—it’s just a facet of their existence.

In fantasy, authors get to create those worlds and readers get to live in them for a while. And while we might not be able to conjure literal magic to the real world, maybe we can bring inspiration, hope, and empathy to it through these stories. In the spirit of that, here are some of my favorite recent books with bisexual and queer characters that are absolutely worth your time and a space on your TBR!

Back in a Spell (Thistle Grove Book 3) by Lana Harper. Kicking off in Payback’s a Witch with a John Tucker Must Die with witches plot, the Thistle Grove series is delightfully queer through and through. These modern fantasy romances are fun and compelling, and don’t just tackle magical shenanigans but grounded plots as well. Living up to familial expectations, recovering from heartbreak or other catastrophic mistakes, changing the narrative of your life and the world around you? Thistle Grove does it all. My personal favorite is Book 3, Back In a Spell, featuring the bi heroine Nina Blackmoore and her accidental but eye-opening and endearing romance with Morty, a non-binary bar owner who stumbles into the magical world he’s unknowingly been living in this whole time.

Behooved by M. Stevenson features an arranged marriage between two bisexual characters, Bianca and Aric. Unlike most arranged marriages, however, Bianca accidentally curses her new husband to turn into a horse during the day. Oops! The slow burn of their relationship is truly enjoyable. Starting from a place of grudgingly doing their duty, with neither trust nor love, Bianca and Aric’s tenuous relationship eventually blossoms because of the understanding and respect that forms between them. As a bonus, their world is a queer normative one, where all manner of relationships are accepted and welcomed. There are, of course, still villains and manipulators to confront and overcome, but it’s always nice when a character’s sexuality isn’t seen as part of the problem. This also has disability rep, as Aric is neurodivergent and Bianca has a chronic illness. Both of these significantly affect their daily lives and senses of self-worth, but are also sources of strength.

Six Wild Crowns (Queens of Elben Book 1) by Holly Race is a richly-detailed fantasy inspired by King Henry VIII and, more specifically, his six wives. What if Elben, the island kingdom Henry ruled over, was protected by magic? And what if the king needed to wed six wives, each connected to a specific region of Elben, to maintain his magical prowess and the barrier? Despite its historical inspiration, this, too, is a queernormative world. Dangerous politics and strict rules of inheritance may apply, but queer relationships, nonbinary gender identities, and even polyamorous marriages are all readily accepted. While this one isn’t a romance by genre, there’s plenty of romance in it, requited and not. The explorations of love, both romantic and platonic, between Seymour, Boleyn, and the other wives is core to this story and reinforces the truth that we are stronger together (and that the patriarchy is really only interested in protecting itself).

A Fae in Finance (How to Do Business in Faerie Book 1) by Juliet Brooks. If you’ve ever worked a crappy office job with a terrible boss and also like fantasy, I can’t recommend this enough! In this contemporary fantasy comedy, the real world has recently learned that the supernatural exists. Miri (a human) has a soul-sucking finance job with a boss so awful that when she gets stuck in the Fae realm, his only response is that since they have Wi-Fi, he expects her to immediately start working remotely. Miri is bisexual, though that’s only part of her story as she flirts with a few Fae, but mostly tries to struggle through dealing with her job, depression, and finding a way home. It’s not all bad though—she still has her adorable cat, Doctor Kitten, with her! This is one of those books where a character’s sexuality simply is without being a major part of the plot–proof that queer people have bad days at work and terrible bosses just like everyone else! Despite Miri’s existential and work crisis, her attempts to navigate the Fae world and teach them about humanity makes for some hilarious situational comedy.

Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai is also a workplace romance, of sorts. A contemporary fantasy romance with xianxia inspirations, it tells the story of Elle, errant descendant of a Chinese god of medicine, and Luc, a half-elf assassin bound by his true name to an employer he’d like to give notice to. Elle uses her magic to create powerful glyphs, which brings Luc into her orbit. When romance blooms between them, things get complicated with Luc’s employer and the family Elle left behind—some of whom are out for revenge. Though they are a straight-presenting couple, Luc is bisexual and a significant queer relationship in his past factors heavily into his arc. A unique, beautifully written story of family, love, obligation, and sacrifice.

Sargassa (Ex Romana, Book 1) by Sophie Burnham. What if the Roman Empire never fell, but continued to expand, even across the ocean? In this speculative novel set in the city of Sargassa, in a land we might call North America, the Roman Empire has been thriving for centuries. But when Selah Kleios inherits the role of Imperial Historian after her father’s assassination, she finds herself drawn into conspiracies, secrets, and the arms of her old flame, any one of which could undermine the Empire. Told from multiple points of view, the world of Ex Romana is brimming with queer characters. Some of them must hide their truths, while others embrace them, but everyone has something to learn about themselves, the privileges they may or may not have been taking for granted, and if the systems they’re living in are ones they still want to accept or not. The queerness of many of these characters is a large part of why they’re against the Empire’s status quo, though not the only reason, and it’s inspiring to read the story of so many who have been othered standing up to the system that wants to keep them down.

This, of course, is but a small taste of what’s out there for fantasy books with great queer representation. If you’re looking for more, here are some others I recommend checking out—including mine!

The Twice-Sold Soul by Katie Hallahan
The Twice-Wanted Witch by Katie Hallahan
The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai
Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson
Prince of Fortune by Lisa Tirreno
Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy
Swordcrossed by Freya Marske

Katie Hallahan is a fantasy author who loves tabletop RPGs, vampire TV shows, corgis, dabbling in nail art, and pumpkin spice everything. She has designed award-winning narrative adventure games at Phoenix Online Studios, an indie game studio she co-founded. She lives with her husband and son in Boston, Massachusetts where, shockingly, she actually uses her blinker when making turns. Katie is on Instagram, Bluesky, and Twitter at @katiehal16, on her website at katiehal.com.

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