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Science Fiction for April 2026

by Henry L Lazarus

In the collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction this month there are two tales of deals with faeries. Does that make a trend?

Reena McCarty imagines an Earth in contact with the Fae. The Fae need human imagination and capture people when they can’t make a bargain. Poppy Hill had been captured as a child, worked as a cook, and then found herself in the real world a century after her capture. She works on bargains for a legal firm Carter Lane, helping with The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains (paper from Orbit)  Then the sister of the Danish decides to make a deal and Poppy misses the loophole and her client ends up on the otherside. Poppy gets one of her Fae friends to get her through the gate to try and rescue the woman, not knowing that she is involved in a complicated powerplay that could easily get her killed. The Fae world comes alive in this marvelous adventure. Very impressive!

Moorea Corrigan sets her tale of Faeries in 1919. Thistlemarsh(hard from Berkley) Hall was once owned by the King of the Faeries and stolen by the Dewhurst family and cursed. Faeries had been gone for a century when Mouse Dunne was declared the heir as long as she refurbishes it within a month. When she finds a frozen faerie. Thornwood,  and releases the spell, she makes a deal for him to use magic to repair the Manor. Unfortunately the curse makes magical home remodeling almost impossible, the inspector has been bribed, and there’s a catch in the deal that gave the Dewhurst family the manor. Fun. 

People pay Kang Siying, a Ganshi priestess, to use her magic to raise a dead body, keep it from rotting, and bring it home for a funeral. So finding one corpse on a battlefield is part of the job. What isn’t part of the job is that the reanimation talisman brings the man back to life. It doesn’t help that the man is a prince. Promised extra money she agrees to help him get home and to purify evil spirits so that their chi will restore his health. Of course there’s politics with a prince involved. Deathly Fates (hard from Wednesday Books) is a fun romance-adventure with a Chinese feel, It gave me a smile the whole time.

Every universe is created by another universe from a skunkworks filled with complicated piping that pushes the mathematics around. Engineers can access that space to repair their universe. Of course there’s corruption. Ellie and Daniel, her cousin, are tasked to resolve a small problem by the Chief Architect of her universe. Using The Subtle Art of Folding Space (hard from Tor) they have to deal with many attempts on their lives as they unravel a plot that goes universes deep. John Chu continues to fascinate with a tale started from an award winning short story. I think this will make its way to award nominations. 

Alexis Marie sets her tale in a world with both magic and cell phones. At its heart is six-year-old Antaris who doesn’t speak after his mother was murdered by a serial killer, the Botanist.Veda Thorne who barely survived the killer and is dying from a curse is asked to tutor the boy. He is staying with the father he never knew. Hiram Ellis, a lawyer who tries to avoid his wealthy parents. This is a tale of three dimensional characters trying to deal with a hurt child, and somehow also dealing with a crazy murderer. There’s a spell Sight Unseen (paper) that might have a clue to identify the killer. There’s also a racial element that has to do with the fact that Seers are treated as second class citizens and the boy might be a Seer. This is a book set in a well-limned world that is unique. Recommended. 

Lauren J. A. Bear has the goddess of love telling her tale to the sculptor responsible for Venus De Milo while he poses for her. Aphrodite in Pieces (Hard from Ace) humanizes the immortal from her birth in sea mist as an adult, her love affair with Ares. The tale turns the many myths about her into a coherent story. I really liked it. 

Amy Coombe writes of a princess cursed to Stay for a Spell (hard from Ace) in a bookstore. Princess Tanadelle, as second daughter, spends her time going to cutting ribbon ceremonies around the country. After she is cursed and can’t leave the bookstore her parents send all the other known princes to kiss her to break the curse. They somehow stay in the local inn in the small town. There’s also an ex-pirate cursed to avoid the sea, and a teenager whom she hires as her assistant as she cleans up the store. I had a grin the whole time, and yes everyone lives happily ever after. 

The Earth is doomed by a black hole, when TJ Klune says We Burned So Bright (hard from Tor). An aging Gay couple,Don and Rodney, decide there is something they have to do before the Earth is destroyed, and rent an RV to cross the country. As society decays around them, they meet both people who remain good, and others gone to savagery.  This is a tale that echoes in the heart, even as the reader is glad that the destruction of Earth by a black hole is extremely implausible. 

When the humans from the planet Anjiin were captured by the insectoid Carryx, they didn’t know that the Carryx intended to conquer the galaxy. Dafyd Alkhor is just trying to survive and somehow he is in charge of the people from Anjiin. In the second book of The Captive's War, he and others have to work with The Faith of Beasts (hard from Orbit), The other intelligent aliens both fighting the Carryx and controlled by them. Because of James S. A. Corey’s  other series The Expanse , these books are intended to become a tv series. The incredibly fascinating alien beings will be very difficult to reproduce on television. People who enjoyed the first part will really enjoy this expansion of the universe where  some real surprises await them. I’m eager for more of the story. 

Allen Stroud returns to his fun  Fractal series which takes place a century from now in which Mars was settled by people working to pay off the debt that got them there and Earth is having problems justifying the cost. This time the tale is mostly about an Anti-State(hard from Flame Tree Press) movement bolstered by an amoral assassin sent by a Corporation to cause a full revolt. Behind the revolt is a true AI inserted into the colony computer system. There’s a side tale of a group stealing a broken space ship to get to a lost freighter. In that one, Commodore Ellisa Shann returns to confront the thieves. This is a fun hard science fiction future with full knowledge of the physics required. Recommended. 

Garrett W. Vance continues the tale of a conquistador  and a Texas ranger who find themselves living on an Earth where time periods are mixed together. In the last tale they found allies and untamed horses on a Mesa. This time in Time Spike: The First Cavalry of the Cretaceous (ebook from Baen) they face a villainous army and have to create a mounted army to oppose them. Fun.

S. L. Huang has a novelette about Ro,  an alien otter linguist who is trying to accomplish jumping and replacing the mind of a Star Eater. These beings mine the material needed for star travel, and they are the only creature capable of translating space, but they are not reproducing. The problem is The Language of Liars (hard from Tordotcom) and it’s quite a twist. I expect this might be on some award lists. 

Jo Walton and  Ada Palmer discuss theTrace Elements (hard from Tor) that make up Science Fiction and Fantasy today. 

Baen books have a collection of The Monster Hunter Files, Volume 2(hard) edited by Larry Correia and Jason Cordova; and Plausibly Deniable (trade) tales edited by Jamie Ibson, They have reprinted Elizabeth Moon’s classic Sheepfarmer's Daughter (trade) that I have read several times . 

There are more reviews at http://www.henrylazarus.com/sf.htm

Henry Lazarus is a retired Dentist and author of several books.