One of Japan's most famous cultural institutions is the Takarazuka Revue, a female-led theater company that puts on productions where women play every role (including the male characters!). Kageki Shojo!! lightly fictionalizes the Revue, giving us the story of two teenage girls applying to an all-female theater troupe and their respective experiences working their way through the ranks. It grapples with tough topics (eating disorders, bullying, stalkers) but grants its characters the space to navigate them on their own terms, rather than leaning on melodramatic twists. A refreshingly down-to-earth series, with further volumes on the way!
A human and an alien on opposing sides of a galactic conflict while away their days selling alien liquor at a pub in a technophobic British enclave--but that's only the beginning of Skyward Inn, a book that over the course of its 200-some pages finds room for meditations on Brexit, colonialism, difficult parent-child relationships, fraught male adolescence, freakish body horror, and an endgame scenario that rivals Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End in scope, while having it beat for prose style and characterization. If you're a fan of Le Guin, Butler, or Vandermeer, or even have a soft spot for Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn, this is the best recent SF novel you likely haven't read.
Nobody writes like R.A. Lafferty. But for years his singular work has languished out-of-print--his phenomenal short story collections known only to devoted used-bookstore trawlers and famous fantasy authors. But with the release of this affordably priced new "best of" collection, you too can become a fan of weird and wondrous tales such as "Nine Hundred Grandmothers," "Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne," and "Thieving Bear Planet." And for those already familiar with this oeuvre, the collection is bundled with critical writing from Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, Samuel Delany, and others.
