By the time this reaches you, we will be a few months into 2024. Over the course of 2023, I reviewed 12 different books from across the speculative fiction genre. Books to haunt you, books to make you dream, and books that feel all too real. Hopefully over the past year, one of the reviews helped you find a book you loved. If you haven’t read any of my reviews from the past year, you can check them out at lightspeedmagazine.com/authors/aigner-loren-wilson and find your next favorite read.

I wanted to give a little bit of a sneak peek at some 2024 titles I’m excited about reading and reviewing.

Ours
Philip B. Williams
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9780593654828
Viking, February 2024, 592 pgs

Williams’ novel is probably going to be one of the first new books I read in 2024. Ours is a novel about American slavery and imaging a history where magic can help free those enslaved. Black surrealism that grapples with Black history is always a hard yes for me.

Moon of the Turning Leaves
Waubgeshig Rice
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9780358673255
William Morrow, February 2024, 320 pgs

In Moon of the Turning Leaves, Waubgeshig Rice returns to the world of his novel Moon of the Crusted Snow. I have not read the former, but the latter has been advertised as a standalone sequel following a new community within the same post-apocalyptic world. What draws my attention to Rice’s work is the same thing that catches my eye about Williams’ novel: the topic of an isolated group of BIPOC people surviving together in community despite the world burning around them.

The Eyes Are the Best Part
Monika Kim
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9781645661238
Erewhon Books, June 2024, 288 pgs

I first heard of The Eyes Are the Best Part on r/PubTips, a sub-Reddit community for writers to share query letters and get critiques. Monika Kim shared the first 300 words and the query of the book about a year or so ago, and my interest was extremely piqued. Then I saw it again in Publisher’s Marketplace only a short time later and knew that I just had to read the finished novel. The Eyes Are the Best Part has some great body horror vibes and a familial darkness that I tend to go crazy for.

The Stars Too Fondly
Emily Hamilton
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9780063320819
Harper Voyager, June 2024, 336 pgs

Lesbians in space: need I say more? Emily Hamilton’s The Stars Too Fondly is advertised as a science fantasy rom-com, which is where I got hooked. I don’t tend to read a lot of romance novels but a bit of love among the stars does the soul good.

The Melancholy of Untold History
Minsoo Kang
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 9780063337503
William Morrow, July 2024, 240 pgs

Minsoo Kang’s debut showcasing a 3,000-year history of a place through a speculative lens has whet my new appetite for historical speculative fiction titles. It’s something I blame Tananarive Due and Shelley Parker-Chan for. They’ve crafted well-researched, captivating tales in ways that have converted me. The small excerpts and pages from Kang’s title promises an unusual and exciting novel.

The Butcher of the Forest
Premee Mohamed
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9781250881786
Tor.com, February 2024, 160 pgs

I’m a Premee Mohamed fan through and through, making each new release something to look forward to. The Butcher of the Forest gives me dark secondary world fantasy vibes with a bit of a mystery. The forest world calls to the trail runner in me, and I can’t wait to see what creatures and strange happenings Mohamed’s crafted.

With 2024 fully upon us, I am knuckle-deep in one of these books. 2023 brought a lot of great reads, and it also brought my first award nomination as a critic or someone who writes words about other words. I don’t know if 2024 will bring the same recognition, but I know I want to bring something new or more to my reviews.

Not quite sure what that is yet. But I’m excited to find out. Hope you continue to follow me as I read and shout about books I think people should care about.