Review: This winter, 4 fantasy novels portend doom — but offer delights
Noir and fantasy often seem to go together, but those two elements seldom uplift each other quite as well as they do ina novella by C.L. Polk. Magical detective Helen Brandt works to solve a string of serial murders in 1930s Chicago, but her own time is running out: She sold her soul to a demon, and the bill is about to come due.
Polk packs plenty of action into a short space, along with a decent number of plot twists, but the heart of the book is the love between Helen and her longtime girlfriend, Edith, who has a secret of her own. A romance between two people who are as good as married is a tall order, but Polk gives them one hell of a spark — and the homophobia they face ends up being as scary as any demonic force.
This Mexican-inspired fantasy is full of beautiful details, but Teo is also a fantastic protagonist: generous and kind but with a bad attitude. “The Sunbearer Trials” is a total thrill ride, one that focuses on friendships at least as much as romance, but the book’s greatest pleasure is in seeing Teo come into his own and gain power, in the face of unavoidable heartbreak.
It’s easy to get lost in Okri’s fable, which weaves the intimate with the communal and is full of mystical revelations — both protagonists suffer a kind of death and are reborn, and both of them come to a greater self-knowledge, which, we’re told, is “better than being a king.” And yet a creeping sense of dread also suffuses the novel, as a vision of people in chains, first revealed in a mysterious nightmare-inducing sculpture, eats away at everything.
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