Another six new and upcoming releases for you to check out – or not:

The High House by Jessie Greengrass

Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long?

Caro and her younger half-brother, Pauly, arrive at the High House after her father and stepmother fall victim to a faraway climate disaster—but not before they call and urge Caro to leave London. In their new home, a converted summer house cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally, the two pairs learn to live together. Yet there are limits to their safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy—the former village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything—can teach them as his health fails.

My thoughts: A Cli-Fi novel in the vein of John Christopher’s Death of Grass and Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow (two of my favorites), The High House is an intimate exploration of the impact of climate catastrophe. The story’s focus is four individuals who find refuge, amidst the mounting distant chaos, at a self-sufficient, high-ground property. Although there are four of them, only three deliver narrative insights through their dedicated POV chapters: Caro and Sally, whose voices are practically indistinct, and young Pauly who offers an interesting outlook as someone who never knew a world before the devastation, a calm before the endless storms. The elder Grandy, for some reason, is odd person out – which is a shame since he could have offered an equally fascinating, atypical perspective to their predicament. The narrative creeps up on us like the flood waters that eventually claim the surrounding village, covering themes related to motherhood and family, survival and loss. A quiet, measured, introspective read.

3/5

***

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

My thoughts: Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

4/5

***

Future Skinny by Peter Rosch

Casey Banks is a devoutly anorexic man who discovers he can see the future by binge-eating. His new plan? Perform visions for cash while staying thin by any means necessary. Reading futures proves to be lucrative, but when he ignores a vision of his girlfriend committing a grisly murder, it sets Casey on a dangerous path toward a destiny he’ll do anything to avoid.

My thoughts: Casey Banks can glimpse the future whenever he binge-eats. It’s an unusual, occasionally revolting ability that proves both lucrative and very dangerous when the wrong kind of people seek out his divinatory gifts. I loved the weird premise and the ensuing intrigue as Casey and his partner Lylian attempt to negotiate two rival factions, but one of the book’s central themes, the exploration of fate vs. free will, rang hollow for me. There’s some discussion about destiny and the ability to change one’s future, yet there are several instances where information gleaned from Casey is used to forestall betrayals by killing individuals before they have a chance to act. I’d argue that effectively puts the debate to rest but the book, at least in its surface discussions, leaves the question unanswered. Having said that, this argument pays off nicely in one of the better twist endings I have read.

3/5

***

The Second Cut by Louise Welsh

Auctioneer Rilke has been trying to stay out of trouble, keeping his life more or less respectable. Business has been slow at Bowery Auctions, so when an old friend, Jojo, gives Rilke a tip-off for a house clearance, life seems to be looking up. The next day Jojo washes up dead.

Jojo liked Grindr hook-ups and recreational drugs – is that the reason the police won’t investigate? And if Rilke doesn’t find out what happened to Jojo, who will?

My thoughts: A tip from an old friend, Jojo, regarding an estate sale sets auctioneer Rike on twin tracks of investigation, the first involving the disappearance of an elderly woman, the second involving the suspect death of the aforementioned Jojo. Along the way, we are treated to glimpses of the seedier side of Glasgow as our protagonist attempts to put together the pieces of these mysterious puzzles. Great characters and a brisk pacing make for a very compelling read – up until the book’s close, at which point the wheels come off. Our hero risks his life to get to the truth – only to have another character step in at the 11th hour to conveniently save the day and make everything right. And, in the end, the revelations regarding that missing woman and Rilke’s dead friend prove equally anti-climactic.

3/5

***

Light Years From Home by Mike Chen

Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he’d been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob.

When Evie’s UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He’s different—older, stranger, and talking of an intergalactic war—but the tensions between the siblings haven’t changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast. Because the FBI is after Jakob, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too.

My thoughts: This novel opens in a distant galaxy where our hero, Jakob, flees an advancing alien race.  Armed with the means to saving the universe, he journeys back to Earth – much to the surprise of his family who haven’t seen him since he disappeared while on a camping trip some fifteen years earlier.  What follows is a thoughtful study of family dynamics, obligations, and the restitutive power of forgiveness.  Jakob’s father is dead, his mother battling Alzheimers, one of his sisters a UFO “conspiracy nut” who never gave up on him, his other sister resentful insofar as she has never forgiven him for abandoning them.  And she does have a point. I too had a hard time finding much sympathy for Jakob who, at one point, even admits to being too busy to get in touch with them even though he visited Earth in the past.  A determined FBI provide a looming threat to the proceedings, but the jeopardy takes a back seat to this story’s more grounded elements – the characters and their respective relationships.  It’s a well-written book with a lot of heart, but sci-fi fans expecting a follow-through on the intergalactic high adventure promise of the opening chapter may be disappointed.

3/5

***

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamtsu

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.

Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.

From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.

My thoughts: A collection of stories spanning centuries, linked by a mysterious viral plague that sweeps across the globe, claiming lives and forever altering others.  On the heels of our own pandemic, it can make for a very sobering read at times, yet moments of despair are counter-balanced by instances of humor, heart, and hope.  Although these tales are interconnected to varying degrees, they serve as effective stand-alone narratives.  As a result, some may resonate more than others.  Two of my favorites were, arguably, the most bittersweet entries.  In one, we follow a young man who lands a job at a theme park that helps sick children “move on” from this physical world.  There, he meets and falls in love with a young mother whose seriously ill son has come to the park to live out his final fun-filled days.  In another story, researchers discover their test subject, a pig, has the ability to talk.  And he has a lot of questions for them.