Conklin introduces themself as a writer to watch with these open-eyed, tenderhearted, well-crafted stories.
An award-winning author offers a spectrum of LGBTQ+ characters in their debut collection.
In “Laramie Time,” a comics artist uncovers some truths about herself and her lover when they ask a friend to help them make a baby. The protagonist of “Cheerful Until Next Time” meets the man he wants to become and then falls in love with him. “The Black Winter of New England,” “Ooh, the Suburbs,” and “Pioneer” show adolescents discovering—often painfully—their sexuality and their gender. The word transition is used to describe the processes transgender people undertake to live more fully as their true selves—and there are certainly transgender people undergoing this sort of transition depicted here—but the people in these stories are all in the midst of transitions of multiple kinds, and Conklin addresses the way society is changing, too. The titular character in “Sunny Talks” is a trans teen who has amassed a respectable following on YouTube by sharing his views on “pansexuality, passing privilege, cisnormativity, he/him lesbians, PGPs, chasers, and demiromanticism.” That sentence would have been shocking just 10 years ago, and it will undoubtedly confound a lot of people even now. These stories assay serious topics, such as pedophilia and sexual assault. In “Boy Jump,” the main character visits a Holocaust memorial in Poland and reflects on the places where it’s not safe for LGBTQ+ people to travel in Eastern Europe. But these are not cautionary tales about being queer. Conklin is adept at communicating complexity and writes in a plainspoken style that does not invite sensationalizing. In each story, a rainbow appears. We might read this as a motif underscoring the full range of human sexualities and genders—and, if it’s not too corny, we might see it as a symbol of hope.
Conklin introduces themself as a writer to watch with these open-eyed, tenderhearted, well-crafted stories.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64622-101-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
An engrossing, action-packed sequel with a compelling cast.
A woman must undergo fearsome trials to free the imprisoned Titans of Greek myth in Owen’s fantasy novel, the second in a series.
Advancing from minor office clerk in the Order of Thieves to Queen of the Underworld, Lyra Keres’ star should be rising. But thanks to Cronos, King of the Titans, she and her longtime friend and fellow thief Boone have been ensnared in a new challenge beneath the earth: Hot on the heels of winning the twisted Crucible Games, Lyra—who has recently been granted goddess powers—finds herself trapped in Tartarus. Separated from her beloved Hades, she must liberate the fearsome Titans from seven Locks to restore the cosmic balance. As Lyra progresses through the Locks engineered by the Gods—each as tricky and lethal as the last—the pressure mounts as the Titans repeatedly remind her, “You will be our savior.” Rhea, the wife of Cronos, reveals that Lyra began this quest “a hundred and fifty years ago,” adding further devastation to the task at hand; the knowledge is helpful, but also painful, as Lyra reflects, “Suddenly, I don’t want to know that it’s real. Because then I have to contemplate how many times I might have ended up in Tartarus already.” As she materializes in and out of time pockets, Lyra sees Hades’ troubled childhood unfold and struggles not to intervene to save the man she loves. In this second entry in the author’s Crucible series, following The Games Gods Play (2024), Lyra’s cynical quips continue to make her an engaging protagonist. Her inner monologues are balanced with hope, love, and longing for Hades as she meets various versions of him. While resilient, Owen’s heroine is also vulnerable (“Was I his pawn in more ways than I ever realized?”). Her introspection effectively contrasts with the simmering rage and restraint in Hades’ chapters. The supporting Titans are given more depth than the traditional myths allow, weaving a knotty family fabric for the reader to navigate alongside Lyra.
An engrossing, action-packed sequel with a compelling cast.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781649378538
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Entangled: Red Tower Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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