Cassandra Khaw is the business developer for a micropublisher Ysbryd Games, which specializes in narrative-driven video games. When not otherwise sending press releases, she is reading them. The Malaysian transplant contributes regularly to technology outlet Ars Technica UK. Somewhere between all that, Cassandra spends abnormal amounts of time writing about living architecture, Southeast Asian mythology, and fantastical things like older female characters with agency.
Coup De Grace (2024) Sofia Ajram "An aching spectacle of bleakness and jewelled prose; Coup de Grace is one hell of a debut for multi-talented Sofia Ajram."
This World is Not Yours (2024) Kemi Ashing-Giwa "A herculean work of ambition, This World Is Not Yours is not only a fantastic story of extraterrestrial threats and survival in alien worlds, but also a startlingly accurate examination of interpersonal relationships."
The Briar Book of the Dead (2024) A G Slatter "Slatter writes witches like none other, and her newest is a darkling feast, jewelled and blood-stained, rich with secrets and seething with unbearable power."
Exordia (2024) Seth Dickinson "Beautiful, introspective, and unbelievably tense. It feels like being in a hospital waiting room in the best and worse sense, the suspended moment right before you find out what's going on."
Bookshops & Bonedust (2023) (Legends & Lattes, book 2) Travis Baldree "Bookshops & Bonedust will resonate with anyone who has ever conflated their worth with their productivity, who has ever worried about being left behind if they take a moment to breathe, who has ever allowed a book to save them from a bad day. Beautifully humane, it is a loving reminder that the best parts of life are what happens between the big moments."
The Pale House Devil (2023) (Discreet Eliminators, book 1) Richard Kadrey "The Pale House Devil showcases Kadrey's gift for gritty characters and snappy dialogue, but also his talent for eerie settings and lean, cruel horror."
Nestlings (2023) Nat Cassidy "An absolute triumph of a book. Propulsive and eerie . . .There's a furious grief to the book, a heartbroken rage that threads the pages together."
The Death I Gave Him (2023) Em X Liu "Blazingly ambitious, immaculately written, imaginative, and oh goodness, I can absolutely keep going. The Death I Gave Him is the locked-room murder mystery queer Hamlet retelling of my dreams."
Darkhearts (2023) James L Sutter "Sutter's breezy, warm-hearted prose feels almost like a trick: blink and you'll catch yourself surprised by the more emotional moments in the book. A fantastic, slow-burn romance both sweet and poignant, hilarious and brilliant."
Linghun (2023) Ai Jiang "Ai Jiang's Linghun is the ache that follows after every funeral, when the mourners are gone and nothing is left but the haunting of memories. A ruthlessly precise meditation on what grief does to the heart, Linghun is a must-read if you enjoy crying your way through every chapter of a book."
The Twice-Drowned Saint (2023) C S E Cooney "Many have spoken about how angels can be both terrifying yet beautiful, but few have successfully captured the idea well-until The Twice-Drowned Saint, at least. A sumptuous, saw-toothed read, it is a jewel box of a novel, glittering with a thousand details and a bright longing we're all familiar with, this want for a place better than we're in now."
Leech (2022) Hiron Ennes "I didn't know a book could perfectly convey the concept of a distributed intelligence, alive and aware of each of its proxies, but Leech is proof anything is possible in good hands."
What Moves the Dead (2022) (Sworn Soldier, book 1) T Kingfisher "A deeply, unsettling examination of what sometimes goes on behind polite smiles and courteous speech."
Glitterati (2022) Oliver K Langmead "Glitterati is a strange, bright wonder of a book that begins as a playful satirization of the world of couture and ends as a finely-cut lens into the habits of the modern world."
Manhunt (2022) Gretchen Felker-Martin "It's beautifully written, a barbed hook that will dig deep and split you open."
Ring Shout (2020) P Djèlí Clark "There are plenty of books that make metaphors of monsters, but RING SHOUT names its horrors without flinching. It is brilliant and coldly angry, cosmic horror and historical fiction without a shred of sentimentality. I didn't expect to squirm from the body horror, but I absolutely did. And I'm still processing its meditations on hatred and rage and fear. How some of us push ourselves to be more than those emotions, how others glut themselves on the darkness."
Automatic Reload (2020) Ferrett Steinmetz "Automatic Reload is for everyone who ever wished the Transformers movies were less Michael Bay, more transformation sequences; it luxuriates in the intricate beauty that is technology, exults in the mechanics of cyberpunk. And it does all this while being a rom-com with a lot of explosions."
