Neon Hemlock’s Fav Titles of 2024
Just like last year, we asked Neon Hemlock authors and editors about their fav reads of 2024. We didn’t restrict them to books published this year, though. Also there are still favs coming in, so watch this space.
A visceral delight.
This book rewrote my brain. Messed up and powerful.
Twisted and fun.
Filled with great character moments.
Taut and compelling.
And clever as hell.
“Bride / Butcher / Doe”
by Lowry Poletti
So gay, so gross, so good.
dave ring, Publisher/Managing Editor
Brent Lambert, author of A Necessary Chaos
A truly unique story and world.
This dark fantasy is Sabriel meets Hellraiser with the fantastic heft of the former and the macabre, painful decadence of the latter.
I quite liked…
“The Royal Wizard’s Apprentice Explains the Prophecy of the Return of the Sorcerer King in Varying Levels of Complexity” by Aidan Doyle. A neat little story whose pacing works really well for its reveals! It’s especially sharp in this era of misinformation and government mistrust, but uses humour to soften the more cutting edges of its critique.
Sharang Biswas, author of The Iron Below Remembers
A.Z. Louise, author of Off-Time Jive
My favorite book of the year.
The Cradle of Eternal Night by Ladz. It's equal parts fantasy romance and truly upsetting horror set in a world trapped in an eternal, unnatural night. I was absolutely riveted, which is really saying something as I'm a very slow reader, and the illustrations by Pom Poison are amazing, too!
A favorite.
I love stories that come in odd lengths: novelettes that feel like novels, novellas that strike the heart with the concentrated force of a short story. "The Enceladus South Pole Base named after V.I. Lenin" by Zohar Jacobs is technically a short story, but it evokes the moon base of its title with such depth and care that in my memory it seems huge. Jacobs' story is simultaneously a persuasive alternate history of the twentieth-century space race and a compelling meditation on what it means to believe in something bigger than yourself--even if that something is ostensibly the opposite of faith.
Ursula Whitcher, author of North Continent Ribbon
Liza Wemakor, author of Loving Safoa
It’s one of those spirited collections where every story is a banger.
I absolutely adored the 2024 edition of I’m A Fool To Want You by Camila Sosa Villada, translated by Kit Maude. Queer nuns with a mysterious creature in their convent, a fictionalized encounter with Billie Holiday near the end of her life, streetwise sex workers getting revenge, a magical commune of trans outlaws living in the wilderness… what more could you want?