Natalie Zutter

3 weeks ago | lithub.com | Natalie Zutter

Summer kicks off with some fun kismet, meaning shared vibes among the new sci-fi and fantasy releases. Wander the Witch Roads or step through a portal into an unknown realm. Vampires travel through the centuries from the 1500s all the way into the 24th century. Couriers, architects, and legionnaires try to envision themselves in new destinations, whether physical (a kingdom) or figurative (war transitioning into peacetime).

1 month ago | reactormag.com | Natalie Zutter

When I reviewed the season 1 finale of The Handmaid’s Tale eight (!) years ago, I commented on how it basically split the final two chapters of Offred’s story in Margaret Atwood’s novel into season-long bookends. Now, the series finale “The Handmaid’s Tale” reaches back across time to that finale but really the entire first season, through myriad callbacks on the visual and linework level as well as the returns of significant people, places, and things.

1 month ago | reactormag.com | Molly Templeton |Natalie Zutter |Danny Bowes

“You want stories?" Thom Merrilin declaimed. "I have stories, and I will give them to you. I will make them come alive before your eyes.”Robert Jordan, The Eye Of The World

1 month ago | lithub.com | Natalie Zutter

We’ve finally made it into spring, but May is still very much a transitional month: wrapping up school years and/or fiscal years for some, and easing into our summer plans. Let this month’s TBR sprout like the greenery you might have noticed popping up overnight: extraterrestrial sentient plants from Mira Grant, Guy Gavriel Kay’s medieval tavern poet meeting a quasi-Joan of Arc, Lincoln Michel’s meta commentary on both the Brooklyn SF scene and the Golden Age of SF.

2 months ago | reactormag.com | Natalie Zutter

My Roman Empire is the Empire Without End duology. 2022’s The Stars Undying radically reimagined Egyptian queen Cleopatra’s astronomical rise to power through a space opera setting with clear character and planetary analogs alongside spectacular worldbuilding: namely, a quicksilver pearl within which is embedded the AI ghost of a long-dead conqueror to advise his descendants.