The great Athenian philosopher Plato once said, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” Wow. Pour me a glass of that, will you?
It’s powerful stuff, music. That a few simple notes can so precisely convey emotions many find difficult to express (or elicit intense anxiety from an audience of moviegoers with only two … Jaws , anyone?) is astounding, magical, even. So, what if music was magic? Some might argue it deserves that status already, even if it conjures no more than tears and can compel only dance, but the fact that we use magic to describe musical composition speaks to its enigmatic qualities. And it is this inexplicable element that allows our imagination, as Plato said, to take flight.
In the seven works of speculative fiction gathered here, music plays a part in magic, in the happenings that lie beyond our comprehension. The characters participate in battles, within their worlds and within themselves, harnessing the power of melody and song in utterly original and fantastic fashions. And you, dear reader, should you choose to join them, may just find yourself humming along.
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Growing up in Mexico City in the late 1980s with her DJ father, it’s no surprise that 15-year-old Mercedes “Meche” Vega has an obsession with music, but it surprises even Meche herself to discover that she can use particular songs and vinyl records to cast spells. Suddenly, armed with this incredible new power, Meche and her friends, Sebastian and Daniela, realize their lives could change for the better: they can heal their broken families, shed their social-outcast status, and maybe, just maybe, find love. They never expect their friendship to change, for good intentions to sour while intoxicated by the magic’s possibility.
Over two decades later, Meche returns to the city she’d long ago abandoned to attend her estranged father’s funeral. However, dearly departed dad is hardly the only relationship she’s reluctant to confront. After an encounter with Sebastian, memories of their childhood together begin to resurface, and faced with bitter resentment, Meche turns to music once again. In this urban fantasy best described as High Fidelity meets The Magicians , Moreno-Garcia toggles back and forth between the two timelines, perfectly capturing the disparate voices of both Meche as a teenager and Meche as an adult, revealing what went horribly wrong all those years ago.
In a war-torn future where human acts of violence give birth to actual monsters, the city of Verity sits divided: the south dedicated to keeping its people safe by hunting monsters, the north deciding to embrace monstrosity instead, providing protection only to those willing to pay for it. Kate Harker, daughter of the ruthless crime boss controlling the north, longs to inspire the same kind of fear and awe that her father does. August Flynn, on the other hand, just wants to be human. The adopted son of the south’s fearless defender, August wants to protect the innocent … but he’s a Sunai, a rare type of monster that can steal a person’s soul with help from a bit of music.
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Each determined to prove themselves to their fathers, the lives of Kate and August become intertwined when they wind up at the same school. After a few secrets come to light and a failed assassination attempt, they’re both on the run. “Dark, moody, and pitch perfect, ” sings one reviewer. Schwab’s novel plays in the grey spaces between black and white, hero and villain, good and evil, and questions whether the life we’re born into is the one we’re destined to live.
After a jousting accident at Missouri’s Ren Faire nearly kills his best friend, musician Boone Daniels agrees to take his friend’s place and perform with his band at a music festival in Central Park. As if Boone didn’t have enough problems suffering from panic attacks and haunted by a wendigo, upon his arrival in NYC, his contact, Professor Stone, is murdered right in front of him. Boone narrowly escapes, but manages to save the professor’s assistant, a violinist named Sapphire, from the culprits. They soon discover that the death of the professor has ties to warring metaphysical societies in the city: one trying to summon the devil and end the world, the other working to stop them.
The fate of existence as they know it hinges on the concert in Central Park. Boone must work with Sapphire to locate a missing Paganini composition she’s meant to play, but the task proves far more complicated than it seems. This epic fantasy adventure travels across the globe and through time, blending history and folklore with entirely original elements. With an endless cast of baddies and music ringing at its core, Zarek’s tale crescendos into something extremely entertaining. (Read ’s review here .)
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The Recurrence happens every 90 years. 12 gods return to the human realm as young people. They will be loved; they will be hated; but within two years, they will be dead. The year is 2014, and the members of the pantheon have each assumed the role of a pop star, through which, in this era, they can most effectively inspire people.
In this introductory volume of Gillen and McKelvie’s graphic novel series, readers follow the character Laura, a fan of the pantheon from South London. At a concert where Amaterasu is performing, Laura finds herself overwhelmed by the Shinto sun goddess’ song. After having passed out, she finds herself in the presence of none other than Lucifer incarnate, who requests that Laura call her Luci. When this chance encounter with one god opens doors for her to meet others, specifically Amaterasu, Laura doesn’t dare decline. She knows taking Luci’s outstretched hand will lead her into an entirely new world, but she never could have guessed what would happen next.
A NYT bestselling series and Eisner Award-nominee, The Wicked + The Divine delivers action and mystery wrapped up in the spellbinding allure of pop music that Douglas Wolk of Comic Alliance declares “Godlike genius.”
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“I was home alone on a Saturday night when I experienced the most beautiful piece of music I had ever heard in my life, ” begins Moore’s strange, eerie and subversive novella. The song in question belongs to a hot new band that calls themselves Beautiful Remorse, and they’re releasing one mesmerizing new track per day for the next ten days. These cryptically-titled tracks all seem to have a palpable and peculiar effect on the group’s fans, an effect that grows stronger and stronger with each new song.
Curious about this new phenomenon that’s rapidly sweeping the music scene, a blogger decides to investigate and follows the band on tour across Texas and Kansas. At first, it’s just fun to be a part of everything — the music, the community, the discovery — but after realizing that the band’s lead singer has been hiding an unbelievable secret, it becomes apparent that something much darker is at work. “Absolutely stunning, ” says science fiction writer Ramez Naam. “A fast-paced, psychedelic blur of music, tech, and things waaay beyond either.” This little gem of incredibly odd and quirky speculative fiction will not disappoint readers.
In small-town Eastern Tennessee, nestled in a valley in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains, live the mysterious Tufa people. This place has been their home for centuries, long before European colonists arrived on the continent, and although their exact origins have been lost to time, their music — the songs passed down from generation to generation — may hold the answers. Most of the Tufa have carried out their entire lives in the same Appalachian valley as their ancestors, but when Bronwyn Hyatt turns 18, she joins the army in an attempt to escape familial obligations and a dangerous ex-boyfriend.
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Now, two years later, she returns injured from Iraq needing to heal both her body and her mind, but the problems she fled are right where she left them. To make matters worse, dark omens whisper of tragedy soon to befall the valley and its people, and an evil spirit threatens to reveal Bronwyn’s closely-guarded secrets. If only she could rekindle her connection to the music of the Tufa, music vital to her identity. It’s a rural fantasy novel that sits “somewhere between American Gods and Faulkner, ” says one reviewer, painting a portrait of the Appalachian world that will captivate readers with both its sense of place and the magic found there.
At the center of the centuries-long battle between angels and demons are the Nephilim, waging war at the behest of their progenitors. Diago Alvarez is uniquely descended from both sides of this supernatural war, yet he doesn’t want anything to do with either of them. However, to save the lives of his son, Rafael, and his lover, Miquel, he joins forces with Los Nefilim, an organization of Spanish Nephilim allied with the angels who use musical harmonies to summon sigils through which they can cast a variety of spells.
As Diago’s fight progresses, he realizes that the war is so much bigger than
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