Reviewing the Mail: Week of 5/21

Monday. Blog post. Books arrived in the mail. My joy. Sharing with you. Hope you love something. I know very little.

First up this time: the first in a new annual series of anthologies of the year's best science fiction stories, from my fellow New Jerseyite Neil Clarke. (Who, more pertinently, has been running the online new-fiction venue Clarkesworld for ages, and otherwise is deeply plugged into the world of SF short stories as a fine editor and anthologist.) It's is unsurprisingly named The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Vol. 1, and it's coming from Night Shade Books on June 7th. Clarke's Best SF is one of the hefty volumes -- there are occasionally skinnier Year's Best volumes, like the old Don Wollheim series and the early years of David Hartwell's, but fatness is generally the point -- with thirty-one stories from last year included. Some of the authors with stories here are Ann Leckie, Carrie Vaughn, Aliette de Bodard, Brenda Cooper, Nancy Kress, Naomi Kritzer, and Alastair Reynolds. (And, obviously, 24 others.)

And then I have a light novel from the folks at Yen Press, available in trade paperback now, which I think was written by Mizuki Mizushiro and illustrated by Namanie. (The cover credit says, simply, "Mizuki Mizushiro x Namanie," which is not as descriptive as it could be.) The book is titled Psychome, Vol. 1, or maybe Psycho Love Comedy, which the first name seems to be short for. And it's about a teen boy -- absolutely ordinary in every single way, and insistent on it, as required for the heroes of stories like this -- who is thrown into a reform school after he's accused of a crime he didn't commit. Since this is a Japanese story, his fellow students are all both gorgeous girls potentially interested in him and incredibly dangerous convicted murderesses. Cue the wacky harem comedy with sudden-death sauce!