There is a thrilling review of Wake the Wild Creatures in the Washington Post this week, included in a feature on four new releases in science fiction & fantasy, written by Charlie Jane Anders.
The Washington Post article is paywalled, so I will share the incredible words about Wake the Wild Creatures here:
Wake the Wild Creatures by Nova Ren Suma
At a ruined Catskills hotel called the Neves, a supernatural mist protects a women-only community from interlopers. The women, refugees from domestic violence and other dangerous situations, lived together in uneasy harmony — until three years ago, when Pola was arrested for double homicide and her daughter Talia was taken to live with Pola’s sister.
Suma’s prose is spare, but she shapes it into sentences that cut like diamond shards, interspersing two timelines: Talia’s childhood at the hotel and her adolescent years with her aunt. The hotel’s fallen grandeur seeps into everything — in one still moment, the narrator says that “time seemed to dangle over me like a chandelier.”
“Wake the Wild Creatures” vibrates with rage but also reveals a scorching tenderness as it muses on the power and problems of community. What do we owe to one another? How do we care for our own? Pola is a terrible mother, but it’s impossible to hate her, especially when we come to understand the injustice she was fleeing. The magical elements start off subtle and dreamlike, but Suma’s narrative builds to an ending that made me tear up, in which the story seems to surrender entirely to fantasy.
From “These Books Prove Worldbuilding is Vital to Sci-fi and Fantasy” by Charlie Jane Anders in The Washington Post, May 21, 2025
As a fan of Charlie Jane Anders’s books since I first devoured her debut novel, All the Birds in the Sky, I cannot express what an exciting thing it was for me to see this! It was also a delight to find Wake the Wild Creatures among such tremendous company in the other three books featured in this piece, by authors Neon Yang, Emily Tesh, and Sayaka Murata. What an honor!