Saad Z. Hossain, Djinn City, The Unnamed Press, 2017.

I will start straight up with a warning I wish someone had given me: this is the first volume in a fantasy series and it ends on a cliffhanger. Nonetheless, I'm reviewing it because Djinn City was a compelling read, with a rich and detailed world building.

Art by Josh Kirby for the cover of Hogfather.

Christmas is coming and you want to fill the world with your love of scifi and fantasy? Alas! The ruffians that are your family and friends used The Lord of the Rings to start a chimney fire, they think that Foundation is the name of a beauty product and they said that Harry Potter would be nice if only there wasn't so many spells and invented stuff in it.
But here is a way to sneak upon them science fiction and fantasy novels! All the following books have been tested and approved by people who are usually allergic to space ships and magic.
As usual in the collections, they are by chronological order.

Vincent Holland-Keen, The Office of Lost and Found, Fox Spirit Books, 2016.

The Office of Lost and Found wasn't what I expected. But I lost expectations and found a couple of great characters in an unusual world.

Art by Joshua Mays.

"Science-fiction is a white "menochrome": it's a genre written by white men for white men and in which characters are white men."
Erm... No, really, no.
So here are ten novels, chosen subjectively and by chronological order, that will get you on your way to discover that there are much more than just these ten novels and that scifi and fantasy is a genre as diverse as our planet's population...

Daniel O'Malley, The Checquy Files,

• The Rook, 2012.
• Stiletto, 2016.

The Checquy Files is a series of novels written by Daniel O'Malley and currently comprising two volumes. It's another one of these urban fantasy novels in which a governmental organisation is dedicated to the supernatural (along the lines of the PC Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch or, in a scifi setting, The Laundry series by Charlie Stross). And like many many (many) of those novels, it takes place in London...