I had the incredible honour of serving on the Sunburst Award jury this year, helping to determine the Long List, Short List, and ultimately the yet-to-be-announced winner of the award. From what I understand, the award received a record number of submissions this year. We got to see so many truly incredible works, and as with any award, it was a challenge to narrow the list down. As such, I wanted to highlight a few works here, including some that did make the Long and/or Short lists and some that did not. I meant to make this post around Canada Day, but hey, we’re still within the month, so better late than never. In no particular order, here are some of my favourite works of Canadian fantastic fiction published last year, all of which are worth checking out!
Horsefly by Mireille Gagné (translated by Pablo Strauss) is a short, visceral eco-horror novel told across two time periods – 1942 and the present day. In the present day, Theodore works at a factory and finds himself plagued by horseflies during a particularly hot summer where tempers are short and violence is on the rise. In 1942, Thomas is an entomologist, recruited for a secret military project at a base on the St. Lawrence, tasked with figuring out if insects can be weaponized to carry plague or other disease and used against the Germans. The novel has a strong voice and a wonderful sense of place, immersing readers in the hot, sticky summer, amidst the horrors experimental military science gone too far.
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes is a lush and decadent novel that sits somewhere on the border between dark secondary world fantasy and horror. The characters are richly-drawn, their motivations complex, and the choices they’re forced to make often heartbreaking. The world feels like it extends well beyond the page, a living, breathing city where Guy, an exterminator, contends with giant bugs, while trying to support his kid sister and navigate a complex political landscape and power struggle that will literally change the world around them. The novel throws the reader into the deep end in the best way and asks them to keep up with its fluid, dreamlike, and beautiful tone.
The First Thousand Trees by Premee Mohamed is the third and final novella in the trilogy that began with The Annual Migration of Clouds. It effectively explores both personal and environmental recovery, allowing for satisfying character growth and and showing that ending up back where you started is by no means a failure. The stakes feel effectively personal, and the novella provides a nice look at different kinds of bravery and what it means to be part of a community.
Veal by Mackenzie Nolan sees Delores “Lawrence” Franklin and her roommate Stasia pick up and move to a small town on somewhat of a whim, running away from their parents’ expectations, and in particular, their mothers who wish they were straight and inclined to have families. Lawrence takes a job at the local arcade and immediately falls for her boss, Franky, who just so happens to be the daughter of an accused serial killer. Franky, however, claims a monster is responsible for the series of killings – all of women age 18-25. The novel does a wonderful job with its characters, their relationships, its exploration of violence against women, societal expectations, gender roles, desire, and obsession. Nolan maintains just the right element of doubt and uncertainty leading up to the climax of the novel. If queer found families and horror are your jam, this is absolutely the book for you.
The Ones We Loved by Tarisai Ngangura is hard to pin down, genre-wise. Is it speculative? Is it literary? At the end of the day, does it really matter? There are certainly elements of horror, and moments that seem like they could lean toward the supernatural, but could also be read as metaphorical. Either way, the prose is gorgeous and lyrical, and the whole novel has a dream-like feel, moving fluidly through time and between characters. As a young woman, She is forced to leave the town of Waterfall after committing murder. He, who lives in the next town over, Spilling Water, ends up on the same bus as She, and their lives become inextricably intertwined. The story echoes with themes of grief, healing, learning how to love other people, and learning how to forgive yourself and let go of pain as it weaves in and out of time periods and various characters’ lives.
The Other Shore by Rebecca Campbell is a collection of speculative climate fiction stories, many of which reflect on the nature of time and the interconnectedness of life, whether that’s connections between people, or between humans and the natural world. Themes of impermanence, liminality, and thin borders – between then and now, life and death – are also a thread across the stories in the collection.
The Lady, the Tiger, and the Girl Who Loved Death by Helen Marshall is a gorgeous and twisty story that weaves together history, mythology and fairy tales. After she’s shot by a soldier, Sara Sidorvoa is whisked away to an in-between place where the Morning Star and Evening Star show her her granddaughter in the future, who is orphaned and comes to live with her. Their stories and lives are intertwined, not just by their shared blood, but in the paths they take through life and the shadow of political violence that hangs over them both. Time lines loop together in beautiful ways, acknowledging the cyclical nature of history, especially where war is concerned. There is death, but hope as well, and the novel is beautifully written.
The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee shares some similarities with Marshall’s novel in its exploration of generational trauma and the scars and hauntings passed down through family lines, however it sits much more firmly in the territory of horror, genre-wise. In 1938, Gigi is a young woman fascinated by a famous house where a silk merchant’s daughter supposedly committed suicide. One day, as she’s passing by the house, she’s grabbed and dragged inside. Haunted or not, there are very real horrors waiting within – it’s a comfort house where she and other girls are kept locked away and subjected to repeated rape by soldiers. In 2024, Alice is a single mother in her 40s, haunted by the death of her father when she was a child, struggling in her relationship with her teenage daughter, afraid of commitment, and trying desperately to make it look like she’s holding it together externally, while drinking too much, pushing away the man she’s dating, and constantly fighting with her daughter. One morning she wakes to find her house mysteriously clean and wonders if she’s sleep walking, losing her mind, or whether something even more sinister is happening. Its an effective and occasionally brutal and chilling look at the lives of women and what’s expected of them across time periods, while also looking at complex mother daughter relationships and multiple kinds of hauntings, both literal and metaphorical.
The entirety of the Long List and the Short List are well worth checking out. There were several other titles I very much enjoyed as well, including a handful I’ve reviewed here previously. While I’m highlighting just a select few here, for further recommended reading of the fantastic Canadian variety, may I also suggest:
The Drowned Man’s Daughter by C.J. Lavigne
Until They Sleep by Nadia Staikos
Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel by Andrew Kaufman
The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Butcher’s Daughter by David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark
Death on the Caldera by Emily Paxman
A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang
The Witch of Willow Sound by Vanessa F. Penney
The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelley Armstrong
Happy reading, eh?
