History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Review of The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas

| February 25, 2026

The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas (Neon Hemlock, 2025) is a charming novella that mashes up academia and superheroes with a largely LGBTQ+ cast of characters. Professor Laxman Yadav, who specializes in art history and archaeology, is brought in to examine a recently unearthed artifact, a rare example of a fully intact technology from […]

Review of The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes

| February 4, 2026

The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes (Apex Book Company, 2026) is a folktale-inspired horror novella with a fascinating cast of characters and themes of family inheritance and isolation. While Jane is visiting her grandmother, an extreme solar event wipes out power, communications, and even car batteries, stranding her in the semi-rural location. As […]

Review of ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction

| November 19, 2025

ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction, edited by Marissa Van Uden (Apex Book Company, 2025), is a collection of previously published stories from a wide variety of venues that look at a variety of issues related to climate change, capitalism, and colonialism, along with other aspects of ecological fiction. A number of the stories in […]

Review of A Fae in Finance by Juliet Brooks

| September 24, 2025

I learned about Juliet Brooks’ book, A Fae in Finance (Orbit Works, 2025), while I was at Seattle’s Worldcon in August, when I chatted with another attendee who was a friend of the author. When said friend explained it as “human trapped in the realm of the fae but still has to work her day job,” […]