Aye-Shan City has already been reduced to ashes, its few remaining survivors sent scattering in the opening pages of Hong Kong brothers Chi-Ho (the author) and Chi-Kit (the illustrator) Kwong’s sweeping and kinetic saga about the nature of war. Aye-Shan City may have been destroyed by the dastardly Zhehe people, but that just means that the stage is set for a City Builder—in this case the young Ocean Hacklin, heir to the great City Builder Yishan Hacklin—to rebuild Aye-Shan City all over again, using his superhuman Naoyang skills. Before that can happen, however, Ocean must team up with Shaman Ling Tiber; together, the duo, along with a comical company of other Aye-Shan City refugees, set out to locate the fabled Guardian Beast. Readers may see parallels between Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series and the story of the fallen city of Aye-Shan: Both set technology and the natural world at odds with each other. The Kwong brothers take the premise one step further in positing that war itself is just part of the natural cycle of things. There is a lyrical quality in both the writing (“The fighting song is loud and clear, the sound of nature changes the world”) and the illustrations. The latter seem to shift and morph into varying styles, some vibrant and colorful, others stark and black & white. At one point, speaking through imaginative speech balloons in prose that gives it an ethereal air of nobility, the mighty Guardian Beast laments how it was overcome after the Zhehe people “tempted Aye-Shan people to engage in lewd acts, which generated negative energy and weakened my power.” Will the Zhehe people and the inhabitants of Aye-Shan City ever break free of this cycle of destruction and creation? That depends on what the Kwong brothers next have in store for readers.

A self-described “company hack,” Gell immerses readers in a startup scene, where colleagues waste time with Nerf guns and pingpong battles. He judges his boss for chowing down on Lucky Charms while lecturing him about quotas in “This Man’s in Charge?” “The Value of a College Education” critiques the predatory nature of student loans and universities’ failure to share which majors generate “serious” income. Readers learn in “Who Is Your Master” that an MBA only makes one overqualified and underpaid. “Working Stiffs” finds the speaker reminiscing about his college days and longing for a greasy spoon called the Breakfast Buzz where “When the bill comes, / you only owe $27 / and you can’t feel your fucking legs!” The speaker finds some relief in a cabin in the redwoods in “West Marin, In Us All,” taking pleasure in “a hot shower, / a strong gummy, / pizza, / some good red.” Aging concerns arise in “Lines” when wrinkles appear and his beard starts graying. In “Slide Through Your Hands,” a divorce prompts the author to conclude “Love is cruel, / love is elusive,” yet he later ponders who his next love might be in “The Search Continues.” Gell deftly takes down corporate culture in this incisive poetry collection. Depictions of open-office hell are relatably conveyed, including overenthusiastic middle managers, pointless meetings, and the feeling that “lunch is always too short.” “Corporate America #2” is an entertaining list of oft-repeated workplace phrases, such as “You’re on mute.” However, some poems, like “Preventative Health,” about the author’s self-care strategies, seem outside of the book’s theme, while others (“Stop Trying So Hard”) read like stand-alone rants. Ultimately, Gell’s vulnerability humanizes the narrative, like a divorce poem in which, “The tears finally come— / a soft patter on the hardwood / of the soulless bedroom / that once had / hope.”

Each chapter presents a question, followed by the “answer” in the form of a unique narrative. The opening query, for example, concerns The Wizard of Oz: “When the tornado took Dorothy’s house to Oz, it landed on the Wicked Witch of the East and killed the witch instantly. What was the witch doing in the road in the first place?” The answer, it turns out, involves an argument with her apprentice. Garg explores a handful of tales, including the motivations behind duping the naked emperor (in “The Honor of Emperors and Thieves”) and the reason why Jack (of Jack and Jill fame) was carrying that pail of water in the first place (in “To Fetch a Pail of Water”). Each story varies in length; the haunting “Denying Hamelin” is only three pages, and the longest, “The Beauty Before She Sleeps,” is 33. While none of the stories can be called happy, some are particularly grim in nature—parents left bereft at the disappearance of their children, death, betrayal, etc. Each story gets its own question and answer except for “Sleeping Beauty”and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” whose questions and answers combine in what feels like a fever dream involving shapeshifting witches and magic portals. While some stories veer toward the predictable (the real identity of Sleeping Beauty’s new lady in waiting, for example, will likely prove glaringly obvious to readers), these tales aren’t necessarily about changing the narrative of the established story from which they come. Instead, Garg adds depth and background to these familiar characters, making them delightfully all her own.

The author offers a tale set in a post-World War III world where society has grown too comfortable with its ability to mitigate catastrophes. Some folks live quite happily on the moon, and those still living on terra firma regularly pack dangerous fault lines and fissures around the globe with, basically, high-tech glue. One character blithely tells Syia, “In the past 21 years, there has never been any seismic activity greater than 2.8 on the Richter Scale in locations where fusing has been completed.” Cue a massive quake that rocks the Midwest, reducing St. Louis’ Gateway Arch to rubble and forcing the mighty Mississippi River to change direction. All that heroic St. Louis resident Syia wants to do is save as many people as she can and reunite with her daughter, Marla, who was running near the Arch. Marla, who’s set to compete in the 2142 Summer Olympics on Earth’s moon, is a triathlete with Down syndrome who’s as courageous as her mother; when disaster strikes, she rescues babies from the raging deluge unleashed by the earthquake. Vettori’s detailed disaster-themed tale could conceivably prepare some present-day readers for real-life disasters. The author, an emergency-services professional, clearly has a taste for disaster fiction, and her take on the calamities erupting around her characters makes them feel real—and there are terrorists afoot, as well. Syia also doesn’t much like the Electromagnetic Sound and Holographic Isler Communication Operating Network that everyone’s using to communicate—especially the “increasingly popular brain implant version”—and it turns out that the good doctor is right to be wary of it. However, Vettori has effectively left that bit of the mystery for the final installment to come.  

A Chicago felon with the unlikely name of Alan Sweetcheeks has just been released from Stateville Prison, where he served time for homicide. Chicago had been rough; he scavenged for scrap metal for a living before his prison stay. Now, he is heading to Boon, Alaska, a small town where a shop owner named Mr. Tinsel has promised to get him a job; he doesn’t know what kind of work awaits him (“Chewing on walrus hides to make them soft enough for shoes?”). Alan is a nice enough guy, but he has killed someone, and even kindly Mr. Tinsel is a bit reticent. But he helps Alan to get a job dipping ice cream bars at a dairy, and Alan gets to know the quirky townsfolk of Boon. There’s Darlene Sandusky, a natural beauty who is the secretary to the district attorney, and Cal, the local madam, who Alan knows is hoarding cash to hide it from the IRS. Boon has its sketchy side, and it’s not long before Alan gets bonked on the head. Kinerk, himself a native of Alaska, brings the isolated small-town setting to life by filling the story with idiosyncratic characters who aspire to be genteel but are as rugged as the surrounding mountain peaks. The protagonist, a likable ex-con (“Yes, I am an admitted killer, but I am also very nice”), endearingly stumbles through the story, hoping to make something of the town’s opportunities (if it has any). The novel’s narrative voice is at once smart and funny, which does not take away from an overarching seriousness when the story calls for it. The caper plot is slow to get going, but when it does it proves to be a rustic delight.