Maria Haskins for B&N SCI-FI & FANTASY BLOG includes Kameron Hurley’s APOCALYPSE NYX among Short Stories for Long Days: 13 Recent Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Collections.

Hurley first chronicled Nyx’s adventures in the Bel Dame trilogy (first book God’s War was a Nebula nominee); now, the ex-government assassin turned bounty hunter is back in a collection of gritty, hard-edged, and most excellent stories—and no, time hasn’t really smoothed away her rough edges. She’s still partial to drinking, swearing, using violence to solve problems, and generally being her best worst self while trying to keep her squad of apocalyptic misfits together. If you like your science fiction hard and gritty, with a generous helping of pain and violence, this collection is definitely for you. Self-destructive, selfish, foul-mouthed, and lethal, Nyx is back, and she’s a blast.

At ELITIST BOOK REVIEWS, Allan Bishop praises the book.

As always, Hurley’s worldbuilding is bonkers fun. The display of futuristic Islamic off-shoots, forever wars, giant bug cars, and titan-sized space cats brings a welcome dose of bizarre and intriguing to the Bel Dame universe. Most of the magic, which is really psionics or some form of advanced nanotech, focuses on the manipulation of bugs, big and small, with all sorts of wings and shapes. My favorite is the insect flesh-eating shotgun. Essentially a buckshot bee gun, it could have been silly in another series, but Hurley’s vicious description of it and the pain the character experiences shows its deadliness.

Altogether, APOCALYPSE NYX is a fun novel. Gritty, dirty, but packed with action sequences and character asides, it’ll make for a great read with its brisk prose and strange world. Give it go, you won’t regret it.

MAXINE’S OBSESSIONS enjoys her first encounter with Hurley.

Kameron Hurley is definitely one of those authors, so when I stumbled across APOCALYPSE NYX on NetGalley, even though I have a backlog of review books to get through, my eyes lit up, I got in touch with my inner Gollum and I requested. I didn’t even read what it was about, I wanted my precious, I has to have it.

Fast forward 24 hrs and I has got my precious.

Let me tell you. This book is high-octane, action packed, blood soaked goodness. I couldn’t get enough. 

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These stories have betrayal, magic, romance, violence, weird creepy bugs, whisky and a whole heap of sass. If you are unsure if Kameron Hurley is for you, try this collection. There are five stories of varying length and detail, all of them are well written, bringing this war ravaged land to life.

As part of Mary Robinette Kowal’s My Favorite Bit, Hurley talks about APOCALYPSE NYX.

All literature is escapism. It takes us away from wherever we are and deposits us neatly into another place, another time, among people whose problems we don’t have to negotiate, manage, or solve in our daily life.

Literature is glorious.

I grew up watching a lot of apocalyptic science fiction movies when I was a kid, probably for the same reason so many enjoy watching The Walking Dead. We all want to believe that when society breaks down and we run out of vaccines and hot water and canned food, that we’ll be one of the tough, lucky few to who can use our wits and our physical prowess to survive.

In reality, the odds are against us. Try talking to any amateur who’s planted a garden, and you’ll discover that growing enough food to feed yourself for a year is no small feat. Every time I battle the bugs eating up all my crops, I lament to my spouse: “How did people ever survive growing food like this?” to which he responds, “There were a lot fewer people.”

Indeed.

For more info on APOCALYPSE NYX, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Wadim Kashin

Design by Elizabeth Story