Black Gate

Two years ago I wrote a couple of articles about Megan E. O’Keefe’s Scorched Continent trilogy. The opening volume, her debut novel Steal the Sky, was nominated for the David Gemmell Morningstar award, and Beth Cato called it “like an epic steampunk Firefly.” The last book in that series appeared in 2017, so I’ve been keeping my eye out for something new from her, and it finally arrived early this summer. And it looks like space opera, my favorite new genre! Is the world good to me, or what. Here’s what Kirkus said about it.

The last thing Sanda Greeve remembers is her ship being attacked by rebel forces. She’s resuscitated from her evacuation pod missing half a leg — and two centuries — as explained to her by the AI of the rebel ship that rescued her. As The Light of Berossus — aka Bero — tells her, she may be the only living human for light-years around, as the war wiped both sides out long ago. Sanda struggles to process her injuries and her grief but finds friendship with the lonely spaceship itself. Sanda’s story is interspersed with flashbacks to the war’s effects on her brother, Biran, as well as scenes from a heist gone terribly wrong for small-time criminal Jules. The three narratives, separated by a vast gulf of time, are more intertwined than is immediately apparent. When Sanda rescues Tomas, another unlikely survivor, from his own evacuation pod, she learns that even time doesn’t end all wars….

Meticulously plotted, edge-of-your-seat space opera with a soul; a highly promising science-fiction debut.

That’s tantalizing enough for me; I bought a copy last week. I want to dig into this one right away — which may mean I have to spring for the audio version. I’ve been traveling a lot recently (9 states in the last two weeks), and I find listening to books while I’m driving is a lot more productive that trying to stay awake reading in a hotel room.

Velocity Weapon was published by Orbit in June, 2019. It is 505 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Sparth. See all our recent New Treasures here.

Saga Press has produced some really extraordinary Saga Anthology volumes over the last few years, all edited by John Joseph Adams. They include:

Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction, edited by John Joseph Adams (2015)
What the #@&% Is That?: The Saga Anthology of the Monstrous and the Macabre, edited by John Joseph Adams (2016)
Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies, edited by John Joseph Adams (2017)

Last week saw a massive new entry in their annual anthology series. Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories collects brand new stories (and three reprints) by a Who’s Who of modern horror writers: John Langan, Nathan Ballingrud, Paul Tremblay, Pat Cadigan, Seanan McGuire, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Bowes, Gemma Files, Nick Mamatas, Terry Dowling, Aliette de Bodard, Dale Bailey, Alice Hoffman, Garth Nix, Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, and many others. It’s a feast for horror fans, in a year that hasn’t seen many decent scary anthologies. Over at Tor.com, Lee Mandelo already has an enthusiastic review.

Echoes is an absolute behemoth of an anthology… Some are ghost stories with science fictional settings, others purely fantastical, others still realist — but there’s always the creeping dread, a specter at the corner of the story’s vision. The sheer volume of work Datlow has collected in Echoes fills out the nooks and crannies of the theme with gusto… I was immensely satisfied by the big tome, and I’d recommend it for anyone else who wants to curl up around a spooky yarn — some of which are provocative, some of which are straightforward, all of which fit together well.

Here’s a few of Lee’s story recommendations.

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