Browsed by
Category: Books

Andrew Liptak on 16 SF and Fantasy Novels You Don’t Want to Miss in January

Andrew Liptak on 16 SF and Fantasy Novels You Don’t Want to Miss in January

Comments 4 comments
The Fortress at the End of Time Joe M. McDermott-small Defiant Dave Bara-small Binti Home Nnedi Okorafor-small

Good golly, we’re more than halfway through January already. How the heck did that happen? I still have over a dozen January new releases to cover!

Well, no use complaining about it… especially when I could use that energy to cheat, instead. Rather than tell you about the best new books in January myself, I could just let the distinguished Andrew Liptak do it. Over at The Verge, Andrew has jotted down his thoughts on 16 science fiction and fantasy novels you don’t want to miss in January — including new books by Carrie Vaughn, Laura Anne Gilman, Annie Bellet, Seanan McGuire, Tad Williams, Katherine Arden, Neil Clarke, and many more.

Perhaps the most intriguing book on his list is The Fortress at the End of Time, published this week by Tor.com. In a feature review published January 17th, Andrew calls it “a brilliant throwback to classic science fiction.”

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley

Future Treasures: The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley

Comments 3 comments

The Stars Are Legion-smallKameron Hurley made a splash with her very first science fiction novel, God’s War (Night Shade, 2010), a “bugpunk” novel set on a desert world where technology is based on insects. It was nominated for a Nebula Award, and was followed by two more books in the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy. The Mirror Empire (Angry Robot, 2014), the first novel in her grimdark epic fantasy trilogy The Worldbreaker Saga, was a 2015 Locus Award Finalist and Gemmell Award Nominee.

Her standalone space opera novel The Stars are Legion is one of the most highly anticipated novels of 2017. It arrives in hardcover from Saga Press on February 7, 2017.

Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars.Here in the darkness, a war for control of the Legion has been waged for generations, with no clear resolution.

As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion.

Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family. She is told she is their salvation – the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zan’s new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan finds that she must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion’s gravity well to the very belly of the world.

Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of the Legion’s destruction – and its possible salvation. But can she and the band of cast-off followers she has gathered survive the horrors of the Legion and its people long enough to deliver it?

The Stars Are Legion will be published by Saga Press on February 7, 2017. It is 380 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The eye-catching cover is by Stephen Youll.

Tor.com on the Most Intriguing SF and Fantasy Books of 2017

Tor.com on the Most Intriguing SF and Fantasy Books of 2017

Comments 3 comments
Revenger Alastair Reynolds-small A Closed and Common Orbit-small Winter Tide Ruthanna Emrys-small

No sooner do we wrap up all the 2016 Best of the Year lists than we’re deluged with 2017 Best Upcoming Books lists. Well, if it’s our lot in life to read all these lists and dutifully report the best to you here, we shall carry our burden stoically.

As usual, Tor.com is first out of the gate, with a generous survey of a dozen SF and fantasy titles coming in 2017 that they want to read right now. It includes new novels by Nnedi Okorafor, Mur Lafferty, George Saunders, Kameron Hurley, Catherynne M. Valente, N. K. Jemisin, and many others. There’s lots on their list that appeals to me — like Revenger by Alastair Reynolds, coming in paperback from Orbit on February 28, 2017.

Captain Rackamore and his crew’s business is to find the tiny, enigmatic worlds which have been hidden away, booby-trapped, surrounded by layers of protection – and to crack them open for the ancient relics and barely-remembered technologies inside. But while they ply their risky trade with integrity, not everyone is so scrupulous.

As Molly Templeton writes, “Space! Pirate! Sisters! Is this a movie yet? I want to read it and watch it.”

…

Read More Read More

The Killingest Book I Know: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks

The Killingest Book I Know: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks

Comments 8 comments

oie_1724619ZA2dICd6

“It is night and the night has no end.”

Matthias Tannhauser

I have read all sorts of hyper-violent books: thrillers; crime; horror; even some fantasy. Nothing, and I mean absolutely, utterly nothing, comes close to Tim Willocks’ The Twelve Children of Paris (2014). Seven years after his adventures during the Great Siege of Malta chronicled in The Religion (and reviewed here), Matthias Tannhauser, ex-Janissary and current Knight of St. John, comes to Paris in search of his wife, Carla. It is August 23rd, 1572, just hours before the start of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

The massacre was the result of the tremendous instability the Reformation had caused to France. During the ten years preceding the massacre, France had fought the first three of the Wars of Religion. Primarily a struggle between two noble houses, the Calvinist House of Conde and the devoutly Catholic House of Guise, the kings strove to maintain a balance between them and avoid bloodshed. When it seemed the Protestants had gained too much power and threatened that of King Charles IX, he authorized twenty-four hours of killing. The plan was to eliminate the leaders of the Protestant cause, many of whom had come to Paris for the wedding of Charles’ sister, Margaret, to the Protestant Henry of Navarre. Not counted on was the terrible enmity the strongly Catholic Parisians held for the Protestants. Instead of a day, the carnage lasted for several days and spread out into the countryside. Estimates vary from five to thirty thousand dead.

Into this brewing hellstorm Matthias Tannhauser rides. Carla, noblewoman and renowned player of the viol da gamba, has been summoned to play at a concert for the royal wedding. Though eight months pregnant, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse a royal summons. Tannhauser, away on business in North Africa, has returned to France and ridden to Paris to join his wife. Upon hearing of an assassination attempt on Protestant leader Admiral de Coligny and the consequent cancellation of the musical performance, Tannhauser decides he must find his wife and remove her from a city on the brink of civil collapse. Unfortunately, he has only the slightest idea of where she might be.

…

Read More Read More

The Omnibus Volumes of Cassandra Rose Clarke: Magic of Blood and Sea and Magic of Wind and Mist

The Omnibus Volumes of Cassandra Rose Clarke: Magic of Blood and Sea and Magic of Wind and Mist

Comments 2 comments
Magic of Blood and Sea-small Magic of Wind and Mist

Angry Robot is one of the most innovative (and successful) new genre publishing houses in the last decade. Not every aspect of its journey has been equally successful, however. Its Strange Chemistry imprint, launched in 2011 to publish young adult SF and fantasy, shut down in 2014… but not before publishing highly acclaimed new work by Martha Wells, Jonathan L. Howard, and three early novels by Cassandra Rose Clarke: The Assassin’s Curse (2012) and its sequel The Pirate’s Wish (2013), and The Wizard’s Promise (2014). A fourth novel, The Nobleman’s Revenge, the sequel to The Wizard’s Promise, was never published.

Clarke was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for her first novel for adults, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, in 2013, and late last year Saga Press reprinted the book in a new trade paperback edition. Now they’re doing the same with Clarke’s Strange Chemistry novels. The Assassin’s Curse series will be reprinted in a handsome omnibus edition, Magic of Blood and Sea, arriving in hardcover in early February. And The Wizard’s Promise and the previously unpublished The Nobleman’s Revenge will appear in Magic of Wind and Mist in 2018.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg

New Treasures: Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg

Comments 6 comments

Lords of Dyscrasia-smallI met Seth Lindberg at the World Fantasy Convention back in October. He co-moderates the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group, one of the rare groups that pays a lot of attention to genre magazines, like Cirsova and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He also maintains a fairly active (and excellent) blog — check out his recent reviews of Joe Bonadonna’s Mad Shadows II, and Skelos issue #1.

He’s also an acclaimed S&S author in his own right. Joe Bonadonna wrote a rave review of his first novel Lords of Dyscrasia here at Black Gate last year. Here’s Joe.

Lords of Dyscrasia (an abnormal or disordered state of the body or of a bodily part) is touted as “Graphic Sword and Sorcery,” but to me it has more in common with the dark fantasy of Clark Ashton Smith and the gothic tones of Mervyn Peake’s first two Gormenghast books. There is some nice Lovecraftian shading to this novel, as well, with a touch of Edgar Allen Poe to lend it a feverishness of tone, and even a psychedelic flavor in style.

While Lindberg channels his influences with a deft hand, he has mapped out a beautifully grotesque world that is truly his own unique creation. This book was described to me as being part of the Grimdark subgenre of dark fantasy, and it is indeed a grim, dark tale….

This is a complex and well-written novel, very difficult to describe. The settings and the atmosphere are rich in color and texture, and story’s pace is almost relentless: it rushes along like a bullet train, with very few stops along the way. Although Lysis Endeken is the main character, it is the weird and wonderful Doctor Grave who really rises above all others.

I bought a copy of this novel from Seth at the convention, and I’m glad I did. It’s become the foundation of a popular new S&S series, and the second volume, Spawn of Dyscrasia, was published in 2014.

…

Read More Read More

Download Some of the Best from Tor.com 2016 For Free Before January 17th!

Download Some of the Best from Tor.com 2016 For Free Before January 17th!

Comments 0 Comment
Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014-small Some of the Best from Tor 2015-small Some of the Best from Tor 2016-small

Every year since 2011 Tor.com, one of the top short fiction markets in the industry, has compiled a collection of some of their finest short fiction into a digital anthology. And this year they’re making the latest edition completely free on their website — but only until January 17th. Act now to grab your free copy today!

We are very excited to offer a free download of the 2016 edition of Some of the Best from Tor.com, an anthology of 25 of our favorite short stories and novelettes from the last year. The ebook edition will be available as a free download here until January 17th, it will also be made available wherever ebooks are sold for the duration of 2017.

Of course, you can always enjoy all of our free weekly short stories by visiting Tor.com’s fiction index.

These stories were acquired and edited for Tor.com by Ellen Datlow, Ann VanderMeer, Carl Engle-Laird, Liz Gorinsky, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Justin Landon, Diana Pho, and Miriam Weinberg. Each story is accompanied by an original illustration.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

…

Read More Read More

A Detective With the Mind of a Criminal: The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, by Edgar Wallace

A Detective With the Mind of a Criminal: The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, by Edgar Wallace

Comments 2 comments

The Casefiles of Mr JG Reeder-smallWordsworth Editions published dozens of titles in their Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural imprint (or, as we like to call them, TOMAToS), featuring classic tales of detection, horror and ghostly doings from Robert E. Howard, Rudyard Kipling, Sheridan Le Fanu, William Hope Hodgson, W.F. Harvey, Edith Nesbit, Oliver Onions, E.F. Benson, and many others.

Wordsworth has revamped the entire series (see their website for the dramatic redesign), and they’re letting all the older titles gradually go out of print… which means it’s definitely time to snatch up those I still don’t have. Like The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, an omnibus collection of three pulp-era books by popular British thriller writer Edgar Wallace.

How on earth did you piece together all this? he asked in wonder. Mr Reeder shook his head sadly. I have that perversion, he said. It is a terrible misfortune. I see evil in everything. I have the mind of a criminal.

Let us introduce you to the enigmatic J. G. Reeder, a timid, gentle middle-aged man who carries a furled up umbrella and wears an old-fashioned flat-topped bowler hat. He is one of the great unsung sleuths of mystery fiction, created by the prolific Edgar Wallace, the King of Thrillers. Despite his insignificant appearance, Reeder is a cold and ruthless detective who credits his success to his criminal mind which allows him to solve a series of complex and audacious crimes and outwit the most cunning of villainous masterminds.

This volume is a rich feast for crime fiction fans, containing the first three volumes in the Reeder canon: two novels, Room 13 and Terror Keep; and the classic collection of short stories, The Mind of J. G. Reeder.

Edgar Wallace was an enormously popular mystery and thriller writer of the 20s and 30s. More than 160 films have been based on his work, and The Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine was a popular digest magazine in the mid-60s. But perhaps his most famous creation was the script for King Kong (1933); he died of complications of diabetes while working on revisions with director Merian C. Cooper.

…

Read More Read More

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Pellucidar

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Pellucidar

Comments 9 comments

Pellucidar-1st-Edition-Cover-smallWelcome back to the concave world of Pellucidar and the second novel in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s series of adventures within the globe: the eponymous Pellucidar. ERB left readers in suspense about the fate of hero David Innes at the close of At the Earth’s Core, but only a year later delivered audiences from the tension and closed out a duology about the Imperial Conquest of the Pellucidar. (And we still have five more volumes to go after this.)

Our Saga: Beneath our feet lies a realm beyond the most vivid daydreams of the fantastic… Pellucidar. A subterranean world formed along the concave curve inside the earth’s crust, surrounding an eternally stationary sun that eliminates the concept of time. A land of savage humanoids, fierce beasts, and reptilian overlords, Pellucidar is the weird stage for adventurers from the topside layer — including a certain Lord Greystoke. The series consists of six novels, one which crosses over with the Tarzan series, plus a volume of linked novellas, published between 1914 and 1963.

Today’s Installment: Pellucidar (1915)

Previous Installments: At the Earth’s Core (1914)

The Backstory

During the mid-teens, Edgar Rice Burroughs frequently wrote with the aim of creating two-part novels. The books we know today as The Mad King, The Cave Girl, and The Eternal Lover are combinations of an original novel and its closely connected sequel. The Pellucidar series might have gone the same way. The sequel to At the Earth’s Core was written at this time and serves as an immediate follow-up that brings the story of its first novel to a conclusion. If Burroughs hadn’t returned to the setting fourteen years later and continued writing more about Pellucidar, it’s possible that At the Earth’s Core and Pellucidar would be considered a single novel today — probably simply titled At the Earth’s Core. (My title choice would be Conquest of the Earth’s Core.)

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

Future Treasures: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

Comments 0 Comment

Six Wakes Mur Lafferty-smallMur Lafferty’s latest novel is a space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer — before they kill again. (On her blog Mur writes, “Clone Murder Mystery in SPACE was a rejected title. Another rejected title was from my friend Alasdair: Murder Space Clone Bastard.”)

James Patrick Kelly writes “This is one of the cleverest and most exciting murder mysteries I have ever read. The confined space of the colony ship Dormire is filled with feisty and memorably strange characters… Lafferty does for clones what Asimov did for robots.” The novel arrives in trade paperback by Orbit at the end of the month.

It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.

At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.

Maria’s vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn’t the only one to die recently…

Mur Lafferty’s most recent series was The Shambling Guide to New York City; she’s also a contributor to the Book Burners serial from Serial Box. She won the 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award for her novel Ghost Train to New Orleans. Our recent coverage of her includes Mur Lafferty on Reading the Classics.

Six Wakes will be published by Orbit on January 31, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.