Black Gate

It’s too early to be certain of course, but it seems to me that publishing is starting to get back to normal after the shock to the system that was the Covid-19 pandemic.

June, at least, has a healthy number of new releases, including plenty that perk my interest. Like John P. Murphy’s debut novel, a space western that Publishers Weekly calls “fast, fun… pure entertainment.” Here’s an excerpt from the PW review.

Murphy skillfully transports spaghetti western tropes to a lawless space station in this action-packed debut. The reclusive, unnamed heroine, an asteroid miner, docks at dilapidated Station 35 hoping to sell her ore, restock her supplies, and interact with as few people as possible. But Station 35 is a violent, unsavory place controlled by a corrupt, all-powerful corporation, and its inhabitants prove intent on cheating and exploiting her. So the Miner, a former intelligence-corps officer of mysterious, dark repute, sets about cleaning up the station by any means necessary — gathering allies, securing resources, and using the already-raging turf war between rival gangs and crooked cops to her advantage…. snappy dialogue and plenty of dry humor keep the pages turning.

SciFiNow has a worthwhile interview with Murphy that dives into his inspirations for the book, and I think Black Gate readers will find them interesting. I know I did.

I took a class in Japanese cinema. We watched and discussed several samurai movies, including Kurosawa’s brilliant film Yojimbo that was loosely based on the Dashiell Hammett novel Red Harvest. I watched the remakes of it: one of Clint Eastwood’s earliest films, Fistful Of Dollars, and Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis…

I became fascinated by how a very small kernel of story could be strong enough to power many very different books and films over the years, beyond that handful and in its precursors going back to Shakespeare. It wasn’t until the last few years though, when my thinking about current events crystallised with that old kernel, that I finally had a story of my own that I needed to tell.

The digital version of Red Noise will be published Angry Robot on June 9, 2020. The print edition lands on July 14. It is 448 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $8.99 in digital formats. Read an interview with Murphy in the June issue of Clarkesworld magazine.

See all our coverage of the best new SF and fantasy here.

May was a tough month for new releases.  Many were pushed to the fall as a result of bookstore closure across the country — and the fact that Amazon dramatically slowed down shipping on all non-essential items.

But a few brave publishers stuck to the schedule, and virtual bookstore shelves weren’t empty last month. I think it’s all the more important to celebrate those books, and especially the ones that deserve special attention. Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s debut novel The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is definitely one of them. Kirkus calls it “Absolutely enthralling,” and Alex Brown at Tor.com says “Every single character is as deeply compelling as the world they live in… a remarkable novel and hands down one of the best of the year.” Here’s the description.

In a world divided by colonialism and threaded with magic, a desperate orphan turned pirate and a rebellious imperial lady find a connection on the high seas.

The pirate Florian, born Flora, has always done whatever it takes to survive — including sailing under false flag on the Dove as a marauder, thief, and worse. Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, a highborn Imperial daughter, is on board as well — accompanied by her own casket. But Evelyn’s one-way voyage to an arranged marriage in the Floating Islands is interrupted when the captain and crew show their true colors and enslave their wealthy passengers.

Both Florian and Evelyn have lived their lives by the rules, and whims, of others. But when they fall in love, they decide to take fate into their own hands — no matter the cost.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s sweeping fantasy debut, full of stolen memories, illicit mermaid’s blood, double agents, and haunting mythical creatures conjures an extraordinary cast of characters and the unforgettable story of a couple striving to stay together in the face of myriad forces wishing to control their identities and destinies.

The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea was published by Candlewick Press on May 5, 2020. It is 371 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover and $5 in digital formats.

See all our latest New Releases here.

I don’t know where John DeNardo vanished to this month. Ever since The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog shut down, taking their excellent monthly summary with tbem, I’ve grown to rely on John’s monthly SF book survey at Kirkus Reviews pretty heavily. It didn’t appear in May — but fortunately Andrew Liptak at Polygon came through, so I don’t have to wrap up the month dangerously uninformed. What does Andrew recommend for us in May? Let’s have a look.

Westside Saints by W.M Akers (Harper Voyager, 304 pages, $27.99 hardcover/$14.99 digital, May 5, 2020)

W.M. Akers follows up his debut novel Westside with Westside Saints, a mystery set in an alternate, Jazz-era New York City. The city has been split into two zones, where the east side is a prosperous metropolis and the west an overgrown wasteland. In Westside, Akers introduced readers to Gilda Carr, a detective who specializes in “small mysteries,” and who ended up trying to solve the mystery of her missing father.

In this new adventure, Carr stumbles upon a new mystery when she’s hired by a group of street preachers from the Electric Church to recover the severed finger of a lost saint. They believe that this digit will bring about a resurrection, and Carr drawn in when her dead mother unexpectedly returns…

We covered the first book in the series, Westside, right here almost exactly a year ago. Read an excerpt from Westside Saints here.

…

Read More Read More

Max Barry is the author of Lexicon, the tale of a secret war between rival poet factions, which Time called “Unquestionably the year’s smartest thriller;” the New York Times Notable Book Jennifer Government; and Syrup, adapted as a 2013 film starring Amber Heard.

His latest is an interstellar thriller which Publishers Weekly calls “a terrific sci-fi thriller,” and which Paul Di Filippo describes as “a blend of Starship Troopers, UK cult TV show Red Dwarf and the cinematic Alien franchise, with Barry’s own unique slant and voice.” That sounds pretty compelling to me. Here’s an excerpt from Paul’s Locus Online review.

We are in a future era — say, fifty to one hundred years ahead of 2020…  this world has FTL travel, and pretty soon there’s a First Contact. The aliens, eventually dubbed “salamanders,” are inherently and implacably hostile… After witnessing the initial slaughter of kindly human ambassadors, we jump ahead to a time when humanity seems to be winning the war against the salamanders. A fleet of enormous battle-ready starships, the Providence class, has taken the fight to the native territory of the aliens, who seem to occupy not planets, but artificial “hives,” located at various random points in interstellar space. The Providence ships, run by very clever but non-self-aware artificial intelligences, each have a crew of four humans, who are present mainly as operational backups — and also as media-friendly faces for humanity’s self-esteem.

Our focus is on the crew of the newest war vessel: Isiah “Gilly” Gilligan, the techie; Paul Anders, the warrior; Jolene Jackson, the captain; and Talia Beanfield, the life-support expert… However, two years into their intermittently deadly cruise (a section that occupies about the first third of the book, during which we learn all the important parameters of the war and the emotional mechanics of the crew interactions), after effortlessly wiping out all the salamanders they encounter, things start to go wrong. Anders begins to go screwy, as does the ship’s AI. And the salamanders exhibit new refinements of strategy that eventually pose a mortal threat to the crew and their ship. How the humans react in the face of these challenges forms the last two-thirds of the tale…

When the battle klaxon sounds, Barry shifts into suspenseful military-SF mode, delivering tense and suspenseful depictions of warfare. His speculative elements are top-notch, as is his technological gadgetry. And when we eventually get a peek into the salamander home world, his crafting of their ecology and culture surprises and astounds.

Providence was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on March 31, 2020. It is 320 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover artist is uncredited. Read a lengthy excerpt here.

See all our recent coverage of the best new SF and fantasy here.