Black Gate

When I published my first novel The Robots of Gotham (written under the name Todd McAulty), John Scalzi was enormously kind to me, helping me promote it by featuring me on his blog Whatever, one of the most popular SF sites in the country. I used the opportunity to conduct a mock interview with an ill-fated Sovereign Intelligence machine character, and it was a lot of fun.

Scalzi’s blog is a great way to discover new writers, in fact, and I’ve become a regular reader. It’s how I discovered J.T. Nicholas’ new novel Re-Coil, out this month from Titan. Here’s a snippet from his own guest post at Scalzi’s Whatever, published earlier this month:

The story – the plot – is a whodunnit at its heart, a mystery where the protagonists are trying to hunt down their would-be killers and stop the first truly existential threat to humanity since mankind uncovered the secrets of immortality. It’s part mystery, part space action romp, and part cyberpunk conspiracy tale. But writing those bits was the easy part. For me, the hard part of Re-Coil was creating the world, fleshing out the societies, and answering the questions my agent and editor posed. Big questions on race and sex and gender and identity and power that I hadn’t really intended to write about, but once I set up the basic premise, I couldn’t possibly avoid.

You can read Nicholas’ full article here. Here’s the publisher’s description for Re-Coil.

Carter Langston is murdered whilst salvaging a derelict vessel — a major inconvenience as he’s downloaded into a brand-new body on the space station where he backed up, several weeks’ journey away. But events quickly slip out of control when an assassin breaks into the medbay and tries to finish the job.

Death no longer holds sway over a humanity that has spread across the solar system: consciousness can be placed in a new body, or coil, straight after death, giving people the potential for immortality. Yet Carter’s backups — supposedly secure — have been damaged, his crew are missing, and everything points back to the derelict that should have been a simple salvage mission.

With enemies in hot pursuit, Carter tracks down his last crewmate — re-coiled after death into a body she cannot stand — to delve deeper into a mystery that threatens humanity and identity as they have come to know it.

Re-Coil was published by Titan Books on March 3, 2020. It is 359 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 in digital format. The cover was designed by Vince Haig. Read an excerpt at Tor.com, and see all our recent New Treasures here.

Cover by Blacksheep UK

A new anthology by Jonathan Strahan is always an event. He’s been editing Year’s Best volumes since 2003, for ibooks, the Science Fiction Book Club, Night Shade, and Solaris, and just announced the contents of the first volume of The Year’s Best Science Fiction from Saga Press (if that Facebook link doesn’t work for you, don’t worry about it; I’ll cover it in an upcoming Future Treasures post). He also edited the groundbreaking Infinity series for Solaris, seven volumes starting with Engineering Infinity (2010) and ending with Infinity’s End (2018), perhaps the most acclaimed original anthology series of the last decade.

His latest is Made To Order: Robots and Revolution, released yesterday by Solaris. Published on the 100th anniversary of the word “Robot” entering our modern lexicon, Made To Order contains brand new stories by Sofia Samatar, Peter Watts, Ken Liu, Sarah Pinsker, Alastair Reynolds, Peter F. Hamilton, Annalee Newitz, Suzanne Palmer, Ian R. MacLeod, Rich Larson, and others. (To get a sense of the spirit of this anthology, read the first story “A Guide for Working Breeds” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, complete and completely free, at Tor.com. It’s a hilarious tale of two robot pals who couldn’t be more different, and it’s well worth your time.)

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Read More Read More

I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy lately, and I’m in the mood for something different. With impeccable timing, along comes Andy Davidson’s The Boatman’s Daughter, a supernatural thriller about a young woman facing down ancient forces in the depths of the bayou. It features the silhouette of a swampman with a plant growing out of his head on the cover, and that qualifies as sufficiently different in my book.

Andy Davidson is the author of In the Valley of the Sun, which was a finalist for the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. His second novel is getting even more attention… Kirkus Reviews says, “The remote Arkansas bayou is a swirling kaleidoscope of murder, greed, and dark, ancient magic… A stunning supernatural Southern Gothic.”

I like the sound of that. Here’s the publisher’s description.

Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm.

But dark forces are at work in the bayou, both human and supernatural, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life. And when the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe.

With the heady mythmaking of Neil Gaiman and the heartrending pacing of Joe Hill, Andy Davidson spins a thrilling tale of love and duty, of loss and discovery. The Boatman’s Daughter is a gorgeous, horrifying novel, a journey into the dark corners of human nature, drawing our worst fears and temptations out into the light.

The Boatman’s Daughter was published by FSG Originals on February 11, 2020. It is 416 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Cover by Carlos Quevado

Sarah J. Maas is the bestselling author of two enormously popular young adult series, Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses, which Elizabeth Galewski called “A classic high fantasy.” House of Earth and Blood is the opening volume in Crescent City, her first adult series. Not every author can make a smooth transition from YA to adult fiction, but House of Earth of Blood has the basics of epic fantasy right. By which I mean it’s huge, a whopping 803 pages. Maureen Lee Lenker at Entertainment Weekly says “it earns the more mature label, with depictions of toe-curling sex, explicit violence, and liberal swearing (don’t worry, we won’t tell your parents).” Here’s the description.

Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life — working hard all day and partying all night — until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart of the investigation. She’ll do whatever it takes to avenge their deaths.

Hunt Athalar is a notorious Fallen angel, now enslaved to the Archangels he once attempted to overthrow. His brutal skills and incredible strength have been set to one purpose — to assassinate his boss’s enemies, no questions asked. But with a demon wreaking havoc in the city, he’s offered an irresistible deal: help Bryce find the murderer, and his freedom will be within reach.

As Bryce and Hunt dig deep into Crescent City’s underbelly, they discover a dark power that threatens everything and everyone they hold dear, and they find, in each other, a blazing passion — one that could set them both free, if they’d only let it.

House of Earth and Blood will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing tomorrow, March 3, 2020. It is 803 pages, priced at $28 in hardcover and $19.60 in digital formats. The striking cover and endpapers are by Carlos Quevado. See all our recent New Treasures here.