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Category: New Treasures

A Gaslamp Fantasy with Political Intrigue and Witchcraft: The Kingston Cycle by C. L. Polk

A Gaslamp Fantasy with Political Intrigue and Witchcraft: The Kingston Cycle by C. L. Polk

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Covers by Will Staehle

C. L. Polk’s fantasy debut Witchmark made a huge splash in 2018. It came in fourth for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, was nominated for a Nebula, and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It was also included in Best of the Year lists by NPR, Publishers Weekly, BuzzFeed, the Chicago Review, BookPage, and the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. It had lots of stellar coverage — including the Los Angeles Public Library, which called it “Brilliant… full of atmosphere and thrills” — but my favorite review was from Publishers Weekly. Here’s an excerpt.

Polk’s stellar debut, set in an alternate early 20th century in an England-like land recovering from a WWI-like war, blends taut mystery, exciting political intrigue, and inventive fantasy. Miles Singer’s influential family of mages wants to turn him into a living battery of magic for his sister to draw on. Fearing this fate, he runs away to join the army and make use of his magical healing abilities, although — like all magic-users — he must hide his powers or risk being labeled insane and sent to an asylum. When Tristan Hunter, a handsome, suave gentleman who’s actually an angel in disguise, brings a dying stranger to Miles’s clinic, the two pair up to uncover the reason for the man’s mysterious death… Polk unfolds her mythology naturally, sufficiently explaining the class-based magical system and political machinations without getting bogged down. The final revelations are impossible to see coming and prove that Polk is a writer to watch for fans of clever, surprising period fantasy.

The sequel, Stormsong, arrived in trade paperback earlier this month, and you know what that means. Time for me to track down a copy of the first book! Here’s the back covers for both.

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io9 on All the New SF & Fantasy You Need to Know About in February

io9 on All the New SF & Fantasy You Need to Know About in February

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The Puzzler's War-small The Last Smile in Sunder City-small The Firmament of Flame-small

As the months go by I feel the loss of the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog keenly. It shut down on December 16th of last year, firing all freelancers and halting production of new content. That included Jeff Somers’ monthly survey of the best genre books, which I’d grown to depend on to keep me reliably informed. Fortunately there are fine other resources for book junkies, like Cheryl Eddy’s monthly new book column at io9/Gizmodo. This month Cheryl looks at 43 new titles from Seanan McGuire, Alastair Reynolds, Marshall Ryan Maresca, Ken Liu, Ben Aaronovitch, Katharine Kerr, Gareth L. Powell, R.E. Stearns, C.L. Polk, Sarah Gailey, Melissa de la Cruz, Justina Ireland, Cate Glass, and many others.

Here’s a few of the highlights. First up is the sequel to The Lost Puzzler, Eyal Kless’ tale of a lowly scribe sent out in world full of puzzles, tattooed mutants, and warring guilds, which we covered last year.

The Puzzler’s War by Eyal Kless (Harper Voyager, 560 pages, $17.99 trade paperback/$11.99 digital, February 4, 2020)

This follow-up to sci-fi adventure The Lost Puzzler finds a variety of characters — including an assassin, a warlord, and a mercenary — tracking down a teenage boy who may the only person able to save the world by solving the ultimate puzzle.

My underground contacts tell me The Puzzler’s War is the second novel in what’s being called The Tarakan Chronicles.

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Bringing to Life an Ancient Mystery: Cries From the Lost Island by Kathleen O’Neal Gear

Bringing to Life an Ancient Mystery: Cries From the Lost Island by Kathleen O’Neal Gear

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Cries From the Lost Island-smallCries From the Lost Island
by Kathleen O’Neal Gear
DAW (320 pages, $26 in hardcover/$13.99 digital, March 10, 2020)

Sixteen-year-old Hal Stevens is an outcast. His friend group consists of two people: Robert, a witch and Cleo Mallawi, who believes herself to be the reincarnation of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra.

Hal is a budding historian, who just happens to be obsessed with Egypt. He and Cleo spend every moment of their free time discussing ancient Roman Egypt, which Cleo claims to remember intimately. She provides details Hal could never find in a book or online. Listening to her describe the landscape, politics and the great love between Cleopatra and Marc Anthony fills Hal with wonder.

A bit that fills him with fear is the demons that Cleo also describes, specifically Ammut, the Devourer of the Dead, whom she believes is hunting her in present day.

The stories Cleo has told Hal since they were children quickly transition from fantasy to reality when Hal finds Cleo murdered outside her home. Left with her pleas to help her find eternal rest, a mysterious medallion forced into his hands by his dying friend, and questions that may never be answered, Hal finds himself headed to Egypt with famed archeologist (and Cleo’s uncle) James Moriarity. Robert the witch completes the adventurous trio, bringing along his wards of protection and his sense of humor, which truly does entertain.

Cries From the Lost Island weaves fantasy and history together to create a beautiful adventure that the reader won’t be able to put down. O’Neal Gear, a nationally award-winning archeologist, has created an engrossing quest that spans Colorado to Egypt and brings to life an ancient mystery – what actually happened to Cleopatra and Marc Anthony?

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New Treasures: Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors, edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey

New Treasures: Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors, edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey

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Cover by M. Fersner/HagCult

Oh my goodness, this looks like fun. Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors is a brand new anthology from Doug Murano and Michael Bailey, and the small press Written Backwards. It’s packed with original fiction from many of the most important writers in horror today, including Michael Wehunt, Brian Hodge, Josh Malerman, Ramsey Campbell, Victor LaValle, Laird Barron, Scott Edelman, Lucy A. Snyder, Usman T. Malik, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Theodora Goss, and many others. It also has interior art by the talented cover artist M. Fersner (HagCult). Here’s a snippet from Sadie Hartmann’s feature review at Cemetery Dance.

Miscreations, by award-winning editors Doug Murano and Michael Bailey, proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that anthologies are well worth any amount of effort, money, blood, sweat, and tears…. I’ve been dying to read something from both Lisa Morton and Lucy A. Snyder; their stories blew me away. Morton’s is this strange story of a woman who sets her mind on creating a man from her own body. The results were both humorous and upsetting. Snyder’s is a brutal account of a sex worker encountering some kind of… monstrosity. It was really quite disarming and disturbing. Of course, I loved it.

I must make mention of the amazing work some of my long-time favorites did for this anthology. Nadia Bulkin captured my imagination and my heart with her mechanical giant. Josh Malerman did the same with his werewolves. I adored “You Are my Neighbor” by Max Booth III, once again confirming Max as one of the most consistently solid writers in the genre right now… I can’t forget to say that Alma Katsu’s foreword and the interior illustrations by M. Fersner (hagcult) assist in making all the moving parts of this anthology feel like one, cohesive… beast. Monster. Miscreation.

Here’s the complete table of contents.

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New Treasures: The Life Below by Alexandra Monir

New Treasures: The Life Below by Alexandra Monir

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Jacket design by Erin Fitzsimmons and Molly Fehr; art by Getty Images and Shutterstock

I first noticed Alexandra Monir when Jessica Brody described her supernatural romance Suspicion as “If Alfred Hitchcock had directed Downton Abbey,” which is the kind of thing that gets my attention. Monir is an Iranian-American who’s published multiple novels for young adults, including The Girl in the Picture and Timeless. Her current series is near-future SF; it began with The Final Six, the story of teen astronauts o a dying Earth competing for a trip to Europa. The sequel The Life Below arrived this week; Kirkus calls it “Fast-paced and plot-driven, the novel decidedly veers into science fiction horror territory with plenty of scares.” Also the kind of thing that gets my attention. Here’s the publisher’s description.

It was hard enough for Naomi to leave Leo, a fellow Final Six contestant, behind on a dying Earth. Now she doesn’t know who to trust.

The International Space Training Camp continues to dodge every question about its past failed mission, and Naomi is suspicious that not everything is as it seems on her own mission to Europa. With just one shot at Jupiter’s moon, Naomi is determined to find out if there is dangerous alien life on Europa before she and her crew get there.

Leo, back on Earth, has been working with renegade scientist Dr. Greta Wagner, who promises to fly him to space where he can dock with Naomi’s ship. And if Wagner’s hypothesis is right, it isn’t a possibility of coming in contact with extraterrestrial life on Europa — it’s a definite, and it’s up to Leo to find and warn Naomi and the crew.

With questions piling up, everything gets more dangerous the closer that the mission gets to Europa. A storm threatens to interfere with Leo’s takeoff, a deadly entity makes itself known to the Final Six, and all questions the ISTC has been avoiding about the previous mission get answered in a terrifying way.

If the dream was to establish a new world for humans on Europa…the Final Six are about to enter a nightmare.

The Life Below was published by HarperTeen on February 18, 2020. It is 311 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover, $10.99 in digital formats. Read an excerpt from The FInal Six at HappyEverAfter.com, and see all our recent New Treasures here.

Captured at Capricon: The Lucky Devil Series by Megan Mackie

Captured at Capricon: The Lucky Devil Series by Megan Mackie

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The Finder of the Lucky Devil-small The Saint of Liars-small

I spent last weekend at Capricon 40, a long-running and very friendly science fiction convention here in Chicago with interesting panels, delightful readings, and a great Dealers Room. One of the highlights of the Dealers Room (besides the jewelry vendors, where I spent a small fortune on gifts for Alice to make up for missing Valentine’s Day) was the Bad Grammar Theater booth manned by Chicago authors Brendan Detzner, K.M. Herkes, R.J. Howell, and Megan Mackie. Bad Grammar is a reading series featuring local authors, and the books they had on display looked darn enticing. I ended up buying a whopping 8 titles  at that booth alone.

Truthfully, I bought a lot of books at the convention — including an overflowing box from Greg Ketter of Dreamhaven Books — and I hope to cover the most interesting titles here over the next few weeks. But the one that leaped into my hands when I finally settled in my big green chair was The Finder of the Lucky Devil, the self-published novel by Megan Mackie, and the opening novel in her Lucky Devil series. It’s got an intriguing premise, and that beautiful cover doesn’t hurt any.

The Finder of the Lucky Devil is an urban fantasy… of sorts. Yes, it’s a fantasy. But it’s also set in a dystopian future Chicago ruled by corporations. I did my homework before digging in, and found it’s been well reviewed at Windy City Reviews and Good Reads, where it enjoys a rating of 4.08 and comments like “a fun read with some heart stopping moments… a fresh urban detective-style fantasy with wizards, fairies, corporate spies, shapeshifters, and even a mermaid dog stylist” (from Rebekah). Here’s a look at the back cover of Lucky Devil and its sequel The Saint of Liars, plus a snippet from one of my favorite reviews.

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Future Treasures: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Future Treasures: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

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Jacket design by Richard Yoo

It good to see a few mainstream publishers still producing collections. The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is Ken Liu’s second, and his second with Saga Press. It follows 2016’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, which was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and won the Locus Award for Best Collection, and about which Amal El-Mohtar wrote, “I have never been so moved by a collection of short fiction. I was at times afraid to read more.”

There’s fine reviews of the new collection at Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, but the most insightful reviewer I’ve found is Paul Di Filippo at Locus Online, who compares Liu to Philip K. Dick, Zelazny, and Heinlein.

“The Reborn” shows us an Earth conquered by aliens who impose their own brand of mutable personalities on humans who resist them. A kind of PKD vibe of surreal memory games pervades the creepy piece…. A wave of Zelaznyian SF-fabulism overcame me as I read “Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard,” which blends shape-changing with the lives of the “midden miners,” poor citizens scavenging the remnants of our era… “The Hidden Girl” is the first pure fantasy in this volume, set in a kind of Asian neverland evocative of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A young girl, trained as an assassin, is forced to acknowledge a higher oath… There’s a faint flavor of Podkayne of Mars inherent in “The Message,” which finds an archaeologist father and his sulky, willful teen daughter marooned on a planet amidst alien ruins.

Here’s the book description.

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Thrilling Magical Realism: Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

Thrilling Magical Realism: Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

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Call Down the Hawk CoverMeet the brothers Lynch. While all three of them became orphans when their father died, not all of them are human. Arguably none of them are, since their father was a dreamer, someone who can dream things (and people) and bring them back into reality upon waking.

Declan, the eldest, seems the most humanish, since his mother appears to have been a real woman.

Ronan, the middle brother, seems less so, since his mother was a dream. Quite literally. One of the things Ronan’s father brought back from his slumber was an imaginary version of Declan’s mother. This dream woman gave birth to Ronan, who, like his father, is a dreamer.

The youngest brother, Matthew, is most certainly not human. As a child, Ronan dreamed him into existence.

Being not-quite-human is a problem for the Lynch brothers. According to the prophets, a dreamer will someday conjure up the apocalypse, and fire will consume the world. Governments worldwide have created teams of Moderators to stamp out this menace.

Carmen Farooq-Lane, a young woman of extraordinary elegance and poise, is one of these foot soldiers. But no matter how many dreamers she tracks down and kills – including her own brother – the oracles’ visions stay the same. Still, the world is going to burn.

If she finds Ronan, he’s toast.

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New Treasures: The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood

New Treasures: The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood

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Cover by Billelis

Well, damn. We’re midway through February and I haven’t read any fantasy debuts yet. Sub-par performance for someone who’s supposed to be keeping you informed. Fortunately Tor sent me a review copy of their next big-budget debut, The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood. It has the obligatory breathless blurbs (“Spine-tingling prose, gorgeous worldbuilding, powerful older women” — Emily Tesh), starred reviews (“[A] phenomenal debut. Csorwe, a 14-year-old orc princess, is betrothed to the Unspoken One, her world’s god, and is slated to be sacrificed… Epic fantasy fans are sure to be impressed.” — Publishers Weekly), and enough grumpy press to keep everyone honest (“A moderately promising entry” — Kirkus). And it’s hefty (463 pages), and it’s about an orc priestess who turns into a wizard’s assassin.

I don’t think I can reasonably ask for any more than that. Here’s the publisher’s description.

What if you knew how and when you will die?

Csorwe does ― she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.

But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin―the wizard’s loyal sword. Topple an empire, and help him reclaim his seat of power.

But Csorwe will soon learn ― gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.

The Unspoken Name is the opening novel in The Serpent Gates. It was published by Tor Books on February 11, 2020. It is 463 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Billelis. Read the first 8 pages of Chapter One here, or download a free preview here. See all our recent New Treasures here.

Space Pirates, a Murderous AI, and a Haunted House in Space: The Shieldrunner Pirates Trilogy by R. E. Stearns

Space Pirates, a Murderous AI, and a Haunted House in Space: The Shieldrunner Pirates Trilogy by R. E. Stearns

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Covers by Martin Deschambeault (left, middle) and Jon McCoy Art (right)

R. E. Stearns’s science fiction debut Barbary Station, the opening novel in the Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy, featured two engineers who hijack a spaceship to join a band of space pirates, only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. Kirkus called it “Super cool… It mixes unpredictable mysteries, a murderous AI, space battles, [and] an awesome and fashionable Pirate Leader… a blend of Die Hard and The Illuminae Files.” We covered it enthusiastically in 2017. Mutiny at Vesta arrived in 2018, and in her Tor.com review, Liz Bourke wrote:

If Barbary Station was a variant on the gothic novel in space (complete with a haunted house in the form of a space station), Mutiny at Vesta is a nested, layered series of capers in which Adda and Iridian work with limited resources and the pressure of time and other people’s competing priorities to pull off the damn-near impossible… Stearns writes measured, tense, and intense space opera, filled with a diverse selection of believable characters. I really enjoyed this book.

The Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy is the kind adventurous space opera I really enjoy. Unfortunately, if Amazon reviews are anything to go by, it doesn’t seem to have found an audience. Barbary Station had a healthy 32 reviews when it was released in 2017; Mutiny at Vesta had only two, a disaster in publishing terms. The third, Gravity of a Distant Sun, will not have a hardcover release; it arrives in trade paperback on February 18.

If you’ve read and enjoyed this series, do me a favor and write an online review. And if you haven’t, here’s a peek at the back covers for all three books, with just a sample of the praise they’ve received. Have a look — this just may turn into your favorite new series.

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