Black Gate

Ah, the new year. When a reader’s mind naturally turns to new authors. Who will have the big breakout debut novel of 2018? Who will come out of nowhere to be the new John Scalzi, Mary Robinette Kowal, or George R.R. Martin? Place your bets!

I’m not much of a betting man, but if I were, I’d pay close attention to the end-of-the-year buzz from the major media outlets. This is where careers are made and broken. And for the last month I’ve been hearing a whole lot about Rivers Solomon’s debut science fiction novel An Unkindness of Ghosts, the tale of slum-dwellers on a generation starship.

It made several Best of the Year lists, including The Guardian‘s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2017, Publishers Weekly‘s Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Books of 2017, Library Journal‘s Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Books of 2017, and it was an NPR Book Concierge Best Book of 2017. PW called it “Stunning… a raw distillation of slavery, feudalism, prison, and religion that kicks like rotgut moonshine.” If I were a betting man, I might place a big bet on Rivers Solomon.

Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world.

Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot — if she’s willing to sow the seeds of civil war.

An Unkindness of Ghosts was published by Akashic Books on October 3, 2017. It is 340 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $15.99 for the digital version. Read an excerpt at The Rumpus.

I’m not sure what’s up with Prime Books, one of my favorite small press publishers, but I heard they had some production difficulties in 2017, and as a result their schedule was reduced and many titles were delayed by several months. Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, expected in June, didn’t arrive until late fall, and Sheila Williams’s Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine: A Decade of Hugo & Nebula Award Winning Stories, 2005-2015, scheduled for last November, hasn’t shown up at all.

Whenever small press publishers experience publishing delays, I fret about them. Delays never help a book. Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2017, due in July, was delayed until December, and I hope it doesn’t get lost in the end-of-the-year crush. It’s a terrific volume, and well worth a look. Why not pick up a copy and help a small press that could use your support?

This is the 8th volume, and it comes packed with fabulous tales — including Amal El-Mohtar’s Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning story “Season of Glass and Iron,” Victor LaValle’s Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominated novella The Ballad of Black Tom, Brooke Bolander’s World Fantasy Award nominee “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies,” and stories by Aliette de Bodard, Jeffrey Ford, Max Gladstone, Kat Howard, N. K. Jemisin, Stephen Graham Jones, Marc Laidlaw, Seanan McGuire, Rachael Swirsky, Steve Rasnic Tem, Catherynne M. Valente, Michael Wehunt, Fran Wilde, Alyssa Wong, and many others. Here’s the complete table of contents.

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Marissa Meyer is the bestselling author of the Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Fairest, Winter). Her latest is a teen superhero saga that has hit the New York Times bestseller list — an unusual feat. Superhero novels are definitely popular these days, but there aren’t many that have hit bestseller lists. Might be worth a look.

Secret Identities.
Extraordinary Powers.
She wants vengeance. He wants justice.

The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies ― humans with extraordinary abilities ― who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone… except the villains they once overthrew.

Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice ― and in Nova. But Nova’s allegiance is to the villains who have the power to end them both.

If you’re in the market for quality superhero fiction, we also recommend checking out Matthew Hughes To Hell and Back trilogy, Carrie Vaughn’s After the Golden Age, and of course George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards.

Renegades was published by Feiwel & Friends on November 7, 2017. It is 576 pages, priced at $19.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Scott Thomas is an Emmy-nominated writer whose short stories have appeared in multiple genre magazines. His collections include Urn and Willow, Midnight in New England, and Quill and Candle. His work also appeared alongside his brother Jeffrey (Punktown) Thomas in Punktown: Shades of Grey. Kill Creek won Inkshares’ 2016 Launch Pad Competition. It has been called “a slow-burn, skin-crawling haunted house novel with a terrifying premise” (HorrorTalk).

At the end of a dark prairie road, nearly forgotten in the Kansas countryside, is the Finch House. For years it has remained empty, overgrown, abandoned. Soon the door will be opened for the first time in decades. But something is waiting, lurking in the shadows, anxious to meet its new guests…

When best-selling horror author Sam McGarver is invited to spend Halloween night in one of the country’s most infamous haunted houses, he reluctantly agrees. At least he won’t be alone; joining him are three other masters of the macabre, writers who have helped shape modern horror. But what begins as a simple publicity stunt will become a fight for survival. The entity they have awakened will follow them, torment them, threatening to make them a part of the bloody legacy of Kill Creek.

Kill Creek was published by Inkshares on October 31, 2017. It is 416 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $8.99 for the digital edition. The cover design is by M.S. Corley.

I’ve been seeing the name Ursula Pflug pop up more and more in the last few years — in magazines like Lightspeed and Strange Horizons, and prestigious anthologies like David Hartwell’s Northern Suns and Postscripts. Matthew David Surridge reviewed her first short story collection After the Fires for us back in 2012, saying:

I don’t remember where I first came across Ursula Pflug’s name… From what I’d heard, she was a Canadian writer of literary fantasy, which was enough for me to take a chance on the book… Overall, these are quiet tales, surreal, dreamlike, and often elliptical… Still, there’s a clarity to the stories. Though filled with loss and despair, they often conclude with hope: they seem parables about seeking healing or wholeness, fables of fitting into place…

The stories are ultimately memorable, fascinating, because of the precision of language, and because the language briefly gets across the radical instability of fiction: in worlds constructed only of language, not of physics, anything can happen… It’s a distinctive element of a brief and strange collection. After the Fires is fascinating work, haunting and unfamiliar.

On her website she describes her latest, Mountain, as “a near-future cli-apocalypse YA thing.” It’s a novella published by Inanna Publications on June 20, 2017. It is 98 pages, priced at $19.95 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Val Fullard.