Black Gate

Fred Strydom’s debut novel The Raft was published in hardcover last year, and the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog called it “One of the sharpest premises in 2016… a must-read.” In a starred review, Publishers Weekly said “Strydom’s debut subverts postapocalyptic fiction… [it] reinvigorates the genre with a suspenseful concept and intimately realized characters. A sucker punch of a novel.”

I never saw the hardcover, but the trade paperback reprint from Talos caught my eye at the bookstore last week. Have a look.

“The day every person on earth lost his and her memory was not a day at all. In people’s minds there was no actual event . . . and thus it could be followed by no period of shock or mourning. There could be no catharsis. Everyone was simply reset to zero.”

On Day Zero, the collapse of civilization was as instantaneous as it was inevitable. A mysterious and oppressive movement rose to power in the aftermath, forcing people into isolated communes run like regimes. Kayle Jenner finds himself trapped on a remote beach and all that remains of his life before is the vague and haunting vision of his son.

Kayle finally escapes, only to find a broken world being put back together in strange ways. As more memories from his past life begin returning, the people he meets wandering the face of a scorched earth — some reluctant allies, others dangerous enemies — begin to paint a terrifying picture. In his relentless search for his son, Kayle will discover more than just his lost past. He will discover the truth behind Day Zero — a truth that makes both fools and gods of men.

The Raft was published in hardcover by Talos Press on May 3, 2016, and reprinted in trade paperback on May 16, 2017. It is 432 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $25.99 for the digital edition. Read a brief excerpt at Books Live.

Kat Howard’s debut fantasy novel Roses and Rot was a Locus Award nominee for Best First Novel, and a Publishers Weekly Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror Novel of Summer 2016. Her latest is a standalone tale of a secret cabal of wizards in New York City, and a woman who wants to bring down the entire system from within. It arrives in hardcover from Saga Press in two weeks.

The Unseen World prides itself on remaining invisible as magicians walk the streets of New York City, rich and literally powerful.

Every twenty years, vying for power and standing during the Turning, the heads of magical houses would elect a champion, a family member or a magician-for-hire, and begin a series of duels.

But the Turning has come early, after thirteen years, and Ian Merlin, the heir to the most powerful house in the Unseen World has elected to become the champion of his father’s chief rival, House Prospero.

Enter Sydney: An unknown magician from a candidate house, an outsider easily dismissed amongst the established wealth and power of the Unseen World.

Acclaimed author Kat Howard has written a magical revenge thriller amidst the private world of New York City’s most influential citizens, who feed off each other in a hidden game of magical dominance.

What the Unseen World will soon learn is that Sydney is a formidable duelist with power that hasn’t been seen in decades, and she has a score to settle.

An Unkindness of Magicians will be published by Saga Press on September 26. It is 355 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Vault 49. Read Chapter One at Tor.com.

Allaigna’s Song: Overture
By JM Landels
Pulp Literature Press (288 pages, $17.99 paperback, $6.49 eBook, July 2017)

I’m a fan of the slow reveal in fiction, particularly if the writer provides just enough detail to intrigue you and increase the tension, but makes you wait to get a clearer picture about what’s going on. That’s part of the reason why Fringe is one of my all-time favorite shows. Building that tension and deciding what information to provide to the reader (or viewer) and when is very tricky; I’ve been told that some of my published stories have pulled it off, but I’ve written other pieces that totally buggered it up. And one thing I’ve never attempted is doing so with parallel narratives in a single work, where the connection isn’t clear at the outset and the tonal change is severe, since I’m always afraid that doing so will throw off my readers.

But in Allaigna’s Song: Overture, Jen Landels manages to avoid all of that, as she tells the story of child Allaigna and parallels it with two other narratives that, over time, are revealed to be the stories of her mother and grandmother. While the core is Allaigna’s discovery of her royal family’s true heritage and her capacity for magic, our real understanding of the world and the Game of Thrones-esque politics involving her family comes from these parallel narratives, since Allaigna is kept out of a lot of discussions and sometimes doesn’t understand or care about what’s really going on. The really neat thing is that when these parallel narratives first appear, there’s no indication about who we’re looking at or where the story has moved to – the first flashback to “Lauresa,” for example, occurs before we learn that Lauresa is Allaigna’s mother’s name – and there’s a shift in tense and narrative structure, which is really experimental and something I’ve never attempted. But Landels pulls it off, constructing a great slow reveal as details come to light.

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Karin Tidbeck’s first collection Jagannath brought rave reviews from China Mieville, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Hand, and others. Ursula K. Le Guin said, “I have never read anything like Jagannath… These are wonderful stories.”

Karin’s debut novel Amatka is likewise garnering a lot of attention. Weird Fiction Review calls it “Remarkable… weird fiction at its most inventive and self-questioning.” And Jeff VanderMeer says “Karin Tidbeck’s Amatka is a stunning, truly original exploration of the mysteries of reality and what it means to be human… a brilliant short story writer has been revealed as an even more brilliant novelist. One of my favorite reads of the past few years, an instant classic.”

Print copies of Jagannath are now almost impossible to find. Don’t make the same mistake of overlooking Amatka! It arrived in trade paperback from Vintage in June.

Welcome to Amatka…

where everyone has a role, language has strange properties, and nothing — not even the very fabric of reality — can be taken for granted.

Vanja Essre Two is sent to the wintry colony of Amatka on an assignment to collect intelligence for the government. Dissent is not tolerated in Amatka, nor is romantic love, but Vanja nonetheless falls for her housemate Nina, a true believer in the colony’s ways. But when Vanja is drawn into a resistance movement, she must choose between love and a revolution, which promises liberation at the cost of tearing the world as they know it apart.

Amatka was published by Vintage on June 27, 2017. It is 216 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. Read more at the author’s website.

Brad Abraham has written for film (Stonehenge Apocalypse), television (RoboCop: Prime Directive), comics (Mixtape), and genre magazines (Rue Morgue, Starburst). His first novel is Magicians Impossible, which Library Journal says reads like “Harry Potter meets James Bond,… this series launch by a screenwriter features ages-old spy rings of magic-wielding secret agents… a cinematic, fast-paced debut.” It arrives in hardcover next week from Thomas Dunne Books.

Twenty-something bartender Jason Bishop’s world is shattered when his estranged father commits suicide, but the greater shock comes when he learns his father was a secret agent in the employ of the Invisible Hand; an ancient society of spies wielding magic in a centuries-spanning war. Now the Golden Dawn―the shadowy cabal of witches and warlocks responsible for Daniel Bishop’s murder, and the death of Jason’s mother years before―have Jason in their sights. His survival will depend on mastering his own dormant magic abilities; provided he makes it through the training.

From New York, to Paris, to worlds between worlds, Jason’s journey through the realm of magic will be fraught with peril. But with enemies and allies on both sides of this war, whom can he trust? The Invisible Hand, who’ve been more of a family than his own family ever was? The Golden Dawn, who may know the secrets behind his mysterious lineage? For Jason Bishop, only one thing is for certain; the magic he has slowly been mastering is telling him not to trust anybody.

Magicians Impossible will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on September 12, 2017. It is 390 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital version. The cover was designed by Ervin Serrano. Read an excerpt here.