Black Gate

I’ve been reading a bit more space opera recently, and I welcome the recent resurgence of the sub-genre. Alien races, hardened crews, derelict spacecraft, ancient mysteries in space… how can you go wrong with a mix like that? Tim Pratt kicks off a new series next month with The Wrong Stars; it sounds like it has all the right ingredients.

A ragtag crew of humans and posthumans discover alien technology that could change the fate of humanity… or awaken an ancient evil and destroy all life in the galaxy.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials… and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

Tim Pratt has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Stoker, and Mythopoeic Awards, and won the Hugo Award for his short story “Impossible Dreams” (Asimov’s SF, July 2006). His novels include The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, and the Pathfinder Tales novels Liar’s Island and Liar’s Bargain. Several of his short stories have been adapted at Podcastle; C.S.E. Cooney reviewed two of them for us here (“HECK YEAH TIM PRATT!”). As T. A. Pratt, he’s also the author of the 10-volume Marla Mason fantasy series (Blood Engines, Poison Sleep, etc.), the first four of which were published by Bantam Spectra; the remainder were self-published.

Of his new series, Angry Robot says:

We’ve signed Tim up for books two and three in the Axiom series! He’ll never get away from us now; the chips are implanted too deeply in his cerebral cortex.

The Wrong Stars, Book One of the Axiom series, will be published by Angry Robot on November 7, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $7.99 in mass market paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Paul Scott Canavan. Read the first chapter at SFF World.

Richard Baker began his career at TSR where, with Colin McComb, he designed the Birthright campaign setting in 1994, the first D&D campaign setting to support PCs as rulers, creating a hybrid game based on “diplomacy, politics, trade, construction and (of course) war” (Pyramid magazine). His next major release was the fondly remembered Alternity SF RPG in 1998, with Bill Slavicsek.

His first novel was Forgotten Realms: The Adventures: The Shadow Stone (1997); it was followed quickly by nearly a dozen others for TSR, including two novels in the Star*Drive setting (1999), the New York Times bestselling War of the Spider Queen: Condemnation (2003), and the Blades of the Moonsea trilogy (2008-2010).

Valiant Dust marks his first non-licensed project, and I’m glad to see it. It’s the opening volume of the military science fiction series Breaker of Empires, set in an era of great interstellar colonial powers. It arrives in hardcover from Tor in two weeks.

Sikander Singh North has always had it easy ― until he joined the crew of the Aquilan Commonwealth starship CSS Hector. As the ship’s new gunnery officer and only Kashmiri, he must constantly prove himself better than his Aquilan crewmates, even if he has to use his fists. When the Hector is called to help with a planetary uprising, he’ll have to earn his unit’s respect, find who’s arming the rebels, and deal with the headstrong daughter of the colonial ruler―all while dodging bullets.

Sikander’s military career is off to an explosive start ― but only if he and CSS Hector can survive his first mission.

Our previous coverage of Richard Baker’s game books includes:

Lost Empires of Faerûn
Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave
Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land

Valiant Dust will be published by Tor Books on November 7, 2017. It is 349 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Larry Rostant. Read the complete first chapter here. Read all of our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.

I read Jhereg, the first book in Steven Brust’s long-running Vlad Taltos series, when my brother Mike thrust it on me in 1983. It was fun, fast-paced, and totally different from anything I’d ever read before.

Steven Brust was a fast-rising literary star in 1983, but Jhereg, and the series it spawned, established him as a major name. He’s produced numerous popular and acclaimed novels in the intervening years — including To Reign in Hell (1984), Brokedown Palace (1985), The Phoenix Guards (1991), and his ongoing Incrementalists series with Skyler White — but it’s the Vlad Taltos series that he remains most closely associated with. There have been thirteen additional novels in the series since Jhereg appeared 34 years ago, and this month marks the arrival of the fifteenth, Vallista, a deep dive into the mysteries of the world of Dragaera.

Vlad Taltos is an Easterner ― an underprivileged human in an Empire of tall, powerful, long-lived Dragaerans. He made a career for himself in House Jhereg, the Dragaeran clan in charge of the Empire’s organized crime. But the day came when the Jhereg wanted Vlad dead, and he’s been on the run ever since. He has plenty of friends among the Dragaeran highborn, including an undead wizard and a god or two. But as long as the Jhereg have a price on his head, Vlad’s life is…messy.

Meanwhile, for years, Vlad’s path has been repeatedly crossed by Devera, a small Dragaeran girl of indeterminate powers who turns up at the oddest moments in his life.

Now Devera has appeared again ― to lead Vlad into a mysterious, seemingly empty manor overlooking the Great Sea. Inside this structure are corridors that double back on themselves, rooms that look out over other worlds, and ― just maybe ― answers to some of Vlad’s long-asked questions about his world and his place in it. If only Devera can be persuaded to stop disappearing in the middle of his conversations with her…

The entire series has been kept in print by Ace in deluxe trade paperback omnibus editions — pretty extraordinary for a series that’s over three decades old.

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