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Future Treasures: Crooked Kingdom, the Sequel to Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Future Treasures: Crooked Kingdom, the Sequel to Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

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Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows, published in hardcover last September by Henry Holt and Co, became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Which hardly seems fair, since she already had a bestselling young adult series in The Grisha Trilogy (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising), but some people just hog all the attention, I guess.

Six of Crows is a caper novel set in the same world as The Grisha Trilogy, in which criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker dreams of a brazen heist in the bustling hub of Ketterdam, and manages to assemble a talented team of geniuses and misfits to pull it off. Author Holly Black called it “A twisty and elegantly crafted masterpiece,” and the Los Angeles Times says it’s “Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones… with a caper twist.” How can you resist a description like that?

The sequel, Crooked Kingdom, arrives in hardcover at the end of the month, and sees Kaz Brekker and his crew thrown right back into the thick of things. Here’s the description.

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Is Robert Reed the New Century’s Most Compelling SF Voice?

Is Robert Reed the New Century’s Most Compelling SF Voice?

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The Memory of Sky wraparound cover

Last month I finally got around to picking up a copy of Robert Reed’s massive collection The Greatship (which I talked about here.) It collects 11 tales — plus a bunch of new connecting material — in his Greatship saga, set on a vast spaceship relic that is larger than worlds, and which contains thousands of alien species.

I’m glad I had the chance to familiarize myself with the Greatship tales, as that came in handy last month at Worldcon in Kansas City. I attended the Asimov’s SF group reading, hosted by editor Sheila Williams, and found it an insightful and entertaining hour, as writers James Patrick Kelly, Connie Willis, Steve Rasnic Tem, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Robert Reed all read from recent or upcoming tales published in the magazine. Robert Reed, whom Sheila calls the writer with the most stories in Asimov’s (“by quite a bit”), read from an unpublished Greatships novella coming in the magazine next year, and it was totally captivating. It certainly helped pique my interest in the series, and it was pretty high to begin with.

[As the panel got started James Patrick Kelly exhorted the audience to “check out the new website — it’s so much better than the old one!” Sheila, with an uncomfortable glance at me, said she didn’t feel right disparaging the old website, “since the person who designed it is sitting in the audience.” I helped Sheila launch the Asimov’s website at SF Site roughly two decades ago, and in fact it was Rodger Turner who did most of the heavy lifting, so it certainly was no insult to me that they’d finally upgraded to a much superior design. I don’t usually like to interrupt panels, but this time I was happy to shout out “Disparage away!”]

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Gods, Monsters and Mayhem: The Pantheon Novels of James Lovegrove

Gods, Monsters and Mayhem: The Pantheon Novels of James Lovegrove

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Age of Shiva James Lovegrove-small Age of Heroes James Lovegrove-small

One of my all-time favorite fantasy novels is Roger Zelazny’s Hugo-winning Lord of Light, a richly original science fantasy of one man’s attempt to stop an elitist cabal from setting themselves up as gods on a newly colonized world, using the gods of the Hindu pantheon as a template. James Lovegrove’s 8-volume Pantheon series is, if anything, even more ambitious than that groundbreaking work, as each volume uses a different pantheon of gods to spin a standalone tale of mythological mayhem.

The series began with The Age of Ra in 2009, and continued in six additional novels and one collection, Godpunk. The most recent, Age of Shiva, which borrows from god of the Hindu Pantheon, arrived in 2014, and the next volume, Age of Heroes, which features the Gods of Greece, arrives in paperback next week.

For anyone looking for their next big SF adventure series, the Pantheon novels make a fine candidate. Here’s the complete list of titles.

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Magic, Intrigue, Adventure, and a Bit of Piracy: The Shades of Magic Trilogy by V. E. Schwab

Magic, Intrigue, Adventure, and a Bit of Piracy: The Shades of Magic Trilogy by V. E. Schwab

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335710zWYMO5wF A-Gathering-of-Shadows-small A Conjuring of Light-small

The second book in V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy, A Gathering of Shadows, made her a New York Times bestselling author. It has become one of the most acclaimed and popular fantasy series in recent memory. Booklist says it’s “Full of magic, intrigue, adventure, deception, a bit of piracy,” and NPR called it “Compulsively readable.” The Wall Street Journal labeled it “a multiple split-screen adventure, with an engaging hero/heroine pair,” and Steven Brust says “is as twisty-turny, dark, and gorgeous as the (multiple) Londons it winds through — I loved it!”

When the second volume was released earlier this year, I called it the “concluding volume” in a 2-book series. Whoops. That’s the publishing biz for you. I hope I don’t get in trouble soon for calling it a trilogy.

The series follows the adventures of Kell, a magician, ambassador, and smuggler who travels between parallel Londons, carrying royal correspondence. When a thief named Delilah Bard robs him, and then saves him from a nasty fate, the two find themselves on the run, jumping between worlds. In A Gathering of Shadows, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events… as strange things begin to emerge from Black London, the place of which no one speaks.

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Future Treasures: Of Sand and Malice Made by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Future Treasures: Of Sand and Malice Made by Bradley P. Beaulieu

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Of Sand and Malice Made

Bradley P. Beaulieu’s first novel in the Song of Shattered Sands series, Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, was published last September, and listed as one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and BuzzFeed. The next book in the series, Of Sand and Malice Made, tells an earlier tale of Çeda, the youngest pit fighter in the history of the great desert city of Sharakhai. It arrives in hardcover from DAW next week.

Çeda, the heroine of the novel Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, is the youngest pit fighter in the history of the great desert city of Sharakhai. In this prequel, she has already made her name in the arena as the fearsome, undefeated White Wolf; none but her closest friends and allies know her true identity.

But this all changes when she crosses the path of Rümayesh, an ehrekh, a sadistic creature forged long ago by the god of chaos. The ehrekh are usually desert dwellers, but this one lurks in the dark corners of Sharakhai, toying with and preying on humans. As Rümayesh works to unmask the White Wolf and claim Çeda for her own, Çeda’s struggle becomes a battle for her very soul.

The next installment in the series, With Blood Upon the Sand, is due in hardcover in February.

Of Sand and Malice Made will be published by DAW on September 6, 2016. It is 240 pages, priced at $18 in hardcover, and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by René Aigner.

New Treasures: The Cold Between by Elizabeth Bonesteel

New Treasures: The Cold Between by Elizabeth Bonesteel

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I see that Amazon.com is taking pre-orders for Remnants of Trust, the second Central Corps novel and the sequel to Elizabeth Bonesteel’s debut The Cold Between.

That means it’s definitely time for me to read the first one. I love an ambitious space opera, and The Cold Between looks like just the ticket. It’s is a military SF novel with romance elements that SFF World calls a “taut, space-based science fiction mystery.” Here’s the verdict from Publishers Weekly.

Bonesteel’s space opera debut, the first in the Central Corps series, expertly revitalizes familiar plot elements… Bonesteel keeps the plot moving briskly… The headlong action will attract readers, but they’ll find themselves paying more attention to the characters’ convincing and satisfying emotional relationships.

The Cold Between was published by Harper Voyager on March 8, 2016. It is 528 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Chris McGrath (click the images above for bigger versions).

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Alaric’s Biggest Secret: “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” by Phyllis Eisenstein

Alaric’s Biggest Secret: “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” by Phyllis Eisenstein

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In the Red Lord's Reach and Born to Exile Phyllis Eisenstein-small

Phyllis Eisenstein’s wandering minstrel Alaric, one of the most beloved characters in modern fantasy, appeared in eight short stories in Fantasy & Science Fiction between 1978-1998, and in two novels: Born to Exile (1978) and In the Red Lord’s Reach (1989). He recently made a long-overdue reappearance in George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’ massive 2014 anthology Rogues, in the novelette “The Caravan to Nowhere.”

He’s reappeared again, this time in the new novelette “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” in the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science, still on sale at better bookshops. In honor of the occasion, F&SF has interviewed Phyllis on their website, and Phyllis reveals several secrets about the magical world she’s been nurturing for nearly four decades.

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New Treasures: The Greatship by Robert Reed

New Treasures: The Greatship by Robert Reed

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I’ve been hearing about Robert Reed’s Greatship stories for a very long time. The tales of a vast spaceship relic that is larger than worlds, and which contains thousands of alien species, the Greatship stories appeared first in F&SF and Asimov’s Science Fiction in the mid-90s, and were frequently reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies.

By the last decade Reed was producing ambitious novellas in his Greatship universe, and they were appearing primarily in anthologies — especially the novella-friendly anthologies from the Science Fiction Book Club — such as “Camouflage” (in Down These Dark Spaceways, May 2005), “Rococo” (Forbidden Planets, May 2006), “The Man with the Golden Balloon” (Galactic Empires, February 2008), and “Alone” (Godlike Machines, September 2010). There was also at least one standalone chapbook, Mere, from Golden Gryphon Press, and three novels: Marrow (2000), The Well of Stars (2005), and A Memory of Sky (2014).

Three years ago, Argo-Navis press produced the first collection, The Greatship, which gathered a dozen short stories and novellas written over the past 20 years (including Mere and all four novellas mentioned above), along with additional connecting material and an introduction. At $31.99 in trade paperback it’s a bit pricey, but it’s well worth it to have so much great material in one place.

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Future Treasures: Spellbreaker, the Concluding Volume of The Spellwright Trilogy by Blake Charlton

Future Treasures: Spellbreaker, the Concluding Volume of The Spellwright Trilogy by Blake Charlton

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It’s not often that a fantasy author achieves a breakout work with his first novel — or even his first series — but that’s exactly what Blake Charlton has done with The Spellwright Trilogy, which began with his debut novel Spellwright. Robin Hobb calls the series “A letter-perfect story,” and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it “A winner” in a star review.

After a nearly 5-year gap, the third and final novel in the trilogy, Spellbreaker, arrives in hardcover next week. All three books were published by Tor; here’s the complete publishing details.

Spellwright (352 pages, $25.99, March 2, 2010) — cover by Todd Lockwod
Spellbound (416 pages, $25.99, September 13, 2011) — cover by Todd Lockwood
Spellbreaker (476 pages, $25.969, August 23, 2016) — cover by James Paick

Here’s a look at the back covers of all three volumes.

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Return to Balumnia: The Stone Giant by James P. Blaylock

Return to Balumnia: The Stone Giant by James P. Blaylock

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oie_930526XfElVMASix years after the second Balumnia novel, The Disappearing Dwarf, James P. Blaylock returned one last time to the series with The Stone Giant (1989). Instead of continuing the adventures of Master Cheeser Jonathan Bing, Blaylock went back in time to reveal the origins of the scandalous, piratical-looking Theophile Escargot. If the previous volumes seem inspired by the adventures of Mole and Rat in The Wind in the Willows, this one reads Toad all the way. Click on the links to read my reviews of the other two Balumnia novels: The Elfin Ship and The Disappearing Dwarf.

A secretive, conniving fellow in the two previous volumes, here we get a peek into just how Escargot’s mind operates, and what leads him to leave Twombly Town and take to the roads and high seas in search of adventure. Stirred by a fit of pique, he steals a pie his wife had locked in the cupboard. This act of domestic thievery eventually leads him into the path of certain dangerous characters, which convinces him to get out of town as fast as he can.

Escargot’s wife regularly locks all the pies she bakes in the cupboard, doling them out to him only a slice at a time in order to get him to lead a respectable life, get a job, and attend church. Unwilling to do any of those things, one night, while his wife and their daughter, Annie, are sleeping, Escargot breaks the locks and steals a peach pie. He then wanders off for a stroll in the moonlight.

When he comes home the next morning (after a run-in with a pack of goblins), he finds the door to his house padlocked and a note inviting him to never return home. Most of the town, long familiar with Escargot’s approach to life and responsibility, is on his wife’s side, leaving him with nowhere to turn. Living on river squid and apples, he relocates to a drafty, abandoned windmill for shelter while he tries to figure out what to do next.

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