This page is updated as books are received throughout the month.
Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett
Black Library, $8.99, 416pp, pb, 9781844167777. Fantasy. On-sale date: January 2011.
Dan Abnett returns to the Horus Heresy in Prospero Burns.
Primarch Magnus the Red of the Thousand Sons Legion has made a catastrophic mistake that endangers the safety of Terra. The Emperor is left with no choice but to charge Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space wolves, with the apprehension of his brother from the Thousand Sons home world of Prospero. The planet of sorcerers will not be easily deterred. With wrath in his heart, Russ is determined to bring Magnus to justice and bring about the fall of Prospero. Prospero Burns is an alternative point of view of the story first told in Graham McNeill’s best selling A Thousand Sons.
Siren Song by Cat Adams
(a Blood Singer novel), Tor, $14.99, 384pp, tp, 9780765324955. Fantasy.
In Blood Song, C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp, writing as Cat Adams, created a riveting new series featuring bodyguard Celia Graves. Once completely human, a vampire attack turned Celia into an Abomination—part vampire, part human. Now, in Siren Song, Celia must convince the world that she’s not a mindless killer and that she shouldn’t be locked away or destroyed.
Ifdf that wasn’t bad enough, the vamp attack seems to have woken a hidden part of Celia’s heritage—she is part Siren, able to enthrall men and enrage women without even trying. Now she must face a new danger: Celia has been summoned to the Sirens’ island for judgment and what may turn out to be a battle to the death. Celia has a lot of enemies, and while some want her blood and others her soul, they all want her dead.
The promise of Blood Song continues in Siren Song. Readers will cheer Celia on in her quest to establish a life for herself, despite everything that wants to knock her down, steal her soul, drain her blood, or just plain kill her.
The High Crusade by Poul Anderson
(50th Anniversary Edition), Baen, $12.00, 196pp, tp, 9781439133774. Science fiction.
The aliens had expected a simple mission of shock & awe. Too bad they ran into the bloody English…
In the year of grace 1345, as Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville is training an army to join King Edward III in the war against France, a most astonishing event occurs: a huge silver ship descends through the sky and lands in a pasture beside the little village of Ansby in northeastern Lincolnshire. The alien Wersgorix, whose scouting ship it is, are quite expert at taking over planets, and they initiate standard world-conquering procedure. Ah, but this time they’ve launched their invasion against free Englishmen!
The High Crusade: one of the most beloved novels of a grand master of science fiction—now published for the first time with Poul Anderson’s short story set in the same universe, plus a new introduction by Astrid Anderson Bear as well as appreciations by Greg Bear, David Drake, Eric Flint, Diana L. Paxson and Robert Silverberg.
The Power of Illusion by Christopher Anvil, edited by Eric Flint
Baen, $12.00, 453pp, tp, 9781439134122. Science fiction collection.
Now you see it… Now you don’t…
The overwhelming power of massed starship armadas can be undone in a moment—by the subtle power of illusion, as demonstrated in this collection of stories by the master of humorous science fiction adventure, including:
* The full-length novel, The Day the Machines Stopped—and what happens, not just to civilization, but to humanity and its chances of survival when all the machines stop working at once?
* A man is captured by aliens who are investigating the Earth as a possible target for colonization. The aliens have science and technology far in advance of humans—but, unfortunately for them, they have never developed the human art of bluffing.
* For the first time in book form, Anvil’s stories of Richard Verner, who is called in to solve apparently insoluble problems, such as explaining why experimental missiles keep failing for no apparent reason, or locating a kidnapped judge, or even solving an inexplicable murder that’s interrupting his vacation.
And much more, in a generous volume of sardonically humorous science fiction.
[Contents: “A Taste of Poison”; “The Gold of Galileo”; The Day the Machines Stopped; “The Missile Smasher”; “The Problem Solver and the Killer”; “The Hand from the Past”; “The Problem Solver and the Hostage”; “The Problem Solver and the Defector”; “Key to the Crime”; “The Problem Solver and the Burned Letter”; “Warped Clue”; “The Coward”; “A Sense of Disaster”; “Destination Unknown”; “High Road to the East”; “A Tourist Named Death”; “The Knife and the Sheath”; “The Anomaly”; “In the Light of Further Data”; “Apron Chains”; and “The Power of Illusion”.]
Myth-Interpretations by Robert Asprin
Baen, $14.00, 300pp, tp, 9781439133903. Science fiction.
The man and the myth…
Presenting a collection of short novels and stories set in the many worlds of Robert Asprin. One of his most popular creations was the “Myth” series, chronicling the misadvevntures of Skeeve and Aahz, a magician who has lost his power and his hapless human apprentice, as they travel through strange and varied worlds in pursuit of wealth and glory, but mostly getting into one Myth-ical mess after another. Collected in this volume for the first time are all the Myth stories of less-than-novel length.
Also included are other short works by Asprin, including his award-winning novelette “Cold Cash War,” and several unpublished stories discovered after the writer’s death. Asprin’s many fans, as well as all readers who enjoy humorous fantasy and science fiction, will find a treasure trove of enjoyable reading. As editor Bill Fawcett puts it, “His stories are always fun, but never predictable.”
[Contents: “The Myth-Adventures”; “Myth-Adventurers”; “Gleep’s Tale”; “M.Y.T.H. Inc. Instructions”; “Mything in Dreamland”, “Myth-Trained”; “From the Files of Tambu: The Incident at Zarn”; “The Ex-Khan”; “Two Gentlemen of the Trade”; “A Harmless Excursion”; “Wanted: Guardian”; “A Gift in Parting”; “To Guard the Guardians”; “The Capture”; “The Ultimate Weapon”; “The Saga of the Dark Horde”; “Cold Cash War”; “You Never Call”; and “Con Job”.]
Masques by Patricia Briggs
Ace, $7.99, 306pp, pb, 9780441019427. Fantasy.
Before Mercy, there was Masques…
Patricia Briggs, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series, has revised and updated her very first novel, Masques for this new edition. This fast-paced, traditional romantic fantasy leads up to an all new, never-before-published sequel entitled Wolfsbane out next month. For those who can’t wait for the next Mercy Thompson novel, this is perfect to quench your Patricia Briggs thirst!
Masques follows the adventures of Aralorn, a young woman of noble birthright who flees her upbringing of proper behavior and oppressive expectations to become a mercenary spy. Her latest mission involves spying on the powerful sorcerer Geoffrey ae’Magi. In a war against an enemy armed with the powers of illusion, will Aralorn know who the true enemy is or where he will strike next?
The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold edited by Lillian Stewart Carl and John Helfers
Baen, $7.99, 678pp, pb, 9781439133798. Literary collection.
A guided tour of the Vorkosigan Universe
Lois McMaster Bujold’s best-selling Vorkoskigan series is a publishing phenomenon, winning record-breaking sales, critical praise, four Hugo Awards and two Nebula Awards. This volume is a goldmine of information, background details, and little-known facts about the Vorkosigan saga.
Included is an all-new interview with Bujold, plus essays by her on crafting the Vorkosigan universe, articles on the biology, technology and sociology of the planet Barrayar, appreciations of the individual novels by experts, maps, a complete timeline of the series, and more.
War World: Discovery edited by John F. Carr
Pequod, $42.50, 387pp, hc, 9780937912096. Science fiction anthology.
War World: Discovery is the first new War World sf anthology in almost 20 years. This book is the opening volume in a series that will present War World’s ricvh history in chronological order. Discovery is a trade hardcover volume and includes nine new stories as well as four previously published yarns.
This collection of stories takes us back to the very beginning of the War World Saga when the large moon of the fourth satellite in the Byers System was discovered by Captain Jed Byers and the resulting problems in opening it up to development and colonization. We see the struggles of the Harmonies to retain their world against the master of the CoDominium, who call Haven “End-of-the-Line” and use it as a dumping ground for criminals, murderers, arsonists, terrorists and just plain political troublemakers they want to exile from Earth—forever. A prison world from which no one without political favor ever returns.…
War World: Discovery is the 9th book in the on-going War World Saga, which includes three novels, the most recent being War World: The Battle of Sauron by John F. Carr & Donald Hawthorne published in 2008. The War World series is a shared-world universe created by Jerry E. Pournelle & John F. Carr and is set in Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium/Empire of Man future history.
He is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson edited by Christopher Conlon
Tor, $15.99, 351pp, tp, 9780765326140. Horror anthology.
Richard Matheson, the New York Times bestselling author of I am Legend, has inspired a generation of storytellers. Now, in He is Legend, an outstanding cast of top writers pays tribute to his legacy with an all-new collection of original stories set in Matheson’s own fictional universes, including sequels, prequels, and companion stories to I am Legend, Hell House, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Somewhere in Time, “Duel”, and “Button, Button”.
Among the highlights of this one-of-a-kind anthology is the first ever collaboration between Stephen King and his son, bestselling horror writer Joe Hill. Other notable contributors include Nancy A. Collins, Joe R. Lansdale, William F. Nolan, Whitley Strieber, F. Paul Wilson, and Matheson’s son, Richard Christian Matheson. Previously published as a limited edition by Gauntlet Press in 2009, He is Legend is now widely available to Matheson’s many fans, as well as all lovers of gripping horror and suspense.
With the success of the newest film version of I am Legend, starring Will Smith and breaking box office records, Richard Matheson has burst back onto the scene, gaining new fans as well as bringing old ones out of the woodwork. Stephen King has said that Matheson is “the author who influenced me most as a writer,” and Dean Koontz claims, “His stories not only entertain, but touch the mind and heart.” Movie versions of many of his other beloved stories are in the works as Hollywood rediscovers the author who penned several classic episodes of Twilight Zone, and who wrote the original stories that became famous movies like Somewhere in Time, What Dreams May Come, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and more.
What makes Matheson’s stories, and the tales based upon them in He is Legend so gripping is their grounded, contemporary realism. “People like my writing because it could happen in their own neighborhoods,” explains Matheson. It’s that chilling reality that keeps his fans wanting more.
Using relatable characters and everyday settings, Matheson has achieved a haunting believability to his writing that has made readers question what might be lurking in their own backyards. That Matheson’s chilling and compelling works have inspired a whole generation of horror, science fiction, and thriller writers is clearly evidenced in the stories collected in He is Legend. This collection of all-new tales both honors Matheson’s legacy as well as introducing new fans to his great style.
[Contributors: Ramsey Campbell, Joe Hill & Stephen King, F. Paul Wilson, Mick Garris, John Shirley, Thomas F. Monteleone, Michael A. Arnzen, Gary A. Braunbeck, John Maclay, William F. Nolan, Ed Gormann, Barry Hoffman, Richard Christian Matheson, Joe R. Lansdale, Nancy A. Collins, and Whitley Strieber.]
Monster Hunter: Vendetta by Larry Correia
Baen, $7.99, 648pp, pb, 9781439133910. Fantasy.
Monster hunter of monster bait?
Owen Zastava Pitt, accountant turned professional monster hunter, managed to stop the nefarious Old One’s invasion plans last year, but as a result made an enemy out of one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Now an evil death cult known as the Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition wants to capture Owen in order to gain the favor of the great Old Ones.
With supernatural assassins targeting his family, a spy in their midst, and horrific beasties lurking around every corner, Owen and the staff of Monster Hunter International don’t need to go hunting, because this time the monsters are hunting them. Fortunately, this bait is armed and very dangerous.…
Cinkarion: The Heart of Fire by J.A. Cullum
(Book Two in the Karionin Chronicles), Edge, $16.95, 336pp, tp, 9781894063210. Fantasy.
“There was a time when wizards ruled the world,
And in that Gold Age the wizards made
Eight living crystals. So, while wizards die,
The karionin live and never fade.”
Home to nine races of humans and near-humans, the world of Tamar lies on the brink of total war unless the living crystals known as the karionin find young wizards capable of attuning themselves to the magic of the stones.
In Lyskarion: The Song of the Wind, the karionin Lyskarion chooses one of the dolphin folk wizards as its bearer. Now in a world torn by war between the humans and tiger folk, a second living crystal, Cinkarion must select a new bearer—one who’s mind is as powerful as the crystal itself.
To the human wizards’ initial disappointment, Cinkarion chooses a member of tiger folk royalty, a young woman who is a commander in the navy. Could this be a mistake, or part of a bigger plan to bring together a new wizards’ council—one that represents all of the races of Tamar in equality?
Afterlife by Merrie Destefano
Eos, $7.99, 322pp, pb, 9780061990816. Fiction.
Afterlife is a thrilling urban fantasy noir adventure in a world where everyone gets nine lives—think Bladerunner meets Jim Butcher.
In near future New Orleans, resurrection technology allows you to live more than one life, choosing your next life and family as you see fit. Music and jive-sweet swallow the city in pleasure and pain, as the Underground Circus lurks for the unwary. Now, you can be anyone you want: just sign one little consent form for a fresh start, and your chance at heaven.
Chaz Dominque is a Babysitter—charged with protecting souls in their first week of new life. But Angelique is far from your avevrage charge, one dark powers have been waiting for. And as she struggles to remember the treacherous secrets from her past, evil searches for the ultimate prize—the secret to true immortality—and only Chaz and Angelique can stop them.
You only get nine lives. Use them wisely.
Bones of Empire by William C. Dietz
Ace, $24.95, 325pp, hc, 9780441019229. Science fiction.
In a far-distant future, the Uman Empire has conquered and colonized worlds. Once thought invincible, its reign is now fragile as alien subjects and enemies conspire against it.…
Jak Cato is a cop—bioengineered to see through the guises of the vicious shape-shifting aliens known as the Sagathies. Once a guard on the prison planet where they are confined, he risked his life hunting down a Sagathi who escaped.
Now Cato is an assignment in the capital city of the Uman Empire. One day he gets a glimpse of the Emperor—and realizes that what he is looking at is not human. It is the supposedly dead shifter.
With only a few allies to assist him, Cato must determine if the alien is acting alone to bring down the hated Umans or if he is part of some even larger conspiracy. Cato knows only two things: The fate of the Empire, and his own honor, is at stake.…
And his mortal enemy is still alive and once again on the run.
What Distant Deeps by David Drake
Baen, $25.00, 370pp, hc, 9781439133668. Science fiction.
No rest for the weary
Captain Daniel Leary and his friends, the spy Adele Mundy, have been in the front lines of Cinnabar’s struggle against the totalitarian Alliance. Now these galactic superpowers have signed a peace of mutual exhaustion—
But the jackals are moving in!
The Republic of Cinnabar was on the verge of collapse under the weight of taxes, casualties, and war’s disruption of trade. That the Alliance of Free Stars was in even worse condition helped only because it has made peace possible.
Years of war have been hard on Daniel and harder still on Adele, whose life outside information-gathering is a tightrope between despair and deadly violence. Their masters in the RCN and the Republic’s intelligence service have sent them to the fringes of human space to relax away from danger.
But the barbarians of the outer reaches have their own plans, plans which will bring down both Cinnabar and the Alliance. The enemies of peace include traitors, giant reptiles, and barbarian pirates whose ships can outsail even David Leary’s splendid corvette, the Princess Cecile.
Unless Daniel, Adele, and their unlikely allies succeed, galactic civilization will disintegrate into blood and chaos.
So they will succeed—or they’ll die trying!
The Magickers Chronicles: Volume Two by Emily Drake
(contains The Dragon Guard and The Gate of Bones), DAW, $8.99, 666pp, pb, 9780756406370. Fantasy.
The Dragon Guard—
With the war between the Magickers and the Dark Hand escalating, Jason Adrian and his friends had been forced to flee Cape Ravenwyng and continue their training at home. They and the senior Magickers knew that their only hope for safety from the Dark Hand lay in the land called Haven. Jason had found two Gates into Haven already, but only if he found the third Gate would it truly become a stable sanctuary for the Magickers. And Jason didn’t have a clue as to what or where that Gate could be.…
The Gate of Bones—
Haven, the land beyond the Gates, was supposed to be exactly that—a refuge for the Magickers from their enemy—the Dark Hand. But what if your enemy could find a way in, too? Suddenly, not only the Magickers but all the people of Haven were at risk. And with two of the senior Magickers held hostage, how much could Jason and the rest do to defeat their ancient enemy? Then just as they though they’d found a way, the Dark Hand opened the Gate of Bones, a maelstrom of evil energy that could destroy them all.…
The House of Dead Maids by Clare B. Dunkle
Holt, $15.99, 160pp, hc, 9780805091168. YA fantasy/classic.
In Clare B. Dunkle’s The House of Dead Maids, readers are introduced to Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights in a chilling tale of ghosts and evil spirits.
When young Tabby Aykroyd arrives at Seldom House to be nursemaid to a foundling boy, she is haunted by the ghost of the last maid, whose spirit is only one of many. As Tabby struggles to escape the evil forces that surround the house, she tries to befriend her uncouth young charge, but her kindness cannot alter his fate. Blending Yorkshire lore and Brontë family history, Clare Dunkle tells the story of the savage creature who comes to be known as Heathcliff.
“I wrote this little novel to encourage teenage readers to tackle Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which is one of my favorite classics,” Ms. Dunkle says in the background notes on her website. “Hence, my book is very short, a mere appetizer to Emily Brontë’s main course. If you haven’t yet read Wuthering Heights, I urge you to start on that brutal, gloomy, mysterious, fascinating book today.”
1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint
Baen, $25.00, 370pp, hc, 9781439133897. Science fiction.
A born leader in a brutal time.
It is 1635. The Thirty Years War continues, but a new force is gathering power and influence in war-ravaged Europe: the United States of Europe, a new nation led by Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the West Virginians from the 20th century who were hurled centuries into the past by a mysterious cosmic accident.
However, West Virginian Mike Stearns has lost an election, and is no longer Prime Minister of the USE. Still, he will continue to lead in a new capacity, as Gustavuvs has appointed him to be a general in the USE army. With the ink barely dry on his commission, he’ll be one of the commanders carrying the war to Brandenburg and Saxony.
But there are other conflicts. Unrest and rebellion begin to unfold in the Germanies as the new prime minister of the USE attempts to roll back the reforms instituted by Stearns. Gustavus Adolphus’s ambitions in the east threaten to bring Poland and Austria into the war as allies of Saxony and Brandenburg.
Europe is a storehouse of high explosives, and nobody is sure how many fuses are already lit and burning.
1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce
Baen, $7.99, 812pp, pb, 9781439133675. Science fiction.
New Targets
The Thirty Years War continues to ravage 17th century Europe, but a new force is gathering power and influence: the United States of Europe. When the West Virginia town of Grantville was hurled centuries into the past by a mysterious cosmic accident, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, saw the advantages of an alliance with the strangers from the future, and a new nation was born.
While the old entrenched rulers and manipulators continue to plot against this new upstart nation, everyday life goes on in Grantville, the town lost in time. And what better place for an undercover spy from France than working with the garbage collectors, examining 20th century machines that others throw out, and copying the technology?
There are more sinister agents at work, however. One of them, the Huguenot Michel Ducos, almost succeeded in assassinating the Pope, but his plan was ruined by quick action by a few Americans. Now, Ducos not only has a score to settle, but has also decided on two excellent targets: Grantville’s leader Mike Stearns and his wife Rebecca.…
Fangs for the Mammaries edited by Esther Friesner
Baen, $7.99, 418pp, pb, 9781439133927. Fantasy anthology.
Vampires put the bite on suburbia
Having influcted the smug homes of suburbia with witches and werewolves, Esther Friesner now unleashes the undead to tap a vein of blood and humor, and drain the suburbs dry of both.
Vampires and the suburbs are a match made in heavevn, or maybe Levittown. Remember Dracula? He didn’t run into any real problems until he took his act on the road and traveled to the Big City. But in the suburbs, everyone is polite and respectful of their neighbors’ right to privacy. And if your neighbors happen to have kids selling gift-wrap, magazine subscriptions, cookies, or other school fundraising ploys, and little Emily or Jason happen to come peddling their wares after sundown… Who says you have to stay in the city if you want good take-out meals delivered right to your door?
Stories of undead suburbia by Sarah A. Hoyt, K.D. Wentworth, Dave Freer and more—including Esther Friesner herself. Enter freely and of your own will.
[Contributors: Jody Lynn Nye, David Freer, Julia S. Mandala, Kevin Andrew Murphy, K.D. Wentworth, Sarah A. Hoyt, Lee Martindale, David D. Levine, Hildy Silverman, Lucienne Diver, Daniel M. Hoyt, Selina Rosen, Susan Sizemore, Robin Wayne Bailey, Sarah Zettel, Linda L. Donahue, Esther M. Friesner, Laura J. Underwood, and Steven Piziks.]
Backstage Passes: An Anthology of Rock and Roll Erotica from the Pages of Blue Blood edited by Amelia G
Blue Blood, $14.95, 208pp, tp, 9780984605316. Fantasy anthology.
Blue Blood is pleased as spiked punch to announce the publication of Backstage Passes: An Anthology of Rock and Roll Erotica from the pages of Blue Blood, edited by Amelia G. In this sexy literary anthology, top genre authors explore the deep eroticism of music subcultures. Demons, vampires, punk employees, spirits, gothic fetish party revelers, and guitarists feel the rhythm where it counts.
Editrix Amelia G says, “I’m fortunate to have been able to work with so many great people. The music does still turn me on. I hope it does it for you too.”
[Contributors: Johnny Chen, Amelia G, John Shirley, Thomas S. Roche, Will Judy, Cecilia Tan, Nancy A. Collins, William Spencer-Hale, Sephera Giron, Sarah McKinley Oakes, Andrew Greenberg, Althea Morin, L., t.d.k., Yon Von Faust, Shariann Lewitt, and Poppy Z. Brite.]
The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor
Night Shade, $14.99, 305pp, tp, 9781597801966. Horror-comedy.
The town of Lake Woebegotten, Minnesota, is a small town, filled with ordinary (yet above average) people, leading ordinary lives.
Ordinary, that is, until the dead start coming back to life, with the intent to feast upon the living. Now this small town of above average citizens must overcome their petty rivalries and hidden secrets, in order to survive the onslaught of the dead.
Weight of Stone by Laura Anne Gilman
(Book Two of The Vineart War), Gallery, $24.99, 374pp, hc, 9781439101452. Fantasy.
Weight of Stone is book two of the enthralling Vineart War series. Following the adventure that began in the Nebula Award finalist, Flesh and Fire, The Vineart series presents a world in which magic derives from wine-making, and where young apprentice Jerzy must defeat the evil forces that threaten to destroy the origins of magic forever.
Jerzy, Vineart apprentice and former slave, was sent by his master to investigate strange happenings in the Lands Vin—and found himself betrayed. Now he must set out on his own journey to find the source of the foul taint that threatens the existence of everything he knows. Accompanying Jerzy are Ao, who lives for commerce and the art of the deal; Mahault, stoic and wise, risking death in flight from her homeland; and Kainam, once Named-Heir of an Island Principality, whose father has fallen into a magic-tangled madness that endangers them all.
These four companions will travel far from earth and the soul of the vine, sailing along coastlines aflame with fear, confronting sea creatures summoned by darkness, and following winds imbued with malice. Their journey will take them to the very limits of the Sin Washer’s reach… and into a battle for the soul of the Vin Lands.
For two millennia one commandment has kept the Lands Vin in order: Those of magic shall hold no power over men. Those of power shall hold no magic. Now that law has given way, and hidden force seeks revenge.
Memories of Envy by Barb Hendee
(a Vampire Memories novel), Roc, $15.00, 290pp, tp, 9780451473531. Fantasy.
For a vampire, killing is easy. She makes it fun.
A reluctant predator, Eleisha Clevon has made a hom for herself and other vampires in Portland, Oregon. Despite the risks, she is determined to locate all vampires who still reside in isolation so she can offer them sanctuary and, more important, so she can teach them to feed without killing. She is shocked when she learns that a lost vampire may be living as close as Denver—and she has to handle this one more carefully than any she has ever approached.
Simone Stratford is a beautiful, delicate-looking creature from the roaring twenties who enjoys playing elaborate games with mortals: She stokes their passion for her before finally draining them of their blood.
When Eleisha and her protector, Philip Branté, go to Denver to search for Simone, what they find is far worse—and more seductive—than either one bargained for. Philip’s love for Eleisha and his ability to fit into her world are pushed to the breaking point, as is Eleisha’s fierce belief in her own mission. But soon they find themselves caught up in one of Simone’s games, which turns into a battle for Eleisha’s life and Philip’s soul.
Burton & Swinburne in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hoddder
Pyr, $16.00, 373pp, tp, 9781616142407. Steampunk.
London, 1861.
Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead.
Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin!
They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy.
The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find our why werewolves are terrorizing London’s East End.
Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn’t exist at all!
Seeker’s Bane by P.C. Hodgell
(contains Seeker’s Mask and To Ride a Rathorn), Baen, $7.99, 1150pp, pb, 9781439133804. Fantasy.
Home Sweet Home, Jame
Seeker’s Mask: After an epic adventure that will become the stuff of legend, Jame has been reunited with her older brother Torisen and with her people, the Kencyrath. But when she is placed in the Women’s Halls and expected to become a normal, quiet Kencyr lady, normal and quiet are not what the Women’s Halls are going to get. Shadow Guild Assassins, outcast ghosts, and wandering death banners are soon after her, sprung not only from her own adventurous past but from the tragic, mysterious events that nearly annihilated her family in her father’s time.
To Ride a Rathorn: Jame’s adventures continue as she arrives at the nobels’ military college to face cut-throat competition and find even more buried, poisonous family secrets. The Kencyr have a phrase, “to ride a rathorn,” referring to a task too dangerous either to accomplish or to give up. This is true for Jame both figuratively, given her military career in a college which no Highborn girl has ever attended before, and literally, in that she is being stalked by one of these murderous, ivory-clad creatures whose mother she killed and who is now after her blood.
All in all, Jame’s school days are shaping up to be anything but golden.
The Weiser Field Guide to Witches: From Hexes to Hermione Granger, from Salem to the Land of Oz by Judika Illes
Weiser, $14.95, 240pp, tp, 9781578634798.
For centuries they have cast a spell over our collective imagination, luring children into ovens and kings to their doom. They peek whimsically from greeting cards and advertisements. They cast shadows over a dark and shameful history. They plant herbs, broom through the stars, stir hissing cauldrons and drive hybrid cars!
A compendium of practitioners from early history to modern movie magicians, The Weiser Field Guide to Witvches explores who and what a witch really is. Featuring such historical legends as Aleister Crowley and Marie Laveau, along with popular literary figures like Harry Potter and The Wicked Witch of the West, author Judika Illes offers the full, fearsome and fabulous range of witches through history.
So ring the bell, light the candle, and open The Weiser Field Guide to Witches. Bewitchment waits!
Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey
(a Sandman Slim novel), Eos, $22.99, 434pp, hc, 9780061714313. Urban fantasy.
L.A. is going to hell.
Last summer’s Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey was an instant cult hit that garnered rave reviews. Marrying the twisted imagination and visual storytelling skills of its utterly original author, Sandman Slim set the standard for witty, gritty, urban fantasy. Sandman Slim had such high buzz factor that film rights were optioned by Dino De Laurentis in 2008, well before its print release.
The second book int he series, Kill the Dead takes everything that made Sandman Slim so explosively enjoyable—angelic hitmen, demons, porn, profanity, side-splitting humor, an abusive talking head. Adding to the mix is a Czech porn-star (who’s actually a zombie hunter) and Lucifer himself, who has come to L.A. to oversee to the filming of his own biopic—and drafts Stark as his bodyguard. It’s Hollywood, so monsters are always abundant… but it’s the glittering elite of the film industry and L.A.’s inhumanly powerful power players that set Sandman Slim on edge. And that’s before a series of inexplicable murders paints the city red… the action really starts when the victims start coming back as the walking undead.
So, Stark’s dealing with questions of his own paternity, his place in eternity, and a zombie plague that turns the City of Angels into a veritable hellmouth.
Deaeth bites. Life is worse. All things considered, He’lls not looking so bad.
One by David Karp
Westholme, $14.95, 312pp, tp, 9781594161285. Science fiction.
In a dateless future, a seemingly benevolent totalitarian State has eliminated poverty and crime and brought the happiness of conformity to its citizens. Professor Burden believes he too is a loyal citizen, but the Department of Internal Examination discovers that he harbors unconscious doubts about its methods and secretly values his individuality. Horrified at the subtlety of this heresy against the State, an examiner named Lark takes Burden on as a special project. He is convinced he can break Burden of his feelings of individuality and return him to being a normal, productive member of society—by persuasion if possible, but by complete obliteration of his identity, if necessary.
First published in 1953, One embodies the paranoia of totalitarianism, where personal freedoms are a threat to the State and individualism has to be brutally controlled. A taught, psychological thriller, this book ranks with the works of Orwell and Huxley as among the great dystopian novels of the era.
Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay
(book two of The Sarantine Mosaic), Roc, $16.00, 432pp, tp, 9780451463548. Fantasy.
The recent success of Under Heaven has reignited an interest in the beautifully written and well-researched work of Guy Gavriel Kay. Last month, Roc Books published the re-release of Sailing to Sarantium, the first book in a duology by Guy Gavriel Kay set in the Byzantine era. Now, Kay brings readers the conclusion to this incredible duology, Lord of Emperors.
In Lord of Emperors, Rustem of Kerakek, a physician in the desert kingdom of Bassania, save sthe life of Shirvan, the King of Kings, and discvovers that his wound was no accident. As a reward, great Shirvan orders him to join the court, and eventually finds a use for him, sending him to the great city of Sarantium as a spy. Here he meets Crispin, and the Emperor Valerius, and his exquisite queen the Empress Alixana, and Gisel, formerly Queen of Varena, now in exile. The city swirls with rumors of war and conspiracy. Valerius is threatening to send armies west to conquer Crispin’s homeland of Varena, while the King of Bassania awaits reports from Rustem on whether armies will also march east to threaten him. Crispin’s loyalties are complex. His fate has become entwined with that of Valerius and Alixana, but even in exile Gisel remains his rightful queen. And in a city full of conspirators, the question is not whether violence will strike, but simply when.
The Silent Army by James Knapp
Roc, $7.99, 374pp, pb, 9780451463616. Fantasy.
In the future, revivors, technologically reanimated corpses, fight an endless war abroad. On the home front, they’re a black market commodity providing labor and pleasure for those willing to pay for them. But Agent Nico Wachalowski knows revivors are more than what they seem.
Samuel Fawkes, the scientist who created revivors, designed a backdoor method into their circuitry so he can control them after his own death. Even though Faye Dasalia, a woman Nico once loved, is among the revivors’ ranks, he is doing everything he can to stop Fawkes from awakening his own private army. With the help of old friends and new allies, Nico must prevent these renegade undead soldiers from seeing the light of day, and face an old love he may now be forced to kill… permanently.
Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit by Mercedes Lackey
DAW, $7.99, 408pp, pb, 9780756406295. Fantasy.
The Warrior Queen
Inspired by the work of her friend and mentor, the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, bestselling author Mercedes Lackey gives her own unique spin to the ancient, classic tale of King Arthur, seen through the eyes of his queen, Gwenhwyfar.
Growing up in a Britain where the old ways are being supplanted by the influence of Christianity, Gwenhwyfar moves in a world where the old gods still walk among their pagan worshipers, where nebulous visions warn of future perils, and where there are two paths for a woman, the traditional path of the Blessing, or the rarer path of the Warrior.
Gwenhwyfar, the third daughter of a Celtic king, has always been the child most blessed with the power of the Goddess. But Gwen is spellbound by her father’s beautiful warhorses, and dreams of driving a war chariot for the glory of her father. Encouraged by the king, who has no sons and loves the idea of one of his daughters becoming his most valued warrior, Gwen is allowed to learn some of the rudimentary ways of war. But as soon as Gwen begins this training, it becomes evident that the way of the warrior is the princess’ true fate.
Yet the daughter of a king is never truly free to follow her own cvalling and all is not well at the court of the High King Arthur. In an attempt to unify the Celtic tribes under his Christian dominion he seeks a wife from the lands of the far west.
When Gwenhwyfar is chosen, she bows to circumstances to become Arhtur’s queen—only to find herself facing temptation and treachery, intrigue and betrayal, but also love and redemption.
Intrigues by Mercedes Lackey
(book two of The Collegium Chronicles), DAW, $25.95, 416pp, hc, 9780756406394. Fantasy.
The Collegium Chronicles: A Novel of Valdemar
Magpie is a thirteen-year-old orphan chosen by one of the magical Companion horses of Valdemar and taken to the capital city, Haven, to be trained as a Herald. Like all Heralds, Magpie learns that he has a hidden Gift—the Gift of telepathy.
But life at the court is not without obstacles. When Mags is “recognized” by foreign secret operatives whose purpose is unknown, Mags himself comes under suspicion. Who are Magpie’s parents—who is he, really? Can Mags solve the riddle of his parentage and his connection with the mysterious spies—and prove his loyalty—before the king and court banish him as a traitor?
The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe
(The Wall of Night, Book One), Eos, $7.99, 466pp, pb, 9780061734045. Fantasy.
Brilliant new voice Helen Lowe releases an ambitious epic fantasy saga of war, prophecy, betrayal, history, and destiny with The Heir of Night (The Wall of Night, Book One).
If Wall falls, all fall…
In the far north of the world of Haarth, the Derai people garrison the mountains known as the Wall of Night against their aeons old enemy, the Darkswarm. The Darkswarm and the Derai have battled across the universe as long as memory lasts, and the Derai’s cataclysmic arrival on Haarth, several millenia earlier, threw up the Wall, which their Nine Houses have garrisoned with a series of Keeps and Holds.
When the story opens, though the Derai remain a people under arms they are also divided, warrior against priest, House against House, and weakened by the loss of their greatest power, a magic that has been so long lost it is believed to be fiction. And though the Derai continue to maintain the Wall, and rule over the other peoples of Haarth, they have become increasingly isolated and fractured.
But all that is about to change, for the Darkswarm are rising again. And the fates of both the Derai and the world of Haarth may well rest with one young woman: Malian, the Heir of the House of Night.
Archvillain by Barry Lyga
Scholastic, $16.99, 184pp, hc, 9780545196499. Middle-grade fantasy.
From acclaimed young adult author Barry Lyga comes Archvillain, a new action-packed middle-grade series for anyone who has ever wondered how it all happened from the villain’s point of view.
Kyle Camden knows exactly where he was the night Mighty Mike arrived: sneaking around the fallow field behind Bouring Middle School (motto: “The U Makes It Exciting!”), running the electrical cabling that would allow him to dump the contents of the old water tower on the visiting football team during the next day’s game.
Which is exactly why he couldn’t tell anyone where he was. Or what he saw.
Those lights everyone witnessed in the sky weren’t tiny meteors burning up in the atmosphere. They were some kind of strange supercooled plasma that bathed the entire field—including Kyle—in alien energies, energies that boosted Kyle’s intellect and gave him superpowers. Unfortunately, the energies also brought Mighty Mike to earth.
Kyle is the only one who knows that Mighty Mike is a space alien. Everyone else thinks that Mike is just some kid who stumbled into the field, got beefed up on meteor juice, lost his memory, and decided to start rescuing kittens from trees. But Kyle knows the truth. And he’ll do anything in his power to stop Mighty Mike—even if it means being an archvillain!
Immortal Quest: The Trouble with Mages by Alexandra MacKenzie
Edge, $14.95, 264pp, tp, 9781894063463. Fantasy/GLBT.
If only he could remember…
500 year old Mage Marlen will do anything possible to get mortal Detective Nicholas Watson to remember their past lives together.
Confronted by an arrested thief who claims to be his best friend of many lifetimes, the young detective sargeant struggles to come to grips with Marlen’s story. Nick’s skepticism begins to wane, howevver, when the mage tells him details—intimate secrets about himself no one could know!
Before Marlen can reveal more though, he needs Nick’s help.
In a bid to secure a spell to help the detective remember the truth, Marlen accidentally releases Vere, one of the world’s most powerful immortals, from her multi-century imprisonment.
Cast into a quest across Wales and Scotland, Nick and Marlen must rapidly retrieve three Objects of Power before Vere can find them and use the hidden objects in her most potent spell—one that could destroy the world!
Cinco de Mayo by Michael J. Martineck
Edge, $14.95, 272pp, tp, 9781894063395. Science fiction.
Secrets: some feel freed having them out. Others will kill to keep them.
On May 5, in a flash of pain, every man, woman and child on the planet receives a second set of memories. A new name, a new language, a whole new life slips into their minds, along side their own.
* In Chicago, a transit worker knows enough about the Aryan Brotherhood to mark him for death.
* In Abu Dhabi, a playboy experiences modern day slavery.
* In New York an advertising executive shares the memories of a blind railroad worker in China.
In this transparent world of instant intimacy, no one is left untouched…
Everyone has secrets.
Betrayer of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
(prelude to Ringworld), Tor, $25.99, 384pp, hc, 9780765326089. Science fiction.
Forty years ago, readers were introduced to Louis Gridley Wu—a 200 year old man enlisted by the long-vanished, elder race of Puppeteers for a desperate mission to explore the galaxy’s grandest, and most intimidating, structure: the Ringworld. Larry Niven’s Ringworld became an instant classic, and Louis Wu’s adventures have made the series one of the most beloved in science fiction. Now, with Betrayer of Worlds, the authors finally reveal why Louis was selected by the Puppeteers—because the Ringworld was not his first epic adventure…
The cowardly Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds have—just barely—survived after fleeing the supernova chain reaction at the galactic core. Unfortunately, they have also stumbled from one crisis to the next: Relentless questing of the Species of Known Space. The rebellion of their human slavevs on Nature Preserve Four. The onslaught of the genocidal Pak. The astonishing rise of the starfish-like Gw’oth who rose from stone tools to fusion in less than two centuries and set in the path of the Fleet.
Nathan Graynor is trapped on Wunderland. In the midst of a bloody civil war, he finds himself in debt to his rebel captors and held in the clutches of a shameful pill addiction. But help soon arrives in a most unexpected form: a Puppeteer named Nessus—a desperate, insane scout—who can provide not only a way out of Wunderland but also a key to Nathan’s true identity: Louis Wu. But Nessus is out of time and ideas, with only desperation to guide him. When Louis and Nathan join up with Achilles, a charismatic Puppeteer politician who is willing to do anything to seize power and take his revenge on everyone who ever stood in his way, catastrophe looms again as past crises return—and converge. Who can possibly save the Fleet of Worlds from its greatest peril yet?
Long-time fans as well as new readers will be captivated by this latest installment to the classic series, which is sure to become as time-honored as Ringworld.
The Flying Saucer by Bernard Newman
Westholme, $14.95, 250pp, tp, 9781594161230. Science fiction.
Mysterious Invaders Threaten the Earth
Strange rockets crash to earth in England, the USSR and in American’s New Mexico desert. The people of the world are stunned by these space ships—but what could the cryptic symbols and maps contained in them mean? Joining forces to decipher the messages, the world’s scientists reveal a terrifying threat: if the Earth does not turn over all its gold, Martians will annihilate the planet. To demonstrate their resolve, the aliens deploy both a representative—unfortunately killed on landing, but disturbingly unlike any human—and a bomb, far more powerful than any nuclear weapon known. The political and military leaders of the world are shocked into an unprecedented unity. To fight this common enemy, they must resolve their planet-bound antagonisms, from Cold War tensions to violent standoffs in Ireland and Palestine. But are these martians real?
The first book to use the term “flying saucer” in its title, this novel appeared in the wake of the Roswell incident and other UFO sightings, at a time when people feared both the threat from outer space and humanity’s tendency toward self-destruction. With a playful take on weighty matters, The Flying Saucer is a satisfying combination of science fiction and thriller, witty satire and political commentary.
Dying to Live: A Novel of Life Among the Undead by Kim Paffenroth
Gallery/Permuted, $15.00, 244pp, tp, 9781439180716. Fiction.
Dying to Live is a novel of life among the undead by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kim Paffenroth. A lone survivor in a zombie-infested world, Jonah Caine wandered for months, struggling to understand the apocalypse in which he lives.
Unable to find a moral or sane reason for the horror that surrounds him, he is overwhelmed by violence and insignificance.
Then Jonah comes across a group of survivors living in a museum-turned-compound. They are lead by Jack, an ever-practical and efficient military man; and Milton, a mysterious prophet who holds a strange power over the dead. Both share Jonah’s anguish over the brutality of their world as well as his hope for its beauty. Together with others, they build a community that reestablishes an island of order and humanity surrounded by relentless ghouls.
But this newfound peace is short-lived, as Jonah and his band of refugees clash with another group of survivors who remind them that the undead are not the only—nor the most grotesque—horrors that they face.
Citadel by John Ringo
Baen, $26.00, 400pp, hc, 9781439134009. Science fiction.
Of all the hosts of Eurotas the Troias were the most fell. For they were born of Winter.
Between the Solar Array Pumped Laser and Troy, the two trillion ton nickel-iron battlestation created by eccentric billionaire Tyler Vernon, Earth has managed to recapture the Sol system from their Horvath conquerors and begin entering the galactic millieu.
But when the Rangora Empire rapidly crushes humanity’s only ally it becomes clear the war is just beginning. At the heart of nickel iron and starlight are the people, Marines, Navy and civilians, who make Troy a living, breathing, engine of war. Survivors of apocalypse, they know the cost of failure.
If this Troy falls, no one will be left to write the epic.
Citadel continues the saga begun in Live Free or Die, following the paths of several characters during the first years of The Spiral Arm Wars culminating in the First Battle of E Eridani.
Of Berserkers, Swords & Vampires: A Saberhagen Retrospective by Fred Saberhagen, introduction by David Weber
Baen, $7.99, 394pp, pb, 9781439133934. Science fiction.
Welcome to the worlds of Fred Saberhagen.
The Berserker series tells of the struggle of all human life, earth-descended and alien, against the ultimate enemy, the berserkers. Programmed by a long extinct race, the berserkers, gigantic automated war machines, continue their mission to seek and destroy all life.
The Swords and Lost Swords series leads the reader on a high fantasy adventure into a world where technology is the stuff of myth and the ancient living gods are very much alive.
The Dracula series portrays Dracula as he sees himself, that is, as a handsome, ethical, loyal representative of an alternate branch of humanity, which unhappily seems to breed quite a few rogue members who must be brought to task.
This retrospective of Saberhagen’s work presents stories from all three series along with some of the best of his short ficiton. Spanning more than four decades of work, from saberhagen’s first-published story to his last-written story, with samples from everything in between, the collection marks the scope and achievements of a remarkable writer’s career.
[Contents: “The Long Way Home”; “Volume PAA-PYX”; “To Mark the Year on Azlaroc”; “Martha”; “Planeteer”; “Blind Man’s Blade”; “Berseker, the Introduction”; “Stone Place”; “The Bad Machines”; “White Bull”; “The Dracula Tape—An Excerpt”; “Box Number Fifty”; and “A Drop of Something Special in the Blood”.]
Antiphon by Ken Scholes
(the Third Volume of The Psalms of Isaak), Tor, $25.99, 384pp, hc, 9780765321299. Fantasy.
Author Ken Scholes has been a fixture of the sci-fi and fantasy scene for years, earning accolades—including a Writers of the Future award—for his complex and engagin short stories. With Lamentations, his debut novel, and its follow up, Canticle, Scholes proved that he could bring the same wonder and elegance to a longer form. The science fiction and critical communities responded to the power of his novel with glowing praise.
Now Antiphon, the third installment of the Psalsm of Isaak series, has arrived.
Nothing is as it seems to be, for the ancient past is not dead. The hands of the Wizard Kings still reach out to chalenge the Andofrancine Order, to control the magick and technology that they sought to understand and claim for their own.
Nebios, the boy who watched the destruction of the city of Windwir, now runs the vvast deserts of the world, far from his beloved Marsh Queen. He is being hunted by strange women warriors, while his dreams are invaded by warnings from his dead father. Jin Li Tam, gypsy queen of the Ninefold Forest, guards her son Jakob as best she can against both murderous threates, and the usurper queen and her evangelists. They bring a message: Jakob is the child of promise of their Gospel, and the Crimson Empress is on her way.
And in hidden plances, the remnants of the Androfrancine order formulate their response to the song pouring out of a silver crescent that was found in the wastes.
Treason’s Shore by Sherwood Smith
(the concluding volume of Inda), DAW, $7.99, 770pp, pb, 9780756406349. Fantasy.
Inda had been exiled to sea for ten long years—the innocent victim of political vengeance against his noble family. But as a natural military prodigy, he had thrived in exile, establishing a life as the leader of a mercenary marine company. And at the end of a long, difficult decade, Inda was known the world over for defeating the most dangerous pirate fleet in history.
But when Inda discovered that his home country was about to be attacked from the sea by the Venn—an ancient enemy of his people—he threw his carefully guarded anonymity to the winds and returned home.
After so long at sea, Inda found his home utterly changed. His old classmate Evred, the formerly powerless younger prince, was now king. Inda, overjoyed to see his good friend again, expected forgiveness and welcome—but Evred had bigger plans for Inda. For Evred was determined to make Inda his Royal Shield Arm—the person in charge of defending his entire kingdom.
Though Inda was an accomplished military leader, his experience was exclusively naval. Yet he found that he could put his skills to work on land to the advantage of his homeland. But the Venn were planning the largest naval attack in history—an attempt to wrest control of all the lands to the south, including Inda’s homeland. The first line of defense would be in a critically strategic strait to the north. Control of this strait had been contested for generations, often by war, and Inda would need strong allies to overcome the Venn. Even with these allies, Inda would be severely disadvantaged and outnumbered.
Could Inda, a military genius, yet only one man, find a way to defeat the powerful navy of the Venn and bring peace to his battered homeland at last?
The Book of the Living Dead edited by John Richards Stephens
Berkley, $15.00, 400pp, tp, 9780425237069. Fiction anthology.
If the dead cannot rest in peace, neither will the living…
They are walking corpses, zombies driven by an insatiable hunger, preying upon people for sustenance and infecting others to increase their ranks of ravenous, empty vessels devoid of humanity. These mindless abominations march day and night without rest, guided only by the instinctual urge to consume—and to cross all barriers between the living and the dead…
[Contributors: W.W. Jacobs, Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Mary Shelley, Sir Hugh Clifford, Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Burke, John H. Knox, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander Pushkin, F. Marion Crawford, Washington Irving, F.G. Loring, Douglas Hyde, Lafcadio Hearn, Augustus Hare, Perceval Landon, Mark Twain, E. and H. Heron, Sir Walter Scott, Amy Lowell, G.W. Hutter, and Jack London.]
Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes
(The Aeons’ Gate, Book One), Pyr, $17.00, 490pp, tp, 9781616142421. Fantasy.
Adventurer. The term has long been synonymous with cutthroat, murderer, savage, zealot, and heathen. And Lenk, an errant young man with only a sword and a decidedly unpleasant voice in his head, counts all five among his best and only associates. Loathed by society and spurned by all merciful gods, he and his band are recruited for only the vilest of jobs.
Denaos, the lecherous thug; Asper, the cursed priestess; Dreadaeleon, the pubescent wizard; Gariath, the psychotic dragonman; and Kataria, the savage shict who farts in her sleep, have all followed Lenk out of necessity. But as their companionship increases, so too does their enmity for each other. Thrown together by necessity and motivated by their distrust for each other, it falls to Lenk to keep them from murdering each other long enough to allow something more horrible, the pleasure of killing them.
When an esteemed clergyman hires them to track down a missing book stolen by a zealous foulness risen from the depths of the ocean, intent on using the tome to raise its abyssal matron from her hell-bound prison, Lenk finds his skills put to the test. Faced with titanic, fishlike beasts, psychotic purple warrior women, and the ferocity of an ocean that loathes him as much as his own people do, the greatest threat yet may be the company he keeps.
Full of razor-sharp wit and characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunge the reader into a vivid world of adventure, this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.
7 Billion Needles, Volume 1 by Nobuaki Tadano
Vertical, $12.99, 190pp, tp, 9781934287873. Manga/Science fiction.
Oddsa are you have never read a manga like this before: a Golden Age classic revived in manga form.
Hikaru Takabe never goes anywhere without her headphones. With her ovevrsized cans covering her ears, even during class, this troubled teen admittedly wants nothing to do with the world outside her head. So when she awakens from what she thought was a crazy dream to a strange buzzing from her mp3-player she immediately feels she might need to replace her gear.
As she soon determines technology is not the problem here, she realizes there is something much more sinister at play. An alien being, known as “Horizon,” has colonized HIkaru’s blood-system and is now keeping her alive as it manipulates her body. The plasmatic cosmic existence now residing within her insists it is on Earth in order to destroy another entity called “Maelstrom,” which threatens all life not only on earth, but also among the universe. Now no matter what she tries, Hikaru is no longer alone; rather, under the Horizon’s direction, she becomes the Earth’s one-in-a-billion chance to save humanity.
Inspired by Hal Clement’s legendary science-fiction nove, Tadano retells the Golden Age classic through the eyes of a lonely adolescent girl, as she ovevrcomes her personal struggles, as well as her mental development, while reluctantly becoming a new age heroine.
Salute the Dark by Adrian Tchaikovsky
(Shadows of the Apt, Book 4), Pyr, $16.00, 325pp, tp, 9781616143291. Science fiction.
The vampiric sorcerer Uctebri has at last got his hands on the Shadow Box and can finally begin his dark ritual—a ritual that the Wasp-kinden Emperor believes will grant him immortality—but Uctebri has his own plans for both the Emperor and the Empire. The massed Wasp armies are on the march, and the spymaster Stenwold must see which of his allies will stand now that the war has finally arrived. This time the Empire will not stop until a black and gold flag waves over Stenwold’s own home city of Collegium.
Tisamon the Weaponsmaster is faced with a terrible choice: a path that could lead him to abandon his friends and his daughter, to face degradation and loss, that might possibly bring him before the Wasp Emperor with a blade in his hand—but is he being driven by Mantis-kinden honor, or manipulated by something more sinister?
The A-Men by John Trevillian
Troubador, £18.99, 404pp, hc, 9781848763432. Science fiction.
Jack is a man with no memory awakening in a dark and dangerous metropolis on the eve of its destruction. The only clue to his former life: a handwritten note in the pages of a book of faerie tales entitled Forevermore.
Marked for death in a peace-keeping force sent to quell the riots, he finds sanctuary and survival with other renegades on the streets of Dead City. Battling to survive they form the infamous A-Men, misfits who have a unifying dream: to be special. Yet that is until their paths cross with Dr. Nathaniel Glass and his mysterious experiment locked deep beneath the Phoenix Tower.
Mixing dark future, noir and urban fantasy, join The Nowhereman, Sister Midnight, Pure, D’Alessandro and the 23rdcenturyboy as they fight for their lives on a non-stop ride into a nightmarish world of ultra-violence.
If the world’s going to end, pray it doesn’t end like this.
Ragnarok by Patrick A. Vanner
Baen, $14.00, 344pp, tp, 9781439133842. Science fiction.
Locked in a war of survival
Captain Alexandra “Alex” McLaughlin is not a woman to be underestimated. Under her petite exterior is a spine of solid steel and a disposition to laugh in the face of impending death. A former member of the Terran Navy’s elite force, the Dead Jokers, electronic-warfare pilots with a mortality rate to match that of old Japan’s Kamikazes, Alex is a born survivor. But sometimes survival can be a curse.
Humanity is locked in a war of survival with the Xan-Sskarn, an alien race that refuses to acknowledge the rights of “weaker” creatures to live. It is a war that will not end with a peace treaty, but only the complete subjugation of one species to the other. And right now, the alien side is winning.
However, the enemy on the outside is not the only one to be faced. As the battles take on an eerily familiar pattern of no-win scenarios, Alex realized the horrifying truth; humanity has a traitor, and it’s somebody close. As each battle brings more death, Alex’s ghosts grow and so does her desire for vengeance. There is only one way for this to end, and Alex is just the human to take it there—to Ragnarok.
Nightshade City by Hilary Wagner
Holiday House, $17.95, 320pp, hc, 9780823422852. YA fantasy.
Juniper waited for silence, finally smacking his tail on the table, forcing the lingering voices to cease. No rat should chatter through this moment. Bostwick Hall fell completely still… Juniper cleared his throat and bellowed… his commanding bass resounding over everyone, “We survive by cover of night. We live in the shadows, waiting for our redemption! Our name must symbolize our burning spirit, kept secret for eleven years, but no longer! Tonight and forever, we are Nightside City!”
Deep beneath a modern metropolis lies the Catacombs, a kingdom of remarkable rats of superior intellect. Juniper and his maverick band of rebel rats have been plotting ever since the Bloody Coup turned the Catacombs, a once-peaceful democracy, into a brutal dictatorship ruled by decadent High Minister Killdeer and his vicious henchman, Billycan, a former lab rat with a fondness for butchery. When three young orphan rats—brothers Vincent and Victor and a clever female named Clover—flee the Catacombs in mortal peril and join forces with the rebels, it proves to be the spark that ignites the long-awaited battle to overthrow their oppressors and create a new city: Nightshade City.
Avim’s Oath by Lynda Williams
Edge, $16.95, 288pp, tp, 9781894063357. Science fiction.
Love and titles are lost and won as two brothers struggle to attain power, recognition, and acceptance in a world filled with treachery and hatred.
The Queen is dead. Two princes are suddenly thrust center-stage to vie for a throne neither really wants, orchestrated by the ambitions of power-hungry princesses.
Amel, the elder, would prefer a quiet life—but is being pressured into the pursuit of power by the alarmingly beautiful princess Alivda.
Erien, the younger, wants to start an academy of science on their planet—but is being pursued by the leige Vretla, who intends to bear the prince’s child.
vTrapped in a tangle of torment, the two brothers must prove themselves, choosing between lives they desire, and the roles for which they are demanded.
Limbo by Bernard Wolfe
Westholme, $15.95, 438pp, tp, 9781594161292. Science fiction.
It is 1990 and strange people have arrived on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. Rather than organic arms and legs, they have robotic prosthetics that allow them to leap over trees and throw heavy weights. With them, news arrives that the US and USSR are no more: the two superpowers had waged computer-driven atomic war leaving vast swaths of the world uninhabitable, but how a new international movement of pacifism has taken hold. Dr. Martine, a neurosurgeon who had hidden on the island to escape the horrors of the war, decides it is time to return to America and find out what has happened to the world he knew.
To his horror he discovers human aggression has been curbed through voluntary amputation—literal disarmament—and those who have undergone this surgery are highly esteemed in this new society. But they have a problem—their prosthetics require a rare metal to function, and international tensions are rising over which countries get the right to mine it. Ambitious, outrageous, witty, and groundbreaking, Limbo, first published in 1952, is a cult dystopian classic that is often cited as one of the best science fiction novels of the twentieth century. It anticipates cyberpunk’s fascination with man-machine interface and draws heavily on the cultural observations of Freud and Norbert Wiener (the inventor of cybernetics), all while grappling with sex, power, self-control, and the inherently ambivalent nature of mankind.