I’ve been a fan of Aliette de Bodard since the publication of her Aztec mystery novels, collected in Obsidian & Blood, so I was thrilled to have the chance to meet her at the Nebulas last month. She is articulate, funny, and absolutely charming in person, and I’m very excited about her upcoming fantasy novel, The House of Shattered Wings, to be published by Roc next month.

Aliette has won the Nebula Award (twice), the Locus Award, and the 2010 British Science Fiction Award, and has been nominated multiple times for the Hugo. The House of Shattered Wings is set in a devastated Paris ruled by fallen angels, and tells a tale of the War in Heaven, divine power and deep conspiracy…

In the late twentieth century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins, the aftermath of a Great War between arcane powers. The Grand Magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.

Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen angel; an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction; and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires’ salvation — or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.

The House of Shattered Wings will be published by Roc on August 18, 2015. It is 402 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover art is uncredited.