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Future Treasures: Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson

Future Treasures: Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson

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Cover by Armando Veve

I’ve really been enjoy enjoying Tor.com’s line of near-weekly original novellas. I don’t know for sure how many they’ve published (I lost count somewhere around 120), but man. It’s a lot. They’ve hogged virtually all the Hugo nominations for Best Novella for the past five years, too, which is no small accomplishment. If you’re looking for cutting edge fantasy and SF from a Who’s Who of exciting new writers, this is the imprint to follow.

I can’t stay on top of all their releases, but every once in a while I get especially intrigued. It happened back in October when they released a sword-and-sorcery novella by Saad Z Hossain back-to-back with a promising space opera debut by Lina Rather. And it happened again this month, when Tor.com sent me a review copy of an odd little package titled Hearts of Oak, by Eddie Robson. Here’s a snippet from Publishers Weekly‘s enthusiastic review.

Four people in an uncannily unchanging city come to question their reality in this piercing work. Iona, Steve, Saori, and Victor can’t remember a time when they didn’t live in the unnamed city or follow their daily routines. They go to work, go home, and repeat this cycle again the next day alongside their obedient, homogeneous fellow citizens. But the arrival of a stranger triggers repressed memories, sending all four hurtling into danger… Robson (Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully) is a master of the gradual release of information, ratcheting up the tension by degrees as both readers and characters learn the truth of his intricately constructed universe… Clever, emotional, and thematically rich, this is sure to please fans of classic science fiction.

Clocking in at 265 pages, this is a very generous package for a novella. Hearts of Oak will be published by Tor.com on March 17, 2020. It is 265 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $4.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Armando Veve. Get all the details here.

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Future Treasures: Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole

Future Treasures: Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole

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Sixteenth Watch-smallMyke Cole’s fourth short story sale was “Naktong Flow” (2009), which appeared in Black Gate 13 in Spring 2009. It was a terrific tale, and when I met Myke in person a few months later at the World Fantasy Convention, I urged him to send more fiction my way.

By then, however, he’d already moved on to better things. His first novel Control Point, the opening volume in the ultra-realistic military SF/superhero series Shadow Ops, was published in 2012; five more in the series followed in quick succession. His fantasy series The Sacred Throne became a trilogy last year with the arrival of The Killing Light.

His latest is near-future SF featuring a US Coast Guard team racing to prevent the first Lunar War. It’s already getting great reviews, including this one from SFX:

It’s incredibly refreshing to find a sci-fl novel with a female protagonist who’s a confident woman in her fifties… The author’s experience in the Coast Guard lends a strong sense of verisimilitude to his portrayal of military operations, and his action scenes sizzle with the rush of adrenaline… Briskly paced, the book strikes a fine balance between military minutiae and imagination.

Here’s the description.

The Coast Guard must prevent the first lunar war in history.

A lifelong Search-and-Rescuewoman, Coast Guard Captain Jane Oliver is ready for a peaceful retirement. But when tragedy strikes, Oliver loses her husband and her plans for the future, and finds herself thrust into a role she’s not prepared for. Suddenly at the helm of the Coast Guard’s elite SAR-1 lunar unit, Oliver is the only woman who can prevent the first lunar war in history, a conflict that will surely consume not only the moon, but earth as well.

Myke Cole’s guest blogs for us include “Drizzt Do’Urden Simply Won’t Stop Adventuring: Learning to Love Serial Fantasy” (2015) and “Selling Shadow Ops: Control Point” (2012), not to mention this 2012 interview with Patty Templeton.

Sixteenth Watch will be published by Angry Robot on March 10, 2020. It is 432 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Isaac Hannaford. Read an excerpt at the Angry Robot website, and see all our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF & Fantasy here.

Monsters, Pirates, and Ghosts: The Revenger Series by Alastair Reynolds

Monsters, Pirates, and Ghosts: The Revenger Series by Alastair Reynolds

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Cover designs by Blacksheep and Lauren Panepinto

The Revenger series is one of the most successful SF series in recent memory. Opening novel Revenger (2017) was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book; SFX called it “By far the most enjoyable book Reynolds has ever written.” Sequel Shadow Captain arrived last year, and quickly won over critics; the Guardian called it “A swashbuckling thriller — Pirates of the Caribbean meets Firefly.” What’s it all about? The Daily Telegraph summed up the first two volumes expertly:

Returning to the universe of Revenger, award-winning author Alastair Reynolds delivers another thrilling tale set among the stars. Two sisters ran away from home to join the crew of a spaceship. They took on pirates, faced down monsters and survived massacres… and now they’re in charge. Captaining a fearsome ship of their own, adventures are theirs for the taking — and there’s hoards to loot and treasures to find in the darkest reaches of space. But the rules are also more relaxed out on the fringes, as they’re about to discover… A rollicking adventure yarn with action, abduction, fights, properly scary hazards, very grisly torture and even ghosts of a sort.

Pirates, monsters, ghosts…. that’s a whole lot in one package. Everyone knows that all the best series come in threes, and sure enough the third volume in Alastair Reynolds’ series arrives next month. Here’s the details.

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Future Treasures: Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights edited by Chris Bain, Patrick Weekes, Matthew Goldman, and Christopher Morgan

Future Treasures: Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights edited by Chris Bain, Patrick Weekes, Matthew Goldman, and Christopher Morgan

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Dragon Age Tevinter Nights-smallDragon Age is one of my favorite computer role playing games. It was the 11th title released by legendary Canadian development house Bioware, creator of Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect.

Dragon Age was a major hit, and was nurtured into a multi-million dollar cross-platform property, with half a dozen novels, a tabletop RPG, comics and graphic novels, action figures, and even an anime film, Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker. Properties like that don’t die easily, and even though Dragon Age was released over a decade ago, in 2009, it continues to live on. Two sequels, Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition (which Elizabeth Cady reviewed for us here), were released in 2011 and 2014, and a fourth installment, Dragon Age: The Dread Wolf Rises, was announced on December 6, 2018.

There’s plenty of excitement and speculation about that latter release, of course. First, players want to know when it will be released (2022… maybe?), and whether it will directly follow the events of Inquisition. A major clue arrives this month in the form of Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights, a collection of short stories co-edited by Dragon Age 4’s lead writer Patrick Weekes, which — no surprise — has triggered healthy speculation that the Tevinter Imperium will be the setting for the next installment.

We received a review copy last week, and I admit my first question is a little more mundane: how does it hold up as an anthology? Is it a worthy introduction to one of the cornerstones of modern computer role playing, or is strictly for fans only?

I’ll have to dig into it to find out, but on the surface it looks pretty promising. It’s certainly beautifully produced, with a fold out color map of the world of Thedas in the front (see below), and no less than fifteen stories by a Who’s Who of Bioware staff writers, including Sylvia Feketekuty (Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, Mass Effect 3), John Epler (Narrative Director for the Dragon Age series), Lukas Kristjanson (lead writer of Baldur’s Gate), and Patrick Weekes (Lead Writer for the Dragon Age series).

This is a rare opportunity to sample the writing of the senior creative talents at one of the most successful gaming companies on the planet, the folks who’ve curated some of the most enduring fantasy properties of the last twenty years. As an added bonus, you’ll get clues to the storyline of one of the industry’s big new releases…. and what’s more cool than being in the know ahead of all your friends?

Here’s the publisher’s description for the book.

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Future Treasures: Cursed, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane

Future Treasures: Cursed, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane

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You lot know how much I love anthologies by now. Titan Books has been home base for several excellent anthologies over the past few years, including Christopher Golden’s Dark Cities, Mark Morris’s New Fears, and three volumes of John Joseph Adams’ Wastelands. They also published Wonderland, an anthology of tales inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane.

O’Regan and Kane return next month with Cursed, a collection of new and reprint fantasy tales dealing with curses of all shapes and sizes, with original tales by M.R. Carey, Tim Lebbon, Margo Lanagan, Alison Littlewood, Angela Slatter, Lilith Saintcrow, Jen Williams, and others, and reprints by Neil Gaiman, Karen Joy Fowler, Christopher Golden, Charlie Jane Anders, Michael Marshall Smith, Christopher Fowler, and others. Here’s an excerpt from the Publishers Weekly review.

Karen Joy Fowler’s “The Black Fairy’s Curse” is a dreamy, disorienting rendition of “Sleeping Beauty”; Neil Gaiman’s lovely, tragic “Troll Bridge” draws from “Three Billy Goats Gruff”; and Angela Slatter’s standout “New Wine” is a truly chilling modernization of “Bluebeard.” While most of these stories transpose fairy tale elements into contemporary England, Lilith Saintcrow conjures a fully realized fantasy world with “Hanza and Ghana.”… These stories are by turns eerie, grotesque, and delightful, ranging in tone from the broadly humorous fantasy of Charlie Jane Anders’s “Fairy Werewolf vs. Vampire Zombie” to the visceral body horror of James Brogden’s “Skin.” Readers won’t have to be Brothers Grimm fans to appreciate this dark mélange.

Cursed will be published by Titan Books on March 3, 2020. It is 384 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. The cover artist is uncredited. See all the details at the Titan website, and see all our coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy and science fiction here.

Future Treasures: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Future Treasures: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

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Jacket design by Richard Yoo

It good to see a few mainstream publishers still producing collections. The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is Ken Liu’s second, and his second with Saga Press. It follows 2016’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, which was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and won the Locus Award for Best Collection, and about which Amal El-Mohtar wrote, “I have never been so moved by a collection of short fiction. I was at times afraid to read more.”

There’s fine reviews of the new collection at Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, but the most insightful reviewer I’ve found is Paul Di Filippo at Locus Online, who compares Liu to Philip K. Dick, Zelazny, and Heinlein.

“The Reborn” shows us an Earth conquered by aliens who impose their own brand of mutable personalities on humans who resist them. A kind of PKD vibe of surreal memory games pervades the creepy piece…. A wave of Zelaznyian SF-fabulism overcame me as I read “Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard,” which blends shape-changing with the lives of the “midden miners,” poor citizens scavenging the remnants of our era… “The Hidden Girl” is the first pure fantasy in this volume, set in a kind of Asian neverland evocative of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A young girl, trained as an assassin, is forced to acknowledge a higher oath… There’s a faint flavor of Podkayne of Mars inherent in “The Message,” which finds an archaeologist father and his sulky, willful teen daughter marooned on a planet amidst alien ruins.

Here’s the book description.

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Space Pirates, a Murderous AI, and a Haunted House in Space: The Shieldrunner Pirates Trilogy by R. E. Stearns

Space Pirates, a Murderous AI, and a Haunted House in Space: The Shieldrunner Pirates Trilogy by R. E. Stearns

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Covers by Martin Deschambeault (left, middle) and Jon McCoy Art (right)

R. E. Stearns’s science fiction debut Barbary Station, the opening novel in the Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy, featured two engineers who hijack a spaceship to join a band of space pirates, only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. Kirkus called it “Super cool… It mixes unpredictable mysteries, a murderous AI, space battles, [and] an awesome and fashionable Pirate Leader… a blend of Die Hard and The Illuminae Files.” We covered it enthusiastically in 2017. Mutiny at Vesta arrived in 2018, and in her Tor.com review, Liz Bourke wrote:

If Barbary Station was a variant on the gothic novel in space (complete with a haunted house in the form of a space station), Mutiny at Vesta is a nested, layered series of capers in which Adda and Iridian work with limited resources and the pressure of time and other people’s competing priorities to pull off the damn-near impossible… Stearns writes measured, tense, and intense space opera, filled with a diverse selection of believable characters. I really enjoyed this book.

The Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy is the kind adventurous space opera I really enjoy. Unfortunately, if Amazon reviews are anything to go by, it doesn’t seem to have found an audience. Barbary Station had a healthy 32 reviews when it was released in 2017; Mutiny at Vesta had only two, a disaster in publishing terms. The third, Gravity of a Distant Sun, will not have a hardcover release; it arrives in trade paperback on February 18.

If you’ve read and enjoyed this series, do me a favor and write an online review. And if you haven’t, here’s a peek at the back covers for all three books, with just a sample of the praise they’ve received. Have a look — this just may turn into your favorite new series.

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Future Treasures: The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley

Future Treasures: The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley

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Cover design by David Mann 

Natasha Pulley reunites the heroes from her breakout fantasy The Watchmaker of Filigree Street in a brand new novel, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, on sale next week. In his review of the first book for us, Damien Moore was enchanted by Pulley’s narrative gifts.

Pulley’s descriptions of High Society London burst from the pages. The exquisite portrait she paints of the interior of a quiet tea shop will linger in your mind long after you’ve read about it. So, too will Pulley’s descriptions of the watchmaker’s wondrous creations. If they don’t enchant you, well, then I guess you’re not into the whole gorgeous automaton craze. Hopefully, Pulley succeeds in getting you to fall in love with Mori’s creations.

The sequel switches up the setting, moving the action to 19th-Century Japan. It’s being enthusiastically received; Kirkus Reviews says “Pulley’s witty writing and enthusiastically deployed steampunk motifs — clockwork, owls, a mechanical pet, Tesla-inspired electrical drama — enliven [the] plot.” Here’s a look at the back covers for both books, and an excerpt from the starred review at Publisher’s Weekly.

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Women and Magic in an Unfair Society: The Women’s War by Jenna Glass

Women and Magic in an Unfair Society: The Women’s War by Jenna Glass

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Covers by Jonathan Bartlett

One thing I love about modern fantasy is how different it is. There’s something for every reader, every mood, and every taste. For example, I’ve never read any of Jenna Black’s fantasy novels, such as her Faeriewalker trilogy, her Nikki Glass series, or her more recent Nightstruck novels for Tor teen. But she’s recently taken to writing more serious fantasy under the name Jenna Glass, starting with The Women’s War, and I find these books very intriguing indeed.

The Women’s War is the tale of a patriarchal society, and a revolutionary spell that abruptly gives women control over their own fertility — and the predictable (and unpredictable) events that follow. Here’s an excerpt from Sabaa Tahir’s review in The New York Times Book Review.

The Women’s War is an epic feminist fantasy for the #MeToo era. . . . The Women’s War does what so many classic adult fantasy books do not: It gives us a nuanced portrayal of grown women dealing with a wretchedly unfair society. It is rare to read a fantasy novel with a middle-aged mother as a main character. And it is refreshing to see women becoming heroes in a world that wishes to keep them muzzled.

The Women’s War was published by Del Rey in March of last year. The sequel, Queen of the Unwanted, is due in May. Here’s all the details.

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Future Treasures: Twilight of the Gods by Scott Oden

Future Treasures: Twilight of the Gods by Scott Oden

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Cover designs by Jimmy Iacobelli

It’s enormously satisfying to see Scott Oden, who’s been a critical darling for his intelligent historical fantasies like Men of Bronze (which Bob Byrne discussed here) and The Lion of Cairo (which Brian Murphy summed up as “Pulse-pounding sword play, leagues of warring assassins, political intrigue, a hint of evil sorcery, and the clash of armies on a grand stage”) finally have a bonafide hit with his new Grimnir Series, an epic Viking fantasy. In his review of the first volume Fletcher Vredenburgh wrote:

Oden’s novel knocked the heck out of any prejudices I had. New or old, this book kicks ass, and is one of the best swords & sorcery novels I’ve read in a while…. A Gathering of Ravens belongs on the same shelf as the best modern swords & sorcery novels, and on the shelf of any serious swords & sorcery reader.

A Gathering of Ravens also garnered a starred review at Publishers Weekly — not something you see every day. Here’s a snippet.

In this lovingly crafted tale of high adventure, Oden creates an alternate early medieval Europe in which mortal men have defeated entire races of vicious magical creatures. Some nightmares have faded from memory as magic and ancient beliefs are supplanted by a new religion, Christianity. Grimnir, last of the giants called kaunar, is on a mission for vengeance several centuries in the making… This fast-paced thrill ride might have been bleak or unsettling, but it’s rendered so lovingly that it reveals new layers of familiar territory. The fresh viewpoint is steeped in an appreciation for the terrifying and powerful characters of high fantasy, and Oden does them justice.

After a gap of nearly three years, Oden finally delivers the long-awaited second volume in the series, Twilight of the Gods. It arrives in hardcover from St. Martin’s Press in two weeks. Here’s all the details.

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