Black Gate

Escaping Exodus, Books 1 & 2, by Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager, 2019 and 2021). Cover: Courtney ‘Seage’ Howlett, unknown

Nicky Drayden won the Compton Crook Award for her first novel The Prey of Gods. I was even more intrigued by Escaping Exodus, the opening volume in a far-future saga in which human society exists in the literal belly of a beast. In his enthusiastic review at Locus Online Tom Whitmore wrote “I don’t think I could have imagined such a book be­fore reading this one. This is something I’ve been missing.”

For a series as vast in scope and ambition as this one, the arrival of a sequel is something to celebrate. Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis was published by Harper Voyager yesterday; here’s the description.

Nearly a thousand years removed from Earth, the remnants of humanity cling to existence inside giant, space faring creatures known as the Zenzee. Abused and exploited by humans for generations, these majestic animals nearly went extinct, but under the command of its newly minted ruler, Doka Kaleigh, life in the Parados I has flourished. Thanks to careful oversight and sacrifice by all of its crew, they are now on the brink of utopia, and yet Doka’s rivals feel threatened by that success.
The Senate allowed Doka to lead their people believing he’d fail spectacularly — a disaster that would cement the legitimacy of their long-standing matriarchy. Despite vocal opposition and blatant attacks on his authority, Doka has continued to handle his position with grace and intelligence; he knows a single misstep means disaster. When a cataclysmic event on another Zenzee world forces Doka and his people to accept thousands of refugees, a culture clash erupts, revealing secrets from the past that could endanger their future. For Doka, the stakes are bigger and more personal than ever before — and could cost him his reign and his heart.

He has fallen for the one woman he is forbidden to love: his wife, Seske.

Doka and Seske must work closely together to sway the other Zenzee worlds to stop their cycles of destruction. But when they stumble upon a discovery that can transform their world, they know they must prepare to fight a battle where there can be no winners, only survivors.

Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis was published by Harper Voyager on February 23, 2021. It is 336 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, $11.99 in digital formats, and $26.99 in audio versions. No idea who did the cover, but I like it. Read an excerpt here.

See all our recent coverage of the best new SF and fantasy series here.

The Expert System’s Brother and The Expert System’s Champion (Tor Books, 2018-21). Covers by Raphael Lacoste

British author Adrian Tchaikovsky has been steadily making a name for himself since he burst onto the scene with his 10-volume epic fantasy Shadows of the Apt. He’s followed that with several ambitious new series, including the Echoes of the Fall fantasy trilogy and the far-future hard science fiction Children of Time series. His latest is a sequence of tales in Tor.com’s prestigious novella line, opening with The Expert System’s Brother (2018). Liz Bourke gave it an enthusiastic review at Locus Online.

The title of The Expert System’s Brother makes one expect a cyberpunk world, but the landscape initially seems like that of fantasy. Gradually, the reader becomes aware that what seems like a fantasy setting is in fact science fictional one: a setting where the inhabitants have forgotten how they came to live the way they do.

Handry has always lived in a village called Aro. He has a sister, Melory, and a small community, but when he’s 13, he’s involved in an accident. The village’s Lawgiver (one of a handful of people, like its doctor, who has a ghost inside her skull that gives advice and commands) is casting out a troublemaker, a process that involves physically severing that person from the community by the use of a specially brewed substance. When the ac­cident happens, Handry gets some of that substance on him…

Handry now becomes a wanderer, drifting from village to village… At the town-village of Orovo, he learns some more about the world: a ghost-bearer (the bearer of an architect-ghost) has been gathering and feeding the Severed in order that they may do the difficult and dangerous work of helping the now-overcrowded village-town set up a new village… Handry falls in with another Severed called Sharskin… a man who discovered a place he calls the House of the Ancestors, and who believes that the Severed aren’t made lesser than the other people, but are in fact made more: restored to their original state, before the ancestors fell from grace and gave their descendants over to the rule of the ghosts…

The Expert System’s Brother has an engaging voice. Told in first person from Handry’s point of view, it showcases Tchaikovsky’s growing ver­satility as a writer of long-form science fiction, depicting an interesting world with compelling characters.

The second volume, The Expert System’s Champion, arrived last week. Here’s a look at the back covers for both books.

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Malamander and Gargantis by Thomas Taylor (Walker Books, 2019-21). Cover art by George Ermos

Sometimes it seems all my best book purchases are impulse buys. Last summer, while browsing the shelves at Barnes in Noble, I came across Malamander, the opening novel in a new middle-grade fantasy series by Thomas Taylor titled Legends of Eerie-on-sea. I was sold less than halfway though the book description on the back.

Nobody visits Eerie-on-Sea in the winter. Especially not when darkness falls and the wind howls around Maw Rocks and the wreck of the battleship Leviathan, where even now some swear they have seen the unctuous Malamander creep…

It’s winter in the town of Eerie-on-Sea, where the mist is thick and the salt spray is rattling the windows of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. Inside, young Herbert Lemon, Lost and Founder for the hotel, has an unexpected visitor. It seems that Violet Parma, a fearless girl around his age, lost her parents at the hotel when she was a baby, and she’s sure that the nervous Herbert is the only person who can help her find them. The trouble is, Violet is being pursued at that moment by a strange hook-handed man. And the town legend of the Malamander — a part-fish, part-human monster whose egg is said to make dreams come true — is rearing its scaly head. As various townspeople, some good-hearted, some nefarious, reveal themselves to be monster hunters on the sly, can Herbert and Violet elude them and discover what happened to Violet’s kin? This lighthearted, fantastical mystery, featuring black-and-white spot illustrations, kicks off a trilogy of fantasies set in the seaside town.

The sequel, Gargantis, was published in hardcover last year, and will be released in paperback in April. Here’s the complete details.

Malamander (290 pages, $7.99 paperback/$0.99 digital, May 2, 2019) — cover by George Ermos, illustrations by Tom Booth
Gargantis (352 pages, $7.99 paperback/$16.99 digital, April 6, 2021) — cover by George Ermos, illustrations by Tom Booth

The series in published by Walker Books in the US. See all our coverage New Releases here.

Cover art by Nico Delort

Orbit Books has impressed me with its editorial acumen over the past half-decade. Last year it acquired Devin Madson’s self published fantasy We Ride the Storm, the tale of a war-torn empire crumbling in the face of a growing number of enemies. Kirkus called it “The first in a bold new series… A slow-building tale of court intrigue that picks up lots of steam on its way to a shocking finish,” saying:

Miko is a princess of Kisia, an empire left in fragments following the recent coup that cost her father his life and saw her stepfather take the Crimson Throne. Rah hails from the loosely associated clans of Levanti — horse riders without kings who resist fighting others’ wars. Cassandra makes her living in sex and murder and moves through the world with another woman’s voice in her head. They do not know one another, but their lives will soon become hopelessly entangled… Although Madson takes her time putting the critical pieces into play, the betrayal that dooms the Kisian nobility to ruin sets off narrative fireworks, exposing the questionable motives of three nations’ leaders in a seemingly unending struggle for dominance.

The sequel, We Lie with Death, arrived in trade paperback earlier this month, and has been well received. Publishers Weekly says “The story moves at breakneck speed… this immersive, action-packed fantasy is sure to please.” Here’s the full details.

We Ride the Storm (Orbit Books, 474 pages, $15.99 in trade paperback/$4.99 digital, June 23, 2020) – cover by Nico Delort
We Lie with Death (Orbit Books, 576 pages, $17.99 in trade paperback/$9.99 digital, January 12, 2021) – cover by Nico Delort

The final volume in The Reborn Empire series, We Cry for Blood, will be released next year. See all our coverage of the best new series fantasy here.