Black Gate

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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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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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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Covers by Julia Lloyd

Gareth L. Powell is the author of the popular Ack-Ack Macaque series, and two short story collections, The Last Reef (2008) and Entropic Angel and Other Stories (2017). His new space opera trilogy began with Embers of War (Titan Books, 2018), and folks took notice immediately. Here’s Joel Cunningham at The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.

Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War is a space opera that does everything right: it’s expansive in scope, but character-focused. It nods to genre tropes, but interrogates them too, considering the real-world ramifications of the lasting trauma of war. Oh, also: it has a great sentient starship. It quickly became a favorite of ours — not to mention the voters who handed it this year’s British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel — and our enthusiasm was not at all muted by the recent release of the just-as-good sequel Fleet of Knives.

Powell’s series is one of the more popular space operas on the market (and you all know how I feel about space opera). I was intrigued by the first two books immediately, but hesitant to jump in until the third one arrived. So this week I was delighted to receive a review copy of Light of Impossible Stars, the third installment in Embers of War, which formally goes on sale February 18 from Titan.

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