Tag archives for Jo Fletcher Books

Amish – The Immortals of Meluha

Today, Shiva is a god. But four thousand years ago, he was just a man.

The once-proud Suryavanshi rulers of the Meluha Empire are in dire peril. The empire’s primary river, the Saraswati, is slowly drying up. There are devastating terrorist attacks from the east, the land of the Chandravanshis – and to make matters worse, the Chandravanshis appear to have allied with the Nagas, an ostracised race of deformed humans with astonishing martial skills.

The only hope for the Suryavanshis is an ancient prophecy: when evil reaches epic proportions and all seems lost, a hero will emerge…

Amish is one of the rare self-published authors – like Amanda Hocking and E.L. James – who made it big before selling their books to a legacy publisher. When Jo Fletcher announced she’d picked up the rights for the Shiva trilogy, my interest was immediately piqued by its subject matter. I love retellings of myths and legends and origin stories and here was a whole new pantheon for me to discover. However, The Immortals of Meluha is far more than the retelling of the story of Shiva; it is also a showcase for Hindu philosophy, for the core teachings of Shiva, for a world view that will be unfamiliar to most of the readers that pick up this English translation. And while the story was very good and I found the philosophical underpinnings quite interesting, the writing felt rather uneven and often distracted from the narrative.

I found the writing to be uneven for several reasons. In places it was rather info dumpy; Shiva is taken aside by a Pandit, a priest, several times and given some of the core teaching of the Meluhan faith to ponder and to bolster his confidence, but these lectures are a thin veil between the author and the reader and it’s hard to not hear Amish speak through the Pandits. Similarly, a lot of information on Meluhan society is conveyed through people lecturing Shiva, who is a foreigner, on its laws and traditions or reacting to his faux-pas. Especially these latter became somewhat repetitive. What I found most problematic, however, was the vocabulary and word use. The book is set in 1900 BC, but at times the prose and dialogue feels rather modern. This might be due to it being a translated work. Hindi is apparently notoriously difficult to translate when it comes to SFF concepts and in addition, Amish uses many traditional titles and the like that were kept, but explained with an added clause, which disturbed the rhythm of the narrative for me. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know whether this is something which is also included in the original text, or whether this was necessary for the translation. The only way to discover it would be to compare the Hindi to the English and as I don’t speak or read Hindi, that’s going to be rather difficult.

Despite all of this, the story of a young chieftain brought to live in a paradisiacal land of milk and honey, who discovers there are worms in the apples and the milk is going off and he’s the prophesied saviour who’ll put everything right is quite compelling. While one could say that this is a classic Hero’s Journey story, but its philosophical bent makes it interesting and different. Shiva is a well-developed character, who comes across as a real human, with a boisterous sense of humour, a strong sense of honour and duty, and deep emotions, but also one who is flawed, unsure of his own competence and addicted to drugs to avoid his haunting past. Despite these flaws, I really rather liked him. While the book very much fails the Bechdel test, it does have an interesting female lead in Sati, who is not just interesting as a romantic partner for Shiva, but also in her own right, as a strong woman who holds to her own principles, even when it goes against her desires. They are surrounded by an interesting cast though some of them tended to come across as rather one note, such as King Daksha, whose overwhelming adulation of Shiva becomes a little tiring if he’s around for too long and General Parvateshwar, whose reluctance to accept Shiva’s identity is as tiring, though his eventual acceptance becomes all the more satisfying for it.

The Immortals of Meluha is thought-provoking as it presents its readers with philosophical theories and concepts that are worth examining more closely. The chance to explore a different sensibility and setting from the usual Western European, medieval setting was refreshing as well. Despite its flaws, Shiva’s story is an exciting adventure, which is insidiously compelling; you won’t notice you’ve been hooked by the story, until you’re nearly to the end. It does end on a cliff hanger of the sort we usually only see in TV series’ season’s finales and it took me both by surprise and frustrated me, as it’ll be the end of April before the next book comes out and we get to discover what happens. For those looking for a different setting from the usual, The Immortals of Meluha is definitely one to check out.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 25 January, 2013 Posted in fantasy, review Tagged: Jo Fletcher Books | Leave a comment

Will Elliott – Shadow

When Eric Albright opened a bettered red wooden door in an old brick railway arch he found Levaal, a world populated by mages, stoneflesh giants, pit devils, tunnel-dwelling groundmen, and much else besides. Once per Age the door between worlds open, and humans from Earth – or Otherworld, as it is known in Levaal – arrive, bringing knowledge of science to a world run by magic. Such people, like Eric and his friend Case, are known as Pilgrims.

In Levaal, war is looming: Tormentors roam the land, bringing death and despair. The Arch Mage seeks to unseat the Castle’s increasingly mad Lord, Vous, before he joins the gods. And one of the dragons is rumoured to have escaped its sky-prison.

Eric and Case have made their way to World’s End, where a great wall divided Levaal from the unknown southern world. The Wall has been destroyed, and now Levaal stands naked before its twin world.

A Dark Age has dawned and all over Levaal, loyalties are fractured. The Pilgrims’ enemies are circling.

And in the south an alien force is rising. . . its name is Shadow.

Normally, I start series at the start, unless it’s a long running series where you’re supposed to be able to step into it later, such as a lot of crime series and some historical fiction series. However, when I was sent Will Elliott’s Shadow for review, I thought I’d just try it to see how well it stood on its own, both because the book sounded interesting and I tend to feel bad if I let review copies languish. I got lucky with Shadow; while there were some things I couldn’t completely figure out without having read the first book, they weren’t insurmountable. On the whole though, the book was very readable on its own, though the ending left a lot of unresolved matters hang and as such it’s clearly part of a larger whole. But despite that Shadow was a fun read.

I’ve never really read much of this sort of book where real world characters are transported to a secondary fantasy world. I have read some of Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame books and the first of Terry Brooks’ Landover novels. I enjoyed those, so I was interested to see what Elliott would do with the idea. I really liked the premise that the Entry Point is opened once per age – no specific number of years is given – and only then will new technology enter the world of Levaal though the arrival of Pilgrims, humans from our world. What’s interesting about it, that it’s all happenstance as to what they’ll learn each time the portal opens, as it would make a great difference whether a professor of English came through or a physicist for example, those are widely varying fields and would bring very different sorts of knowledge. In this case they got Eric and Case and the imported technology most focused on and most important to this story is the fact that Eric carries a gun. While they aren’t able to exactly replicate the gun itself, they do manage to engineer something resembling a gun, with similar effects and this directly impacts the way the story develops.

The magic system in place was quite interesting, though I never completely figured out how it worked. However, the differences in application were rather cool. I loved the idea of the happenstance mage who could scry back along the timeline, but whose gift is more or less reliable according to where they were in their personal cycle. Or the Engineer, who used magic to create automatons and other machines. Then there are also the high magic entities, such as dragons, Spirits, and the gods, who are far more powerful and dangerous.

The characters were well-written though this was definitely one of the areas were having read the first book would have made a huge difference as there are relationships and animosities that are clearly formed by events in the first book and knowledge of those would have elucidated them quite a bit. However, one character stood out; he was chilling and scary and rather pitiable at the same time: the entity called Shadow. He’s a killer and tears men apart without blinking, but it does so in a sort of innocent drive to know what makes the world tick, much like a toddler will take apart a toy and then throw a tantrum because it’s broken. I liked discovering his motives and the way he grows from an inquisitive toddler into a sulky teen during the novel, but all the while is super-destructive and kills people left and right. Also, I loved Case the Drake. His ability to give comment on situations without being able to speak was quite funny.

The plot was interesting, with the fate of not one, but three worlds resting on the outcome. The idea of the land of Levaal being neutral territory on which the Pendulum rests and which needs to keep it balanced so it won’t tip de scales one way or the other was rather clever and I really liked how this was handled and how the characters slowly all realise the importance of this and what sort of consequences their actions may have had. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until the final book to find out whether they’ll succeed in stopping the Pendulum’s swing.

Shadow was a fun read and can be read without reading the first book, Pilgrims, but I wouldn’t advise it if you have a choice. In fact, this is another series in which I want to go back and read the previous book before I reread this one and then read the final book, World’s End, which was released earlier this month. However, based on this reading, Will Elliott has created an interesting world populated with interesting characters and Shadow has definitely made me curious to read the rest of the series.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 28 December, 2012 Posted in fantasy, review Tagged: Jo Fletcher Books | Leave a comment

Anticipated Reads (Winter/Spring) 2013

After last week’s posts on my Anticipated Books for Winter/Spring 2013, today I bring you the fifteen books I anticipate reading the most in the coming six months. Last year I couldn’t get the number down to ten so I stuck to fifteen and since I struggled to get the list down to even fifteen, I stuck with that number. I had to do a lot of gouging to get the list down from the initial twenty-five books to fifteen. There are a lot of books I’m really anticipating reading that I decided to exclude right off the bat, such as all the next books in series I’ve started in the past year. If I loved a book last year, you can bet that I’ll want to read the next instalment. Examples of these are Anne Lyle’s The Merchant of Shadows, Lou Morgan’s Blood and Feathers: Rebellion and Giles Kristian’s Brothers’ Fury. Another book that would have been sure to have been on this list is Laura Lam’s Pantomime if not for the fact I’ve already read and reviewed it here on the blog. And there a couple of historical novels and YA novels that I went back and forth over, but ended up scrapping. So below in alphabetical order by author is my list, with a little explanation of why I really can’t wait to read these books. Do you agree or would you have chosen differently from last week’s lists?

Clifford Beal – Gideon’s Angel (Solaris)
Ever since reading Anne Lyle’s Alchemist of Souls I’ve become more and more enchanted with historical fantasy. Of course this shouldn’t be surprising as it combines my two most favourite genres into a fabulous new whole. Add that to the fact that Beal’s debut novel is set in an era of British history that I’ve only recently come to read more about, but has demons and magic to boot and it had to be a given that I’d want to read this book.

Lauren Beukes – The Shining Girls (HarperCollins)
My favourite read for 2011 was Zoo City, while Moxyland grabbed third place last year, and I’ve been waiting impatiently for a new novel by Lauren Beukes ever since finishing Moxyland. And now The Shining Girls is almost here! I can’t wait to see what Beukes has in store for us, but the premise sounds amazing and I really look forward to seeing her take on a crime novel.

C. Robert Cargill – Dreams and Shadows (Gollancz)
Look at that cover. Tell me that isn’t a pretty cover! But more importantly, the book sounds really interesting and whisky-swilling genies and foul-mouthed wizards can’t be anything other than a good thing. Besides, comparisons to Gaiman, Del Torro, and Burroughs? I’m intrigued.

Cassandra Rose Clarke – The Mad Scientist’s Daughter (Angry Robot Books)
One of my favourite debuts this year was Cassandra Rose Clarke’s YA fantasy The Assassin’s Curse. So when Angry Robot announced they were publishing her first novel for adults and it was an SF story about robots, I was immediately on board. Then they released the cover and I really couldn’t wait for the book. Luckily, I received and ARC, so I’ll be able to read and review the book sooner rather than later!

Tara Conklin – The House Girl (William Morrow)
The first historical novel on the list and it’s one that piqued my interest for a number of reasons. First of all, it deals with one of the most difficult subjects to write about in US history: slavery. Set in the frame of a modern day law firm setting, the synopsis drew me in immediately. This looks like a very interesting story and as I know embarrassingly little of the history of slavery beyond what I was taught in grammar school, I thought this might be a good place to learn some more.

US Cover

Neil Gaiman – The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Headline)
When Headline announced that they’d signed Neil Gaiman for a new adult novel, the internet went kind of crazy. While reading The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere finally clued me in on why people turn into such rabid fans and Gaiman charmed my socks off with his ‘Make Good Art’-commencement speech, I’m still woefully under-read in his works, so I have to read this one, just to make sure I don’t get farther behind. Plus, that synopsis? It sounds amazing!

Rosie Garland – The Palace of Curiosities (HarperCollins)
Set in the Victorian age, in a circus and the characters are a lion-faced girl and a man risen from the dead? Done. What more can I add? Oh, perhaps that this is another title I have an ARC for, so look for a review of this title soon!

Helen Grant – Silent Saturday (Random House Children’s Books)
For Christmas 2010 I was given a copy of Helen Grant’s The Glass Demon by Liz. And oh, how I loved that book. Then I went to London and got my hands on Helen’s two other books The Vanishing of Katharina Linden and Wish Me Dead and devoured both of those. And then I had to wait, and wait… I had to wait till 2013 to get my hands on Helen’s next book. Fortunately, Silent Saturday is part of a trilogy and even more fortunately, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a very early ARC. So now I won’t have to wait so very long to finally return to the mysteries and creepiness that always pervade Grant’s writing.

Snorri Kristjansson – The Swords of Good Men (Jo Fletcher Books)
I’m going to cheat and just quote what I wrote over on the Jo Fletcher Books blog for my look at their spring 2013 debuts:

Vikings! What more do I need to say? Well, actually, there is a lot more to say about this debut. It’s a book in which the Old Gods confront the new and where betrayal is just around the corner. It’s also written by a true Viking descendant, as Snorri is originally from Iceland. However, the book was written in English, a feat I find astonishing, because even if my English isn’t shabby, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to write an entire novel in it. Then again, I can’t imagine writing a novel in Dutch either, so I’m impressed by anyone who can write a good story. The Swords of Good Men has been on my radar ever since Jo announced she’d signed Snorri and I’m looking forward to finally being able to read the book come June.

Elizabeth May – The Falconer (Gollancz)
Again Victorian – ~~not steampunk~~ the author let me know that the story is steampunk – Edinburgh, an aristocratic young Lady out for revenge, fairies?! Count me in. This is another book that’s been on my radar since its acquisition was announced and I can’t wait to read it.

Amy McCulloch – The Oathbreaker’s Shadow (Random House Children’s Books)
The Oathbreaker’s Shadow is the debut for Amy McCulloch, commissioning editor over at HarperVoyager UK and part of the Lucky 13′s. I love the premise of this one: that the promises you make are binding, even if they are made for you. From the synopsis, it also looks to have an interesting setting and a great classic fantasy feeling, so this is another one I’ve been eagerly awaiting for months.

Will McIntosh – Love Minus Eighty (Orbit)
Love Minus Eighty is based on Bridesicle, a short story McIntosh wrote for which he won a Hugo and which I heard on Escape Pod during their Hugo Month in 2010. I adored the story and I was really excited to hear that McIntosh was developing the story into a novel. The story sounds amazing and I know the concept for the world is strong, so roll on June.

Terence Morgan – The Shadow Prince (Macmillan)
This is a book I discovered going through the catalogues in preparation for this season’s Anticipated Books and the subject immediately caught my eye. The story of the Princes in the Tower has always fascinated me and some part of me always hopes they were smuggled out and lived happily ever after, or at least long and peaceful lives, away from the turbulence and violence their family was caught up in, however unlikely the chance that happened is. So the legend of Perrin Warbeck was one that has always been attractive to me and Terrence Morgan’s take on his story sounds like an intriguing one.

Emma Newman – Between Two Thorns (Angry Robot Books)
I’ve posted about Emma Newman and Between Two Thorns before and I’ve even hosted a story in her Split Worlds project on the blog. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Between Two Thorns is included on this list. In fact, I think you can well say that this is my most anticipated read for the next few months! I’m lucky enough to have received an ARC for it, so this is one title you can be sure will be reviewed sooner rather than later!

Benjamin Percy – Red Moon (Hodder & Stoughton)
A month or two ago a mysterious envelope appeared in my mailbox. In it was nothing but a business card with on it the title Red Moon with the subtitle They Are Amongst Us. On the back it said ‘Have there been lycans sightings in your local area? Do you think someone you know might be infected? Please report any suspicious activity. Call the Lobos Helpline:’ with a UK number listed, followed by ‘Or go to www.banthelycans.co.uk.’ To say I was intrigued was putting it mildly and from what I’ve been able to find out about the novel so far, I really want to read it, when it comes out.

By Mieneke Published 24 December, 2012 Posted in article, crime, fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, science fiction, YA Tagged: Angry Robot Books, anticipated, Gollancz, HarperCollins, Hodder, Jo Fletcher Books, Macmillan, Orbit, Random House Children's Books, Solaris, William Morrow | 4 Comments

Anticipated Books (Winter/Spring) 2013: Crime and Historical Crime Fiction

Murder, mayhem, sleuthing… who doesn’t like a good crime story every once in a while? Today my Anticipated Books post focuses on crime and historical crime fiction. For some of these I already have an (e)ARC or review copy, so they’ll definitely be read and reviewed. And for the rest, I’ll have to see whether I get the chance to get my hands on them!

Crime

January
David Jackson – Marked (MacMillan)
Her tattoo wasn’t just a mark for life; it marked her for death too.

In New York’s East Village a young girl is brutally raped, tortured and murdered. Detective Callum Doyle has seen the victim’s remains. He has visited the distraught family. Now he wants justice.

Doyle is convinced he knows who the killer is. The problem is he can’t prove it. And the more he pushes his prime suspect, the more he learns that the man is capable of pushing back in ways more devious and twisted than Doyle could ever have imagined.

Add to that the appearance of an old adversary who has a mission for Doyle and won’t take no for an answer, and soon Doyle finds himself at risk of losing everything he holds dear. Including his life.

Chris Kuzneski – The Hunters (Headline)
Chris Kuzneski, bestselling author of the Payne and Jones series, including Sign of the Cross and The Death Relic, moves to Headline for his brand new series, The Hunters.

The Hunters: a team of renegades, an ex-military leader, a historian, a computer whiz, a weapons expert and a thief – financed by a billionaire philantropist are tasked with finding the world’s most legendary treasures.

February
A.K. Benedict – The Beauty of Murder (Orion)
Stephen Killigan has been cold since the day he came to Cambridge. Then he finds the body of a missing beauty queen and thinks he’s found the reason why. But the police go to retrieve the body and find no trace…So begins a trail of tattooists, philosophers and scholars as Killigan must question how a corpse can be found before someone goes missing…

Jonathan Kellerman – Guilt (Headline)
When a young couple takes possession of their dream home, they can’t wait to remodel the neglected mansion. That is until they make a gruesome discovery of a rusted metal strongbox containing two rotting leather doctor’s bags. And inside each bag, swaddled in sheets of sixty-year-old newspaper, lies a tiny human skeleton. The case hits the media, and theories abound. The most likely culprit is a mysterious woman, employed as private nurse to wealthy L.A. families during World War Two and Lieutenant Milo Sturgis consults psychologist Alex Delaware for insight into the perpetrator’s motives. But the horror is just beginning. Two more bags are discovered, but this time the infants inside have been dead less than a month. Is a copycat at work? Or is there a link between the two finds which goes back decades? By the time both cases close, Alex and Milo will have confronted unprecedented narcissism, cruelty, deceit and a cold but fiendish objectification of the human spirit that shakes both men to the core…

Becky Masterman – Rage Against the Dying (Orion)
In her hey-day, Brigid Quinn worked serial killer cases. Small and blonde, she was the perfect bait to catch a killer. But as Quinn got older, she realised she needed to find a protégé. So Quinn trains a twenty-two year old to take her place. The plan works, Until the killer not only takes the bait, but kills it.

Mark Roberts – The Sixth Soul (Corvus)
London is in the grip of a barbaric serial killer. Four women have been abducted in quick succession, their bodies mutilated and dumped. When a fifth woman is taken from her home, DCI David Rosen knows that time is running out…

Then Rosen gets a mysterious phone call from Father Sebastian Flint, an enigmatic priest who seems to know rather too much about the abductions. But it isn’t until Rosen discovers the existence of an ancient text – said to be the devil’s answer to the bible – that the true horror of Herod’s plan begins to unfold.

Lachlan Smith – Bear is Broken (Headline)
Leo Maxwell grew up in the shadow of his older brother, Teddy, a successful yet reviled criminal defence attorney, who racked up enemies as fast as he racked up acquittals.

The two are at lunch when Teddy is shot, the gunman escaping through a crowd. As Teddy lies in a coma, Leo realises that the search for his brother’s shooter falls upon him, as Teddy’s enemies are not just among his criminal clients but embedded within the police department as well…

Leo must navigate the seedy underbelly of San Francisco, but the deeper he digs into his brother’s life, the more questions arise: about Teddy and his estranged ex-wife, about the ethics of Teddy’s career, and about the murder that tore their family apart decades ago. And somewhere, the person who shot Leo’s brother is still on the loose, and there are many who would happily kill Leo in order to keep it that way.

March
Tom Harper – The Orpheus Descent (Hodder & Stoughton)
Would you pay the ultimate price for the ultimate knowledge?

Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife.

And archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another. Then Lily vanishes. Has she walked out of her job, her marriage and her life – or is the explanation more sinister? Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her.

But not everyone who journeys to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.

Julia Keller – A Killing in the Hills (Headline)
Nestled in the breathtaking beauty of the Appalachian Mountains, Acker’s Gap is a town rife with problems. Bell Elkins is a single mother with a sister in prison and a background full of secrets. She has returned to Acker’s Gap to become Raythune county’s prosecuting attorney and is desperate to bring stability to the town. But when her daughter is witness to a multiple murder, Bell must work fast to find the truth before her daughter pays the price.

Richard Montanari – The Killing Room (Sphere)
‘The thing is, Detective . . .

If you believe in God, you’ve got to believe in the Devil.’

Deepest winter. Darkest Philadelphia.

A murder shocks the frozen city – the most spectacular homicide in its 300-year-old history: an ex-cop has been lured to the basement of an abandoned chapel, wrapped in barbed wire – and kept alive for ten days.

Twenty-four hours after the discovery, Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano find another victim in another church, encased in a pristine block of ice.

Someone is transforming the city’s cathedrals into killing rooms, someone who is determined to raise hell on earth.

April
Roberta Kray – Bad Girl (Sphere)
It’s 1959 and Lynsey Quinn has done the unthinkable. She’s got herself pregnant by a cop. Rejected by her criminal family, she will pay the price for her betrayal, and so too will her daughter.

At the age of eleven, Helen is returned to the clan. Hated by her grandfather, loved only by her uncle, she struggles to fit into a world she doesn’t understand. As warring factions battle for control of the East End, tragedy is about to strike again.

How can she survive? And who can she trust as the murderous past comes back to haunt her?

Andrew Pyper – The Demonologist (Orion)
Professor David Ullman, an authority on Christian religion and myth, accepts a mysterious offer to visit Venice with his teenage daughter in order to offer his expertise in an undisclosed case. But what he experiences when he gets there is horrifying beyond belief and leaves him with the unshakeable feeling he isn’t alone…

May
Lauren Beukes – The Shining Girls (HarperCollins)
The girl who wouldn’t die, hunting a killer who shouldn’t exist…

1930’s America: Lee Curtis Harper is a delusional, violent drifter who stumbles on a house that opens onto other times.

Driven by visions, he begins a killing spree over the next 60 years, using an undetectable MO and leaving anachronistic clues on his victims’ bodies.

But when one of his intended ‘shining girls’, Kirby Mazrachi, survives a brutal stabbing, she becomes determined to unravel the mystery behind her would-be killer. While the authorities are trying to discredit her, Kirby is getting closer to the truth, as Harper returns again and again…

Historical Crime Fiction

April
James Benmore – Dodger (Heron Books)
London, 1850s.

After five years in an Australian penal colony, the Artful Dodger returns to London in search of a hidden fortune. Unaware of the fate that befell Twist, Fagin and Sykes, Dodger revisits the criminal underworld of Dickensian London to seek out his old comrades, any of whom might possess the key to the treasure.

He finds the city a changed place from his youth: with law and order upheld by a new police force, Fagin gone to the gallows, his old gang scattered and danger around every corner.

Alex Connor – Isle of the Dead (Quercus)
In 15th Century Venice it is a dangerous time to be alive. A permanent winter has rolled in over the canals and bodies keep washing up on the banks of the city, especially hard to identify, since they have been skinned.

In the present day, a famous portrait by Titian has been discovered of the 15th Century murderer Angelico Vespucci. It is rumoured that when the portrait arises, so will the man. And when flayed bodies start turning up all over the world, it looks like this is more than just a superstition.

Lindsey Davis – The Ides of April (Hodder & Stoughton)
First of a new series of crime novels set in ancient Rome and featuring Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of much-loved Marcus Didius Falco.

Based in real historical events: mysterious poisonings, in which victims died, often unaware they had been attacked. Albia is now twenty-eight and an established female investigator.

We meet Albia’s personal circle, glimpse old haunts and hear of old friends, but the focus is on Albia herself, a tough, witty, winning personality who fearlessly tackles inhumanity and injustice, braving any risks and winning the friendship of unexpected allies.

Sarah Pinborough – Mayhem (Jo Fletcher Books)
Gaslit London: and while Jack the Ripper’s murders are making headlines, there’s another madman on the loose in the East End . . .

A new killer is stalking the streets of London’s East End. Though newspapers have dubbed him ‘the Torso Killer’, this murderer’s work is overshadowed by the hysteria surrounding Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel crimes.

Mayhem is a masterwork of narrative suspense: a supernatural thriller set in a shadowy, gaslit London, where monsters stalk the cobbled streets and hide in plain sight.

May
S.G. Maclean – The Devil’s Recruit (Quercus)
1635, and Europe is in the grip of the brutal territorial and religious struggle of the Thirty Years’ War.

Fear stalks the town of Aberdeen as a ship recruiting for the wars lies at anchor in the river mouth. A sinister figure watches from the shadows as apprehension grows and culminates in the disappearance of the son of a Highland chief – a student of Alexander Seaton.

When the frozen body of a young woman is found in the garden of a prominent citizen, Alexander becomes more deeply embroiled. He realises that the figure in the shadows is known to him and has come for him. He can hide from his past no longer.

Steven Saylor – The Seven Wonders (Constable & Robinson Crime Fiction)
Steven Saylor, the bestselling author of Empire and Roma, turns the clock back to 92 BC, where Gordianus, just turned 18, is set to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: a far-flung expedition to see the Seven Wonders of the World, the most spectacular constructions ever devised by mankind. Accompanied by his tutor, the celebrated poet Antipater of Sidon, he will journey to the fabled cities of Greece and Asia Minor, to Babylon and Egypt.

In this compelling prequel, Gordianus is not yet called ‘The Finder’ – that title still belongs to his father. But at each of the Seven Wonders, the wide-eyed Roman encounters a mystery to challenge his deductive powers. Here is a portrait of a master sleuth in the making, the earliest exploits of the man who will become Rome’s most sought-after investigator.

By Mieneke Published 20 December, 2012 Posted in article, crime, historical fiction Tagged: anticipated, Constable and Robinson, Corvus, HarperCollins, Headline, Heron Books, Hodder, Jo Fletcher Books, Macmillan, Orion, Quercus, Sphere | 1 Comment

Anticipated Books (Winter/Spring) 2013: Science Fiction and Horror

Fear not! For on the third day of Anticipated Books posts there will be horror – well, one horror book anyway – and science fiction. Both SF and horror were genres I managed to explore further in the past reading year with success, so this year there are more books in this list than last year. For some of these I already have an (e)ARC or review copy, so they’ll definitely be read and reviewed. And for the rest, I’ll have to see whether I get the chance to get my hands on them!

Science Fiction

January
Natsuo Kirino – The Goddess Chronicle (Canongate)
In a place like no other, on an island in the shape of a tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of the oracle. Kamikuu, with creamy skin and almond eyes, is admired far and wide; Namima, small but headstrong, learns to live in her sister’s shadow.

On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is presented with a feast of seaserpent egg soup, sashimi and salted fish, and a string of pure pearls. Kamikuu has been chosen as the next Oracle, while Namima is shocked to discover she must serve the goddess of darkness. So begins an adventure that will take Namima from her first experience of love to the darkness of the underworld. But what happens when she returns to the island for revenge?

Natsuo Kirino, the queen of Japanese crime fiction, turns her hand to an exquisitely dark tale based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi. A fantastical, fabulous tour-de-force, it is a tale as old as the earth about ferocious love and bitter revenge.

Ramez Naam – Nexus (Angry Robot Books)
Mankind gets an upgrade
In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link human together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it.

When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he’s thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage – for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes.

James Smythe – The Explorer (HarperVoyager)
When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity’s great explorers.

But in space, nothing goes according to plan.

The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue.

But as the body count begins to rise, Cormac finds himself alone and spiralling towards his own inevitable death … unless he can do something to stop it.

February
Cassandra Rose Clarke – The Mad Scientist’s Daughter (Angry Robot Books)
“Cat, this is Finn. He’s going to be your tutor.”

He looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion… and more.

But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world.

Naomi Foyle – Seoul Survivors (Jo Fletcher Books)
A meteor known as Lucifer’s Hammer is about to wreak destruction on the earth, and with the end of the world imminent, there is only one safe place to be.

In the mountains above Seoul, American-Korean bio-engineer Dr Kim Da Mi thinks she has found the perfect solution to save the human race. But her methods are strange and her business partner, Johnny Sandman, is not exactly the type of person anyone would want to mix with.

Drawn in by their smiles and pretty promises, Sydney – a Canadian model trying to escape an unhappy past – is an integral part of their scheme, until she realises that the quest for perfection comes at an impossible price.

Karen Lord – The Best of All Possible Worlds (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Sadiri were once the galaxy’s ruling élite, but now their home planet is unlivable and most of the population killed. The few groups living on other worlds are desperately short of Sadiri women, and their extinction is all but certain.

Grace Delarua is assigned to work with Councillor Dllenahkh, a Sadiri, on his mission to visit distant communities, looking for possible mates. Delarua is garrulous and fully immersed in the single life; Dllenahkh is controlled and responsible for keeping his community together. They both have a lot to learn.

April
Ian Whates (ed.) – Solaris Rising 2 (Solaris)
Having re-affirmed Solaris’s proud reputation for producing high quality science fiction antologies in the first volume, Solaris Rising 2 is the next collection in this exciting series. Featuring stories by Allan Steele, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kim Lakin-Smith, Paul Cornell, Eugie Foster, Nick Harkaway, Nancy Kress, Kay Kenyon, James Lovegrove, Robert Reed, Mercurio D. Rivera, Norman Spinrad, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Liz Williams, Vandana Singh, Martin Sketchley, and more. These stories are guaranteed to surprise, thrill and delight, and maintain our mission to demonstrate why science fiction remains the most exiting, varied and inspiring of all fiction genres. In Solaris Rising we showed both the quality and variety that modern science fiction can produce. In Solaris Rising 2, we’ll be taking that much, much further.

Jared Shurin & Anne C. Perry (eds.) – Pandamonium Fiction: The Lowest Heaven (Jurassic London)
The Lowest Heaven explores the furthest reaches of the Solar System with help from the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Today’s greatest science fiction authors set out on missions of discovery, with new stories inspired by our closest celestial neighbours.

May
Eric Brown – Serene Invasion (Solaris)
THEY ARE HERE… AND WE ARE NOT READY It’s 2025 and the world is riven by war, terrorist attacks, poverty and increasingly desperate demands for water, oil, and natural resources. The West and China confront each other over an inseperable ideological divide, each desperate to sustain their future. And then the Serene arrive, enigmatic aliens from Delta Pavonis V, and nothing will ever be the same again. The Serene bring peace to an ailing world, an end to poverty and violence but not everyone supports the seemingly benign invasion. There are forces out there who wish to return to the bad old days, and will stop at nothing to oppose the Serene.

Wesley Chu – The Lives of Tao (Angry Robot Books)
When out-of-shape IT technician Roen woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it.

He wasn’t.

He now has a passenger in his brain – an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Now split into two opposing factions – the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix – the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet, and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that’s what it takes.

Meanwhile, Roen is having to train to be the ultimate secret agent. Like that’s going to end up well…

Al Ewing – The Fictional Man (Solaris)
Niles Golan is writing a remake of a camp-classic spy movie. The studio has plans for a franchise, so rather than hiring an actor, the protagonist will be ‘translated’ into a cloned human body.

It’s common practice – Niles’ therapist is a Fictional. So is his best friend. So (maybe) is the woman in the bar he can’t stop staring at. Fictionals are a part of daily life now, especially in LA.

In fact, it’s getting hard to tell who’s a Fictional and who’s not…

June
Alan Averill – The Beautiful Land (Ace)
Takahiro O’Leary has a very special job working for the Axon Corporation as an explorer of parallel timelines—as many and as varied as anyone could imagine. A great gig—until information he brings back gives Axon the means to maximize profits by changing the past, present, and future of this world. If Axon succeeds, Tak will lose Samira, the woman he has loved since high school—because her future will cease to exist. The only way to save her is for Tak to use the time travel device he “borrowed” to transport them both to an alternate timeline.

But what neither Tak nor Axon knows is that the actual inventor of the device is searching for a timeline called the Beautiful Land—and he intends to destroy every other possible present and future to find it.

The switch is thrown, and reality begins to warp—horribly. And Tak realizes that to save Sam, he must save the entire world…

Stephanie Saulter – Gemsigns (Jo Fletcher Books)
For years the human race was under attack from a deadly Syndrome, but when a cure was found – in the form of genetically engineered human beings, Gems – the line between survival and ethics was radically altered.

Now the Gems are fighting for their freedom, from the oppression of the companies that created them, and against the Norms who see them as slaves. And a conference at which Dr Eli Walker has been commissioned to present his findings on the Gems is the key to that freedom.

But with the Gemtech companies fighting to keep the Gems enslaved, and the horrifying godgangs determined to rid the earth of these ‘unholy’ creations, the Gems are up against forces that may just be too powerful to oppose.

Guy Haley – The Crash (Solaris)
The Market rules all, plotting the rise and fall of fortunes without human intervention. Mankind, trapped by a rigid hierarchy of wealth, bends to its every whim. To function, the Market must expand without end. The Earth is finite, and cannot hold it, and so a bold venture to the stars is begun, offering a rare chance at freedom to a select few people.

But when the colony fleet is sabotaged, a small group finds itself marooned upon the tidally locked world of Nychthemeron, a world where one hemisphere is bathed in perpetual daylight, the other hidden by eternal night. Isolated and beset, the stricken colony members must fight for survival on the hostile planet, while secrets about both the nature of their shipwreck and Nychthemeron itself threaten to tear their fragile society apart.

Frank Schätzing – Limit (Quercus)
2025. Entrepreneur Julian Orley opens the first-ever hotel on the moon.

But ORLEY ENTERPRISES deals in far more than space tourism: it operates the world’s only space elevator, connecting the earth with the moon and enabling the transportation of helium-3, the fuel of the future.

Now Julian has invited twenty-one of the world’s richest and most powerful individuals to sample his lunar accommodation, in the hope of securing the finances for manufacturing a second lift.

Meanwhile, on earth, cyber detective Owen Jericho is sent to Shanghai to find a young female hacker, Yoyo, on the run since uncovering information that someone seems very determined to protect.

As Jericho closes in on the girl, and the conspiracy surrounding her, he finds increasingly concerning links to Julian Orley – and his enemies and competitors – that suggest the lunar expedition is in real and immediate danger.

Horror

Alison Littlewood – Path of Needles (Jo Fletcher Books, January)
A murderer is on the loose, but the gruesome way in which the bodies are being posed has the police at a loss. Until, on a hunch, an expert in fairytales is called in. And it is Alice who finds the connection between the body of Chrissie Farris and an obscure Italian version of Snow White.

Then, when a second body is found, Alice is dragged further into the investigation – until she herself becomes a suspect. Now Alice must fight, not just to prove her innocence, but to protect herself: because it’s looking like she might well be next.

By Mieneke Published 18 December, 2012 Posted in article, horror, science fiction Tagged: Ace, Angry Robot Books, anticipated, Canongate, HarperVoyager, Jo Fletcher Books, Quercus, Solaris | 3 Comments

Anticipated Books (Winter/Spring) 2013: Fantasy April-June

The second day of my Anticipated Books posts and the second half of the fantasy books. For some of these I already have an (e)ARC or review copy, so they’ll definitely be read and reviewed. And for the rest, I’ll have to see whether I get the chance to get my hands on them!

April

Mark Alder – Son of the Morning (Gollancz)
Meet Hal Romsey
Priest, sorcerer, assassin
A good man
Who fights for the Devil

It’s 1337. Genoese mercenaries under the French are harrying the channel ports and Edward III is powerless to stop them. He’s bankrupt, up to his ears in debt to Florentine bankers. He can’t hope to defend his lands in France, which are subject to a vicious scorched earth policy pursued by the French king.

Hal Romsey is a sixteen year old boy, frightened and intimidated by exalted company. But he is a Luciferist – a visionary and a disciple of the devil. He has one of the keys to Hell, and knows how to use it. Hell is willing to ally with England – and thus begins a story that will shake the thrones of medieval Europe and see angels and demons fighting for the future of England and France.

Richard Ford – Herald of the Storm (Headline)
Under the reign of King Cael the Uniter, this vast cityport on the southern coast has for years been a symbol of strength, maintaining an uneasy peace throughout the Free States. But now a long shadow hangs over the city, in the form of the dread Elharim warlord, Amon Tugha. When his herald infiltrates the city, looking to exploit its dangerous criminal underworld, and a terrible dark magick that has long been buried, once again begins to rise, it could be the beginning of the end.

Stella Gemmell – The City (Transworld)
The City is ancient and vast, built up over the millennia, layer upon layer. Once a thriving metropolis, it has sprawled beyond its walls, inciting and waging constant wars with neighbouring tribes and kingdoms – creating a barren wasteland of what was once green and productive.

At the heart of the City lives the emperor. Few have ever seen him, but those who have recall a man in his prime, though he should be very old. Some speculate that he is no longer human, others wonder if indeed he truly ever was. And a small number have have come to the desperate conclusion that the only way to stop the City’s incessant war and the constant bloodshed is to end the emperor’s unnaturally long life.

From the maze-like sewers and catacombs below the City, where the poor struggle to stay alive in the dark, to the blood-soaked fields of battle where few heroes manage to survive the never-ending siege, these rebels pin their hopes on one man:Shuskara. Once the emperor’s foremost general, he was betrayed long ago and is believed to be dead. But, under different aliases, he has survived, forsaking his City and hiding from the man to whome he once vowed his allegiance. Now, the time has come for Shuskara to emerge from the shadows and lead a final bid to free the City from those who have brought it and its people to their knees for so long…

Justin Gustainis – Morris & Chastain Investigations: Play With Fire & Midnight at the Oasis (Solaris)
In Play With Fire houses of worship are burning around the U.S. From churches, to synagogues, to mosques. Usually while the places are full of people. Initially dismissed as random acts of violence, Morris and Chastain uncover the deadly meaning behind the fires, and the terrifying cause they seek to serve. In Midnight at the Oasis Middle Eastern terrorists have conjured a deadly djin that will lay waste to America — unless Morris and Chastain can stop it first.

Elizabeth May – The Falconer (Gollancz)
Edinburgh, Scotland, 1844

18 year old Lady Aileana Kameron, the only daughter of the Marquess of Douglas, was destined to a life carefully planned around Edinburgh’s social events – right up until a faery kills her mother.

Now it’s the 1844 winter season. Between a seeming endless number of parties, Aileana slaughters faeries in secret. Armed with modified percussion pistols and explosives, every night she sheds her aristocratic facade and goes hunting. She’s determined to track down the faery who murdered her mother, and to destroy any who prey on humans in the city’s many dark alleyways.

But she never even considered that she might become attracted to one. To the magnetic Kiaran MacKay, the faery who trained her to kill his own kind. Nor is she at all prepared for the revelation he’s going to bring. Because Midwinter is approaching, and with it an eclipse that has the ability to unlock a Fae prison and begin the Wild Hunt.

A battle looms, and Aileana is going to have to decide how much she’s willing to lose – and just how far she’ll go to avenge her mother’s murder.

Brian McClellan – Promise of Blood (Orbit)
‘The Age of Kings is dead. And I have killed it.‘

Field Marshal Tamas’s coup against his king sends corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brings bread to the starving. But it also provokes war in the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics and greedy scrambling for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies: the Church, workers’ unions and mercenary forces.

Stretched to his limit, Tamas relies heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be Tamas’s estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty will be tested to its limit.

Now, amid the chaos, a whispered rumour is spreading. A rumour about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods returning to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing . . .

But perhaps they should.

Sarah Pinborough – Poison (Gollancz)
POISON is a beautifully illustrated retelling of the Snow White story which takes all the elements of the classic fairytale that we love (the handsome prince, the jealous queen, the beautiful girl and, of course, the poisoning) and puts a modern spin on the characters, their motives and their desires. It’s fun, contemporary, sexy, and perfect for fans of ONCE UPON A TIME, GRIMM, SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and more.

May
Mur Lafferty – The Shambling Guide to New York City (Orbit)
Following the disaster that was her last job, Zoe is searching for a fresh start as a travel writer in New York City. After stumbling across a seemingly perfect position, though, Zoe is blocked at every turn because of the one thing she can’t take off her résumé – human.

Not to be put off by anything – especially not her blood-drinking boss or death goddess co-worker – Zoe delves deep into the monster world. But her assignments turn deadly when the careful balance between humans and monsters starts to crumble – with Zoe right in the middle.

Justin Gustainis – Known Devil (Angry Robot Books)
My name’s Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.
A new supernatural gang is intent on invading Scranton – as if I didn’t have enough to contend with!

Supernatural gang warfare? Not on my watch!

Benjamin Percy – Red Moon (Hodder & Stoughton)
They live amongst us. They are your neighbour, your mother, your lover. You think they are safe. They change.

Every teenage girl thinks she’s different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realises just how different she is.

Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and, hours later, stepped off it, the only passenger left alive. A hero.

President Chase Williams has sworn to eradicate the menace. Unknown to the electorate, however, he is becoming the very thing he has sworn to destroy.

Each of them is caught up in a war that has been controlled with laws and violence and drugs. But an uprising is about to leave them tied to one another for ever.

Jonathan Strahan (ed) – Fearsome Journeys: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy (Solaris)
Nothing further announced yet, but I loved the The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction last year and I well respect Jonathan Strahan’s chops as an editor, so I’m very much looking forward to this.

Chuck Wendig – Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits (Abaddon)
Exiled to Earth, the gods now walk amongst us, bringing with them their children and their servants and their monsters. Their power is a mere fraction of what it once was, but even a mote of divine magic is awesome – in the truest sense of the word.

Cason Cole knows this firsthand. He’s been serving the gods for the better part of a decade, their leash fastened tight around his neck. But when his most recent divine master gets killed – a thing Cason didn’t even know could happen – he finds himself once more a free man. All he’s got left is a burning need for vengeance against the very gods who forced him to kneel, but he’ll soon discover that getting revenge against the gods is no easy feat. He’ll have to put his life, love, sanity and soul on the line. Will he pay the cost? How priceless is his wrath?

June
Ben Aaronovitch – Broken Homes (Gollancz)
A new case for Peter Grant takes him into the heart of a crowded south London housing estate where he finds a brooding horror.

Alex Bledsoe – Wisp of a Thing (Tor Books)
Touched by a very public tragedy, musician Rob Quillen comes to Cloud County, Tennessee, in search of a song that might ease his aching heart. All he knows of the mysterious and reclusive Tufa is what he has read on the internet: they are an enigmatic clan of swarthy,, black-haired mountain people whose historical roots are lost in myth and controversy. Some people say that when the first white settlers came to the Appalachians centuries ago, they found the Tufa already there. Other hint that Tufa blood brings special gifts.

Rob finds both music and mystery in the mountains. Close-lipped locals guard their secrets, even as Rob gets caught up in a subtle power struggle he can’t begin to comprehend. A vacationing wife goes missing, raising suspicions of foul play, and a strange feral girl runs wild in the woods, howling in the night like a lost spirit.

Change is coming to Cloud County, and only the night wind knows what part Rob will play when the last leaf falls from the Widow’s Tree…and a timeless curse must be broken at last.

Stephen Deas – The Dragon Queen (Gollancz)
The war that destroyed mankind had a beginning shadowed by dragons.

This is the second standalone novel set in the world of Stephen Deas’ Memory of Flames trilogy. A pseudo-medieval world where life and politics are dominated by massive fire breathing dragons.

US Cover

Neil Gaiman – The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Headline)
THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac – as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark, from storytelling genius Neil Gaiman.

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed – within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it.

His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

Kevin Hearne – Hunted (Del Rey/Orbit)
For a two-thousand-year-old Druid, Atticus O’Sullivan is a pretty fast runner. Good thing, because he’s being chased by not one but two goddesses of the hunt – Artemis and Diana – for messing with one of their own. Dodging their slings and arrows, Atticus, his apprentice Granuaile and his wolfhound Oberon are making a mad dash across modern-day Europe to seek help from a friend of the Tuatha Dé Danann. His usual magical option of shifting planes is blocked, so instead of playing hide and seek, the game plan is . . . run like hell.

Crashing the pantheon marathon is the Norse god Loki. Killing Atticus is the only loose end he needs to tie up before unleashing Ragnarok – AKA the Apocalypse. Atticus and Granuaile have to outfox the Olympians and contain the god of mischief if they want to go on living – and still have a world to live in.

Snorri Kristjansson – The Swords of Good Men (Jo Fletcher Books)
To Ulfar Thormodsson, the Viking town of Stenvik is the penultimate stop on a long journey. Tasked with looking after his cousin after disgracing his father, he has travelled the world and now only wants to go home.

But Stenvik is different; it contains the beautiful and tragic Lilja, who immediately captures Ulfar’s heart. Because of her, he persuades his cousin to stay. But Stenvik is also home to some very deadly men, who could break Ulfar in an instant.

King Olav is marching on Stenvik from the East, determined to bring the White Christ to the masses at the point of his sword, and a host of bloodthirsty raiders led by a mysterious woman are sailing from the north. But Ulfar is about to learn that his enemies are not all outside the walls.

Mercedes Lackey – Steadfast (DAW)
Lionel Hawkins is a magician whose act is only partially sleight of hand. The rest is real magic. He’s an Elemental Magician with the power to persuade the Elementals of Air to help him create amazing illusions. It doesn’t take long before his assistant, acrobat Katie Langford, notices that he’s no ordinary magician—and for Lionel to discover that she’s no ordinary acrobat, but rather an untrained and unawakened Fire Magician. She’s also on the run from her murderous and vengeful brute of a husband. But can she harness her magic in time to stop her husband from achieving his deadly goal?

Will McIntosh – Love Minus Eighty (Orbit)
Welcome to dating a hundred years into the future: Technology has extended the lives of the rich and attractive by decades. The wealthy can arrange to be reanimated multiple times. While in cryogenic dating farms, dead women await lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home . . .

Love Minus Eighty follows interconnected lives touched by these dating farms.

There’s Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sells everything to visit her, seeking her forgiveness but instead falling in love.

Veronika, a socially awkward dating coach, finds herself responsible for the happiness of a man whose life she saved against his will.

And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in the heterosexual dating centre near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the centuries pass.

Lou Morgan – Blood and Feathers: Rebellion (Solaris)
“This is a war. The war. There is no stopping; no getting out. You’re in this – just like the rest of us – to the end.”

Driven out of hell and with nothing to lose, the Fallen wage open warfare against the angels on the streets of our cities. And they’re winning.

As the balance tips towards the darkness, Alice – barely recovered from her own ordeal in hell and struggling to start over – once again finds herself in the eye of the storm.

But with the chaos spreading and the Archangel Michael determined to destroy Lucifer whatever the cost, is the price simply too high; and what sacrifices will Alice and the angels have to make in order to pay it?

The Fallen will rise. Trust will be betrayed. And all hell will break loose.

Seth Patrick – Reviver (Tor UK)
Revivers. Able to wake the recently dead, and let them bear witness to their own demise. Twelve years after the first reviver came to light, they have become accepted by an uneasy public. The testimony of the dead is permitted in courtrooms across the world. Forensic revival is a routine part of police investigation.

In the United States, that responsibility falls to the Forensic Revival Service. Despite his troubled past, Jonah Miller is one of their best. But while reviving the victim of a brutal murder, he encounters a terrifying presence. Something is watching. Waiting. His superiors tell him it was only in his mind, a product of stress. Jonah is not so certain.

Then Daniel Harker, the first journalist to bring revival to public attention, is murdered, and Jonah finds himself getting dragged into the hunt for answers. Working with Harker’s daughter Annabel, he becomes determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Soon they uncover long hidden truths that call into doubt everything Jonah stands for, and reveal a threat that if not stopped in time, will put all of humanity in danger . . .

S.M. Wheeler – Sea Change (Tor Books)
The unhappy child of two powerful parents who despise each other, young Lilly turns to the ocean to find solace, which she finds in the form of the eloquent and intelligent sea monster Octavius, a kraken. In Octavius’s many arms, Lilly learns of friendship, loyalty, and family. When Octavius, forbidden by Lilly to harm humans, is captured by seafaring traders and sold to a circus, Lilly becomes his only hope for salvation. Desperate to find him, she strikes a bargain with a witch that carries a shocking price.

Her journey to win Octavius’s freedom is difficult. The circus master wants a Coat of Illusions; the Coat tailor wants her undead husband back from a witch; the witch wants her skin back from two bandits; the bandits just want some company, but they might kill her first. Lilly’s quest tests her resolve, tries her patience, and leaves her transformed in every way.

Chuck Wendig – The Blue Blazes (Angry Robot Books)
Meet Mookie Pearl.

Criminal underworld? He runs it.

Supernatural underworld? He hunts in it.

Nothing stops Mookie when he’s on the job.

But when his daughter takes up arms and opposes him, something’s gotta give…

By Mieneke Published 17 December, 2012 Posted in article, fantasy Tagged: Abaddon, Angry Robot Books, anticipated, DAW, Del Rey, Gollancz, Headline, Hodder, Jo Fletcher Books, Orbit, Solaris, TOR, Tor UK, Transworld | 3 Comments

Anticipated Books (Winter/Spring) 2013: Fantasy Jan-March

And so the Anticipated Books posts for the first half of 2013 start going up. As usual I had so many fantasy books catch my fancy I had to split them into two posts. For some of these I already have an (e)ARC or review copy, so they’ll definitely be read and reviewed. And for the rest, I’ll have to see whether I get the chance to get my hands on them!

January
Amish – The Immortals of Meluha (Jo Fletcher Books)
1900 BC: the once-proud Suryavanshi rulers of the Meluha Empire are in dire peril. There are devastating terrorist attacks from the east, the land of the Chandravanshis – and to make matters worse, the Chandravanshis appear to have allied with the Nagas, an ostracised race of deformed humans with astonishing martial skills.

The only hope for the Suryavanshis is an ancient prophecy: when evil reaches epic proportions and all seems lost, a hero will emerge …

Clifford Beal – Gideon’s Angel (Solaris)
1653: The long and bloody English Civil War is at an end. King Charles is dead and Oliver Cromwell rules the land as king in all but name. Richard Treadwell, an exiled royalist officer and soldier-for-hire to the King of France and his all-powerful advisor, the wily Cardinal Mazarin, burns with revenge for those who deprived him of his family and fortune.

He decides upon a self-appointed mission to return to England in secret and assassinate the new Lord Protector. Once back on English soil however, he learns that his is not the only plot in motion. A secret army run by a deluded Puritan is bent on the same quest, guided by the Devil’s hand. When demonic entities are summoned, Treadwell finds himself in a desperate turnaround: he must save Cromwell to save England from a literal descent into Hell.

But first he has to contend with a wife he left in Devon who believes she’s a widow, and a furious Paris mistress who has trailed him to England, jeopardising everything. Treadwell needs allies fast. Can he convince the man sent to forcibly drag him back to Cardinal Mazarin? A young king’s musketeer named d’Artagnan. Black dogs and demons; religion and magic; Freemasons and Ranters. It’s a dangerous new Republic for an old cavalier coming home again.

Leigh Evans – The Trouble with Fate (Tor UK)
SHE’S HALF FAE AND ALL TROUBLE

WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW MIGHT KILL HER: Hedi looks normal. Yet that’s taken effort. Her fellow Starbucks baristas don’t see her pointed ears, fae amulet or her dark past, and normal is hard for a half-fae, half-werewolf on the run. Hedi’s life changed ten years ago, when her parents were murdered by unknown assassins. She’s been in hiding with her loopy aunt Lou since, as whatever they wanted she’s determined they won’t get it.

Things change when wolves capture Lou, forcing Hedi to steal to free her – for if she can offer up a fae amulet like her own they may trade. But it belongs to a rogue werewolf named Robson Trowbridge, who betrayed Hedi on the night of her greatest need. Over forty-eight hours, Hedi will face the weres of Creemore, discover the extent of her fae powers and possibly break her own heart in the process.

Anne Lyle – The Merchant of Dreams (Angry Robot Books)
Exiled from the court of Queen Elizabeth for accusing a powerful nobleman of treason, swordsman-turned-spy Mal Catlyn has been living in France with his young valet Coby Hendricks for the past year.

But Mal harbours a darker secret: he and his twin brother share a soul that once belonged to a skrayling, one of the mystical creatures from the New World.

When Mal’s dream about a skrayling shipwreck in the Mediterranean proves reality, it sets him on a path to the beautiful, treacherous city of Venice – and a conflict of loyalties that will place him and his friends in greater danger than ever.

Gail Z. Martin – Ice Forged (Orbit)
Condemned as a murderer for killing the man who dishonoured his sister, Blaine ‘Mick’ McFadden has spent the last six years in Velant, a penal colony in the frigid northern wastelands of Edgeland. Harsh military discipline and the oppressive magic of the governor’s mages keep a fragile peace as colonists struggle against a hostile environment. But the supply ships from Dondareth have stopped coming, boding ill for the kingdom that banished the colonists.

Now, McFadden and the people of Velant must decide their fate. They can remain in their icy prison, removed from the devastation of the outside world, but facing a subsistence-level existence, or they can return to the ruins of the kingdom that they once called home. Either way, destruction lies ahead . . .

James Maxey – Witchbreaker (Solaris)
Long ago, Lord Stark Tower – the famed Witchbreaker – nearly wiped out the witches. Today, only a handful of women still practice the weaving craft in secret. The witch Sorrow, Infidel’s fellow adventurer, has vowed to right this wrong, wiping out the Church of the Book and launching a new golden age of witchcraft. In pursuit of her goal, she has bonded her soul with Rott, the primal dragon of decay, giving her near-limitless powers of destruction.

Unfortunately, this power has cost Sorrow her humanity, leading her to a desperate quest to fi nd the greatest witch of all time, Avaris – rumoured to still be alive after hundreds of years – in hopes of mastering her dark magic before it destroys her. But she’s not alone in hunting Avaris, as fate throws her into an uneasy partnership with a man who wants to be the new Witchbreaker. Can either of them survive their mutual quests when their journey leads them into battle with Tempest, the primal dragon of storms?

K.J. Taylor – The Shadow’s Heir (Ace)
Laela Redguard was born with the black hair of the Northern kingdom and the blue eyes of the Southern people, forever marking her as a hated half-breed child of both. While Laela’s Northern features allow her to blend into the crowds of King Arenadd’s seat at Malvern, she cannot avoid falling victim to a pair of common thugs. But when a stranger saves her life and gives her a place to stay, Laela is shocked to learn he is Arenadd himself—a man said to be a murderer who sold his soul to the Night God—the King without a heart…

February

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Robert Jackson Bennett – American Elsewhere (Orbit)
Ex-cop Mona Bright has been living a hard couple of years on the road, but when her estranged father dies, she finds she’s had a home all along: a little house her deceased mother once owned in Wink, New Mexico.

And though every map denies Wink exists, Mona finds they’re wrong: not only is Wink real, it is the perfect American small town, somehow retaining all the Atomic Age optimism the rest of world has given up on.

But the closer Mona gets to understanding her mother’s past, the more she begins to understand that the people in Wink are very, very different—and what’s more, Mona begins to recognize her own bond to this strange place, which feels more like home every day.

C. Robert Cargill – Dreams and Shadows (Gollancz)
In the debut novel DREAMS AND SHADOWS, screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill takes us beyond the veil, through the lives of Ewan and Colby, young men whose spirits have been enmeshed with the otherworld from a young age.

This brilliantly crafted narrative – part Neil Gaiman, part Guillermo Del Torro, part William Burroughs – follows the boys from their star-crossed adolescences to their haunted adulthoods. Cargill’s tour-de-force takes us inside the Limestone Kingdom, a parallel universe where whisky swilling genies and foul mouthed wizards argue over the state of the metaphysical realm. Having left the spirit world and returned to the human world, Ewan and Colby discover that the creatures from this previous life have not forgotten them, and that fate can never be sidestepped.

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Myke Cole – Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier (Ace/Headline)
Colonel Alan Bookbinder is an army bureaucrat whose worst war wound is a paper-cut. But when he develops criminalized magical powers, he is torn from everything he knows and thrown onto the front-lines—where he will face not only a horrific enemy, but the most wanted man in the known universe…

Lee Collins – She Returns From War (Angry Robot Books)
Four years after the horrific events in Leadville, a young woman from England, Victoria Dawes, sets into motion a series of events that will lead Cora and herself out into the New Mexico desert in pursuit of Anaba, a Navajo witch bent on taking revenge for the atrocities committed against her people.

Francis Knight – Fade to Black (Orbit)
Mahala: a city built in the dark depths of a valley. A city built up in layers, not across – where streets are built upon streets, buildings balance precariously upon buildings. A city that the Ministry rules from its lofty perch at the sunlit summit and where the forsaken lurk in the shadowy depths of the Pit.

Rojan is a bounty hunter trying to make his way in the city. Everyone knows he’s a womaniser, a shirker of all responsibility, but they don’t know he’s also a pain-mage: able to draw magic from his own and other people’s pain. He’s not keen on using it (not least because it’s outlawed), but when his niece is abducted and taken to the dark depths of the Pit, he may just be forced to unleash his power . . .

Ian Tregillis – The Coldest War (Orbit)
For decades, Britain’s warlocks have been all that stands between the British Empire and the Soviet Union – a vast domain stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the English Channel. Now each wizard’s death is another blow to Britain’s national security.

Meanwhile, a brother and sister – the subjects of a twisted Nazi experiment to imbue ordinary people with superhuman abilities –escape from a top-secret facility deep behind the Iron Curtain. They head for England, because that’s where former spy Raybould Marsh lives. And Gretel, the mad seer, has plans for him.

As Marsh is once again drawn into the world of Milkweed, he discovers that Britain’s darkest acts didn’t end with the war. And while he strives to protect queen and country, he is forced to confront his own willingness to accept victory at any cost.

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Paul Witcover – The Emperor of All Things (Transworld)
Tempus Rerum Imperator: Time, Emperor of All Things

1758. England is embroiled in a globe-spanning conflict that stretches from her North American colonies to Europe and beyond. Across the Channel, the French prepare for an invasion – an invasion rumored to be led by none other than Bonnie Prince Charlie. It seems the map of Europe is about to be redrawn. Yet behind these dramatic scenes, another war is raging – a war that will determine not just the fate of nations but of humanity itself…

Daniel Quare is a journeyman in an ancient guild, The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. He is also a Regulator, part of an elite network within the guild devoted to searching out and claiming for England’s exclusive use any horological innovation that could give them an upperhand, whether in business or in war.

Just such a mission has brought Quare to the London townhouse of eccentric collector, Lord Wichcote. He seeks a pocket watch rumoured to possess seemingly impossible properties that are more to do with magic than with any science familiar to Quare or to his superiors. And the strange timepiece has attracted the attention of others as well: the mysterious masked thief known only as Grimalkin, and a deadly French spy who stop at nothing to bring the prize back to his masters. Soon Quare finds himself on a dangerous trail of intrigue and murder that leads far from the world he knows into an otherwere of dragons and demigods, in which nothing is as it seems … time least of all.

March
Lee Battersby – The Marching Dead Angry Robot Books)
Find the dead a King, save himself, win the love of his life, live happily ever after. No wonder Marius dos Helles is bored. But now something has stopped the dead from, well, dying.

It’s up to Marius, Gerd, and Gerd’s not-dead-enough Granny to journey across the continent and put the dead back in the afterlife where they belong.

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Rosie Garland – The Palace of Curiosities (HarperCollins)
Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa, forged in the heat of a merciless sun. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps…and when Eve is born, the story goes, she didn’t cry – she meowed and licked her paws.

When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste?

Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They soar to fame as The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.

Matthew Hughes – Hell to Pay (Angry Robot Books)
Meet Chesney Arnstruther. Once a mild-mannered insurance actuary, now a full-time crime-fighting superhero, it’s all he can do to kick bad-guy ass while at the same time holding down a steady relationship with the gorgeous Melda. Something is going on.

Meet Xaphan, wise-cracking demon and the source of (almost) all of Chesney’s powers. He’s been asked by his infernal master to give Chesney whatever he needs… but surely stopping bad guys is not in Hell’s plan? Something is definitely going on.

Meet Arthur Wrigley, a modest yet charming older gentleman whose nasty little hobby is fleecing innocent widows. Meet Simon Magus, ancient mystic and magician from Biblical times now very much enamoured of Vegas, baby. And pray you never meet the Chikkichikk, a proud and ancient race of, well, warrior dinosaurs, from the universe that God made then rejected before He started monkeying around with this one. Whatever the hell is going on, this is definitely the third book in the wondrous To Hell & Back series.

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Fiona McIntosh – The Scrivener’s Tale (HarperVoyager)
In the bookshops and cafes of present-day Paris, ex-psychologist Gabe Figaret is trying to put his shattered life back together. When another doctor, Reynard, asks him to help with a delusional female patient, Gabe is reluctant… until he meets her. At first Gabe thinks the woman, Angelina, is merely terrified of Reynard, but he quickly discovers she is not quite what she seems.

As his relationship with Angelina deepens, Gabe′s life in Paris becomes increasingly unstable. He senses a presence watching and following every move he makes, and yet he finds Angelina increasingly irresistible.

When Angelina tells Gabe he must kill her and flee to a place she calls Morgravia, he is horrified. But then Angelina shows him that the cathedral he has dreamt about since childhood is real and exists in Morgravia.

Soon, Gabe′s world will be turned upside down, and he will learn shocking truths about who he is . . . and who he can – or cannot – trust.

Emma Newman – Between Two Thorns (Angry Robot Books)
Something is wrong in Aquae Sulis, Bath’s secret mirror city.

The new season is starting and the Master of Ceremonies is missing. Max, an Arbiter of the Split Worlds Treaty, is assigned with the task of finding him with no one to help but a dislocated soul and a mad sorcerer.

There is a witness but his memories have been bound by magical chains only the enemy can break. A rebellious woman trying to escape her family may prove to be the ally Max needs.

But can she be trusted? And why does she want to give up eternal youth and the life of privilege she’s been born into?

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Geoffrey Wilson – The Place of Dead Kings (Hodder & Stoughton)
Can England be liberated if the Holy Grail is found? An epic quest to Scotland set in a magical alternate Britain.

It is 1855. The English revolt has failed, and brutal General Vadula governs England now. Only a few small bands of English rebels still hold out against the Rajthanan empire.

Jack Casey survives in remote Shropshire, training young rebels to use the conqueror’s magic. But he is gravely ill, with only two months to live…

Then refugees bring with them news of a rogue Indian sorceror in Scotland. Mahajan has discovered a mysterious power in the uncharted country to the north – a power that could be the legendary Holy Grail.

By Mieneke Published 16 December, 2012 Posted in article, fantasy Tagged: Ace, Angry Robot Books, anticipated, Gollancz, HarperCollins, HarperVoyager, Headline, Hodder, Jo Fletcher Books, Orbit, Solaris, Tor UK, Transworld | 3 Comments

Meanwhile on… the Jo Fletcher Books blog

This past week I staged a takeover of the Jo Fletcher Books blog. Jo Fletcher Books is the SF/F/H imprint for Quercus Books and publishes some amazing books. When they asked me to take over the blog for a week I was chuffed and I was fortunate enough to get help from some of my blogging friends for one of the posts. In case you haven’t seen me tweeting about the posts or don’t follow the JFB blog, I thought I’d post a handy-dandy list of links to the posts here:

Blog Takeover: A Fantastical Librarian – I answer my own Blogger Query questions
Why I’m any kind of Fantasy reader
Here Be Spoilers with Jared and Anne from Pornokitsch, Paul Holmes from The Eloquent Page, and Paul Weimer.
Jo Fletcher Books Debuts for Spring 2013

I had lots of fun putting the posts together and I wanted to thank Mark and Daniel from Quercus and Jo Fletcher Books again for the opportunity to takeover the JFB blog for a few days!

By Mieneke Published 18 November, 2012 Posted in article, guest post Tagged: Jo Fletcher Books | Leave a comment

Tom Pollock – The City’s Son

Expelled from school, betrayed by her best friend and virtually ignored by her dad, who’s never recovered from the death of her mum, Beth Bradley retreats to the sanctuary of the streets, looking for a new home.

What she finds is Filius Viae, the ragged and cocky crown prince of London, who opens her eyes to the place she’s never truly seen.

But the hidden London is on the brink of destruction. Reach, the King of the Cranes, is a malign god of demolition, and he wants Filius dead. In the absence of the Lady of the Streets, Filius’ goddess mother, Beth rouses Filius to raise an alleyway army, to reclaim London’s skyscraper throne for the mother he’s never known.

Beth has almost forgotten her old life – until her best friend and her father come searching for her, and she must choose between the streets and the life she left behind.

Tom Pollock’s The City’s Son was a much buzzed about debut earlier this year and one I was completely looking forward to as well. A novel in the tradition of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, novels which I both loved, and similarly set in London, The City’s Son has a magic all its own. Pollock’s created a fantastic read, which I’m actually finding rather hard to review, as I can’t think of a bad thing to say; I just want to rave about how wonderful I found it and how much I loved it. It’s hard to pinpoint why I loved it, I just want to say everything. Still, I’m going to try and be a little more coherent about it, but you have been warned!

The environment Pollock creates – the unseen London, if you will – is fantastic. It is a rich creation, which takes places known and loved and distils their essence and lets said essence inform the creatures that inhabit them. I loved his creatures and their personalities. Both the creatures of Mater Viae and those of Reach have a feeling of wildness, capriciousness, and danger to them: the Sodiumites and Blankleits, who both burn and light your way; the Pylon Spiders, feeding of human voices; the Railwraiths; the Scaffwolves, the Wire Mistress, the Pavement priests. They are all part of the fabric of the city, perhaps that part that makes London magical. One of my favourite terms in the book is urbosynthesis. It’s the way Filius feeds; he nourishes and replenishes himself with the energy of the city, like a plant on sunlight. And I recognised it, as it’s the same feeling I have when I visit London: that jolt of energy that comes just from being there and walking its streets.

To inhabit his version of London, Pollock has created some really wonderful characters. The first and most important of which is Beth. She’s my new favourite YA heroine; she’s brave, smart, and loyal, but oh so flawed—and knows it. I loved how her jaded outlook on life overlaid an idealist who stands by both her friends and what she believes is right, even if it’s to her own detriment. Her most important connections in the book are those to Pen and Filius. While the romance between Beth and Filius is a little obvious, I liked that it was hesitant and tentative, so it worked for me. Even if there is a strong attraction for Beth to Filius’ wildness, her connection to Pen is far stronger and I loved the depth of their friendship. Beth and Pen have the sort of friendship that can withstand anything, even each other, and I loved how Pollock used it to anchor Beth to the mundane world. Filius is a fascinating character, but also a tragic one. We get to know him quite well, as those parts of the narrative told from his perspective are in first person. We really get to look inside his head and see how conflicted he is about being the Urchin Prince, destined to save the City from Reach. Even so, he never became as alive for me as Beth or even Pen. Because, while Pen may not be able to act for much of the book, when she does and when we get to see her view of things, she shone. And I was really excited to see on the Jo Fletcher website that she’ll have a large role in the next book The Glass Republic. One character that completely broke my heart was Beth’s dad. While I wanted to shake him for the way he’s neglected Beth after his wife’s death, at the same time I felt such pity for his collapse. And the way he ‘wakes up’ out of his depression and realises what he’s done and how he tries to make up for it, was rather touching.

The City’s Son‘s plot was very well done too. The structure is interesting, reaching several crescendo’s in the form of battles, confrontations and other shenanigans and keeps developing right up until the end. There were several twists I hadn’t seen coming, which all served to deepen the plot and the characters. In addition to the structure of the plot I also found the narrative structure, which uses first person narration for Filius and third person for everyone else, very appealing. Though it seems to become more prevalent, as I’ve read several such books this year, it’s still a fairly original approach and one I really enjoy.

The City’s Son is a stunning debut from Tom Pollock; his is a unique voice and vision of London. His love for the city bleeds off the page and makes me long to be able to visit the city once more. The book is an absolute contender for favourite read of the year and I can’t wait for the sequel, The Glass Republic, due out in August 2013.

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 13 November, 2012 Posted in fantasy, review, YA Tagged: Jo Fletcher Books | Leave a comment

Evie Manieri – Blood’s Pride

A generation has passed since that bloody night when the Norlanders’ great ships bore down on the Shadar, and from the backs of their great flying beasts, the ‘Dead Ones’ slashed and burned the desert city into submission. Now the enslaved Shadari toil in the mines for the increasingly rare black ore, the Norlanders’ greatest prize.

The Norlander governor is dying, and his three alienated children struggle against the crushing isolation of their lives in the desert. Eofar, the eldest, searches desperately for the runaway Shadari slave who will soon give birth to his child. His fiercely ambitious sister Frea, her perfect face hidden beneath a silver wolf’s helm, works the helpless slaves to death to further her interests at the far-off Norland court. And Isa, the youngest, tries to mould herself into the epitome of the icy northern warrior, though she knows nothing but the burning sands.

Into this world strolls the Mongrel, summoned by the Shadari rebels to lead their bid for freedom. Her terms are unusual – and unsettling: she will name her reward only after the Norlanders have been defeated. Her presence is like an acid, stripping away the lies of the past, and bonds of blood and race are shattered, only to be replaced by new and unexpected alliances.

An interview with Civilian Reader first made me aware of Evie Manieri’s debut novel Blood’s Pride. It sounded really good, plus I saw several people be very complimentary about it on Twitter. So when I had the chance to review it, I jumped. It turns out that the people of Twitter spoke truly when they said Blood’s Pride was a wonderful debut. It is a wonderful epic fantasy tale, with a close personal feel. On the book jacket there is a quote from Fantasy Faction that says “Combine Trudi Canavan with [George R.R.] Martin and you won’t be far off”; however, to me Blood’s Pride evoked another Australian author, Rowena Cory Daniells, whose works – especially the Outcast Chronicles – gave me the same sense of immediacy and the same urge to keep turning pages. In fact, clocking in at 516 pages, Blood’s Pride is a big, fat door-stopper of a book, but I finished in a bit over a day. And that is something that rarely happens these days!

While Blood’s Pride had some amazing world building and a grabbing plot – more on both of those later – what grabbed me most were the characters. Manieri fills her world with some amazing people, who for better or for worse, do what they think is best and do so even if they are flinching from the consequences. While from the above flap text it seems that the book focuses on the three Norlander siblings and the Mongrel, in fact the cast of main point of view characters is far larger and Frea, the middle sibling, and the Mongrel don’t have their own points of view. The points of view are mixed between all three races present in the narrative, three Norlander, two Shadari, and one Nomas. I liked all of their story lines, but my favourites were Isa, Rho and Harotha. Isa is the youngest of the three siblings and somewhat the odd one out. I loved how she came into her own during the narrative, finding herself, her strength and an innate wisdom that made her leap off the page. Her final decision in this book left me both saddened and proud, because she chose to do what was right at great personal cost and I’m hoping we’ll see that courage repaid in the next book. Rho is a Norlander guard and he crept under my skin. I loved his connection to Dramash and the unreasoning feeling of protectiveness he has towards the boy. Harotha broke my heart in several places, protecting those she loves with cruel words and discovering that not everyone changes for the better. The Mongrel’s story and character was fascinating and while at times her refusal to explain her actions to Jachad made me want to slap her, she stole every scene she was in. Manieri created some well-formed bad guys. Especially Frea, who is stone-cold and ambitious, but Manieri manages to create empathy for her, by showing what has formed her character and informed her choices.

The world building was fabulous. The races inhabiting the world of the book are fascinating. I loved the warm-blood/cold-blood juxtaposition between the Shadari and the Norlanders and the latter’s forced nocturnal way of life as a result of their physical traits. I loved that this hadn’t anything to do with vampirism, but was due to their adapting to the harsh conditions of their homeland. They are also a strong honour-based warrior culture and I always enjoy those. The Shadari are warm-blooded and well adapted to their desert habitation. I found their culture, where literacy is taboo for anyone other than a priest and even looking at writing evokes a feeling of horror in most regular Shadari, to be fascinating. The idea of institutionalised illiteracy is abhorrent to me, but I loved how Manieri fit it in to the narrative and even made it seem logical. The Nomas don’t seem to differ too much from the Shadari, but are very much different in their cultural development, with their nation split into two by gender, the men folk trading in the deserts and the women folk trading by the sea. They even worship opposing gods, the men worship Shof (the sun) and the women Amai (the moon). While most of the action was focused on the Shadar and the Shadari temple in Blood’s Pride, there is a definite sense of a well-defined world surrounding it and I can’t wait to explore more of it in further books in the Shattered Kingdoms.

The plot is an interesting mix of rebellion and discovery. The rebellion part should speak for itself; the Shadari rise up against their Norlander conquerors to throw them out of the Shadar. The discovery part is less self-explanatory, as there are several forms of discovery. It’s the Mongrel discovering her heritage and the reason for her abandonment; it’s Eonar, Frea, and Isa discovering the real truths behind their mother’s tragic demise and their posting in the Shadar; it’s Isa discovering her inner strength and wisdom; it’s Daryan finally discovering how to be the leader everyone expects him to be; it’s Harotha’s discovery of the history of their people. And these are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head, there are more I am sure. All of these discoveries are an integral part of the plot and move it forward at a fast clip. Coupled with an incredibly smooth writing style, Blood’s Pride reads like a dream, with pages and pages gone at such a fast rate I kept being surprised by the small amount of time that had actually passed—normally it’s the other way around.

Blood’s Pride is a great debut for Evie Manieri and gives us a great new voice in epic fantasy. I had a fabulous time with this story and I can’t wait to return to it with the second instalment. If epic fantasy is your thing, you really ought to pick up Blood’s Pride and discover the rich world of Manieri’s Shattered Kingdoms. Check back tomorrow for an interview with the author!

This book was provided for review by the publisher.

By Mieneke Published 22 October, 2012 Posted in fantasy, review Tagged: Jo Fletcher Books | 1 Comment

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