New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another (long delayed) edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about?

Addison, Katherine. The Witness for the Dead [Tor]
Publisher's Description:

Katherine Addison returns to the glittering world she created for her beloved novel, The Goblin Emperor, in this stand-alone sequel

When the young half-goblin emperor Maia sought to learn who had set the bombs that killed his father and half-brothers, he turned to an obscure resident of his father’s Court, a Prelate of Ulis and a Witness for the Dead. Thara Celehar found the truth, though it did him no good to discover it. He lost his place as a retainer of his cousin the former Empress, and made far too many enemies among the many factions vying for power in the new Court. The favor of the Emperor is a dangerous coin.

Now Celehar lives in the city of Amalo, far from the Court though not exactly in exile. He has not escaped from politics, but his position gives him the ability to serve the common people of the city, which is his preference. He lives modestly, but his decency and fundamental honesty will not permit him to live quietly. As a Witness for the Dead, he can, sometimes, speak to the recently dead: see the last thing they saw, know the last thought they had, experience the last thing they felt. It is his duty use that ability to resolve disputes, to ascertain the intent of the dead, to find the killers of the murdered.

Celehar’s skills now lead him out of the quiet and into a morass of treachery, murder, and injustice. No matter his own background with the imperial house, Celehar will stand with the commoners, and possibly find a light in the darkness.

Katherine Addison has created a fantastic world for these books – wide and deep and true.

Why We Want It: This is the novel we didn't think we'd get. Addison had said that The Goblin Emperor was a standalone and that was seven years ago, so a return to this world is a welcome surprise. The Goblin Emperor was a spectacular fantasy, so we are so very excited. Adri has a nanoreview.

Cho, Zen. Black Water Sister [Ace]
Publisher's Description:

When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, she chalks it up to stress. Closeted, broke and jobless, she’s moving back to Malaysia with her parents – a country she last saw when she was a toddler.

She soon learns the new voice isn’t even hers, it’s the ghost of her estranged grandmother. In life, Ah Ma was a spirit medium, avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she’s determined to settle a score against a business magnate who has offended the god—and she’s decided Jess is going to help her do it, whether Jess wants to or not.

Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business, but dealing with her grandmother is just as complicated. Especially when Ah Ma tries to spy on her personal life, threatens to spill her secrets to her family and uses her body to commit felonies. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she’ll also need to regain control of her body and destiny – or the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.

Why We Want It: The Sorcerer to the Crown and The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water are so different from each other in style and tone, but what they share is being two thrillingly excellent stories and it is that difference that tells me that whatever Cho writes is something that I want to read.

Khaw, Cassandra. The All Consuming World [Erewhon]
Publisher's Description:

Maya has died and been resurrected into countless cyborg bodies through the years of a long, dangerous career with the infamous Dirty Dozen, the most storied crew of criminals in the galaxy, at least before their untimely and gruesome demise.

Decades later, she and her diverse team of broken, diminished outlaws must get back together to solve the mystery of their last, disastrous mission and to rescue a missing and much-changed comrade . . . but they’re not the only ones in pursuit of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir.

The highly evolved AI of the galaxy have their own agenda and will do whatever it takes to keep humanity from ever regaining control. As Maya and her comrades spiral closer to uncovering the AIs’ vast conspiracy, this band of violent women—half-clone and half-machine—must battle their own traumas and a universe of sapient ageships who want them dead, in order to settle their affairs once and for all.

Welcome to The All-Consuming World, the debut novel of acclaimed writer Cassandra Khaw. With this explosive and introspective exploration of humans and machines, life and death, Khaw takes their rightful place next to such science fiction luminaries as Ann Leckie, Ursula Le Guin, and Kameron Hurley.

Why We Want It: That description. It's not often that a book description actually sells me on a story, but oh my fierce god that description.

Pinsker, Sarah. We Are Satellites [Berkley]
Publisher's Description:

From award-winning author Sarah Pinsker comes a novel about one family and the technology that divides them.

Everybody’s getting one.

Val and Julie just want what’s best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all.

Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device.

Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse? And how do you stop a technology once it’s everywhere? Those are the questions Sophie and her anti-Pilot movement rise up to answer, even if it puts them up against the Pilot’s powerful manufacturer and pits Sophie against the people she loves most.

Why We Want It: This is one we've already read (and reviewed not once, but twice) - so we already know We Are Satellites is great. But - just in case you don't know, Sarah Pinsker is one of our great storytellers working today. Her debut novel A Song for a New Day was eerily prescient and exceptional. Her short stories are all top notch, and we're here for everything she writes.

Solomon, Rivers. Sorrowland [MCD]
Publisher's Description:

A triumphant, genre-bending breakout novel from one of the boldest new voices in contemporary fiction

Vern—seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised—flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future—outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland is a genre-bending work of Gothic fiction. Here, monsters aren’t just individuals, but entire nations. It is a searing, seminal book that marks the arrival of a bold, unignorable voice in American fiction.

Why We Want It: It is difficult to say that we're "excited" for a new book from Rivers Solomon because their books are just so heavy, but their work is so exceptional that you don't want to look away. Sorrowland, even just suggested by the title let alone the description, is looking to be a heavy and spectacular. Adri already wrote about it, so check out her review.

Vaughn, Carrie. Questland [John Joseph Adams]
Publisher's Description:

YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A MAZE FULL OF TWISTY PASSAGES...

Literature professor Dr. Addie Cox is living a happy, if sheltered, life in her ivory tower when Harris Lang, the famously eccentric billionaire tech genius, offers her an unusual job. He wants her to guide a mercenary strike team sent to infiltrate his island retreat off the northwest coast of the United States. Addie is puzzled by her role on the mission until she understands what Lang has built: Insula Mirabilis, an isolated resort where tourists will one day pay big bucks for a convincing, high-tech-powered fantasy-world experience, complete with dragons, unicorns, and, yes, magic.

Unfortunately, one of the island's employees has gone rogue and activated an invisible force shield that has cut off all outside communication. A Coast Guard cutter attempting to pass through the shield has been destroyed. Suspicion rests on Dominic Brand, the project’s head designer— and Addie Cox's ex-boyfriend. Lang has tasked Addie and the mercenary team with taking back control of the island at any cost.

But Addie is wrestling demons of her own—and not the fantastical kind. Now, she must navigate the deadly traps of Insula Mirabilis as well as her own past trauma. And no d20, however lucky, can help Addie make this saving throw.

Why We Want It: I'm sorry to admit that I had fallen off of Carrie Vaughn for a bit following her concluding the Kitty Norville series of novels in 2015, but her two Robin Hood novellas last year was a reminder just how much I like her writing. I've heard nothing but great things about Questland and it's time to get back.

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 5x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

Microreview [book]: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

A story of trauma, transformation and healing with a protagonist whose journey is impossible not to root for

Content Warning: Mentions of child marriage and offsceen CSA, body horror

Having brought us a generation ship space opera with US chattel slavery race dynamics, and a story of first contact and alien society with the Black merfolk of Drexciya, I went into Rivers Solomon's third book with expectations of something similarly genre bending and thoughtful, but otherwise with little expectation of whether Sorrowland, with its intriguing, gothic set-up, would twist towards science fiction, fantasy, realism or some other direction entirely. It's a mild spoiler to answer that question in full, but what I can confirm that Sorrowland is full of magic in its most basic sense: events and locations that seem mundane on their surface but are transfused with mythical qualities. At the centre of it is Vern, Sorrowland's protagonist and one of the most engaging, interesting protagonists I've ever spent a book with. From the first few pages of Vern's narration, I was hooked on her character's voice, and in following her journey through its heartbreak and discovery I was desperate for things to work out in some for her.

Sorrowland opens with Vern as a pregnant teenage girl escaping an unknown "fiend" in the forest near Cainland, the commune compound where she grew up. Vern's first act is to give birth in the midst of making her escape, taking her twins Howling and Feral - both referred to with he/him pronouns, though their gender is left ambiguous - to live in the safety of the woods. Vern is able to survive almost exclusively on what the forest provides, her inexplicable survival skills providing the first hint both of extraordinary abilities and her strength of character - but the Fiend continues to pursue her and make its presence known, and eventually it becomes clear that at least some of what Vern needs is outside of the forest. So she leaves, first temporarily, finding comfort with a woman called Ollie; and later, while seeking her closest friend from the compound who left under mysterious circumstances, with a more permanent support network. By the point of her departure, our suspicions that Vern carries supernatural abilities of some form have been confirmed, and Vern herself is grappling with a transformation that she can't fully understand, but which is clearly linked to her former life in Cainland.

As a cult survivor, Vern's experiences in Cainland permeate every facet of Sorrowland's story, from the overt - her past, and the circumstances in which she ran away, are explored throughout the book's first section - to the way she expresses her political and cultural beliefs, to the contrast between Vern's upbringing and the start in life she gives her own children. Cainland is a Black commune built to offer its residents an alternative to white supremacist society, but by Vern's time this mission has been corrupted by authoritarian religious patriarchy which forcibly cuts its members off from outside communication and preaches hate against queer folk while enabling child marriage for its leaders. As an albino intersex girl with an exclusive attraction to women, and strong opinions about the world around her, Vern finds it impossible to mould herself to the expectations of the compound, and its no accident that Howling and Feral are brought up in an environment where curiosity is encouraged and only curbed when it would bring immediate danger. This being Rivers Solomon, of course, Cainland doesn't exist in a political vacuum, and as Vern's personal transformation is explored, the factors that made that compound what it was also come into play.

Running in parallel the physical repercussions of Vern upbringing is her emotional journey, one which involves grappling with the trauma of Cainland and learning to live with (and embrace!) the parts of her which it tried to suppress. A large part of that is Vern's sexuality, and Sorrowland has some great (consensual) queer sex, including a poly encounter towards the end of the book which would be a spoiler to begin to describe but made me go "ohhh???" in a very intrigued and thoughtful way. (Maybe also some other emotions). Finding accommodation for her disability (Vern has nystigmatus due to her albinism, which reduces her vision and stops her being able to read) and gaining access not just to books but to people who support her intellectual curiosity and interests is also a significant - and heartwarming - part of her healing towards the second half of the book. But Vern's greatest emotional challenge, and the part that propels the book to its eventual, unexpected climax is reckoning with the way the cult has negatively affected her relationships. Vern's feelings towards her mother, who took her to live in Cainland in the first place and allowed her to become a child bride; her childhood friend Lucy, who left her abruptly with only an address in a book she couldn't read to track her down; her allies outside the compound, especially Native woman Bridget and her niece Gogo who offer Vern and her children an eventual home; and of course Vern's precociously smart, curious, thoughtful children: all these relationships are complicated and nuanced and come together in a messy but optimistic vision of healing, however imperfectly, from trauma. While its ending was more high-stakes than I anticipated, the work Sorrowland puts into its emotional journey had the biggest payoff for me, and I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Howling and Feral as their own well-rounded human beings even at a young age, with relationships with adults which go beyond a one-way system of care.

Sorrowland covers so much ground, and a lot of it is best experienced without knowing what's to come, making it a difficult book to really sum up in a review. This is a work of thoughtful, passionate brilliance from a writer at the top of faer game, and trying to capture that in a 1,000 word one-sitting review is like trying to describe the ocean to someone who has never experienced water. This isn't an easy book - if you're familiar with Solomon's previous books, you won't be expecting that anyway - but if you have the time to devote to it, Sorrowland's journey is a powerful one and ultimately something that left me with a great deal of hope for its characters. And I simply cannot rate Vern highly enough, in all her prickly, passionate, confused glory - her journey is one that will stay with me long after I put Sorrowland down.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: Packs so many layers of nuance in depicting Vern's struggles and the forces she is up against

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

Posted by: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Reference: Solomon, Rivers. Sorrowland [MCD Books (US)/Merky Books (UK)]

Reading the Hugos: Short Story

Welcome back to Reading the Hugos, 2020 Edition! Today we are taking a look at the six finalists in the Short Story category.

None of the finalists were on my nominating ballot, but I read fewer stories last year than I would have liked. I've read some of the authors on this year's ballot before, but Nibedita Sen and Shiv Ramdas are completely new to me and I'm not sure if I've read S.L. Huang before, but that is certainly going to change after reading "As the Last I May Know".

Let's take a look at the finalists.


“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons, 9 September 2019)
“As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang (Tor.com, 23 October 2019)
“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, 24 July 2019)
“A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2019)
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 2019)
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare Magazine, May 2019)


A Catalog of Storms: When the weather is almost sentient and angry, the only defense is people who are willing and able to sacrifice their own lives by turning into a more soothing weather. "A Catalog of Storms" reads better than that description, but that's the best way I can wrap my brain around this story. There's a lot here to appreciate, but there's something about Fran Wilde's fiction that just doesn't grab me, just doesn't work for me. That remains the case with "A Catalog of Storms". I can see the emotional heart of the story, but it remains empty for me as a reader.

Fran Wilde is also a finalist for the Lodestar Award with her novel Riverland. Riverland was the winner of the Andre Norton Award and "A Catalog of Storms" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award.


And Now His Lordship: There are stories you appreciate for the craft rather than the execution and this is one of those stories. The ending of "And Now His Lordship Is Laughing" is excellent, it's exactly what the story needed and what the story was leading up to. Shiv Ramdas is telling a story of colonization, magic in the real world, and the cost of those colonized and used for resources. Set back in World War II, the story resonates today. I admire so much about the story, except for my desire to actually read it.

"And Now His Lordship Is Laughing" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award.


Ten Excerpts: Perhaps the story would not have worked so well if it was longer or fleshed out in a more conventional narrative form, but I really wanted more of this story. Sen rolls out the story in little disparate bits of academic commentary, moving through the titular bibliography and giving the story of the Ratnabar women more context and more heartbreak, though that heartbreak is suggestive from the beginning. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island" is exceptional.

Nibedita Sen is on the Astounding Award ballot for Best New Writer this year. "Ten Excerpts" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award


Blood is Another Word for Hunger: It should be no surprise that a Rivers Solomon story is as good as it is powerful, and "Blood is Another Word for Hunger" is exactly that.  It's a story of an enslaved woman taking her freedom by taking the lives of her captors, but it each of those killings which drives the story forward by birthing spirit lives. This isn't a post-slavery tale so much as it deals with the trauma of slavery and it is a trauma that doesn't end with freedom - regardless of how that freedom is attained. This is an unrelenting story, an excellent one.

Rivers Solomon is also a Best Novella finalist for The Deep.


Do Not Look Back, My Lion: This is Harrow's first story since winning the Hugo Award last year for "A Witch's Guide to Escape" and it's another banger. Tightly written, "Do Not Look Back, My Lion" is a heartbreaking story of love and loss, of duty and promises to family. The story is perpetually on the edge of a war, but is centered on a desire to not have one of the children marked to be a soldier. This is a beautiful story, raw with grief.

Alix E. Harrow's debut novel is both a Hugo and Nebula Award finalist for Best Novel. "Do Not Look Back, My Lion" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award.


As the Last I May Know: S.L. Huang looks at the problem of nuclear weapons and the deeper problem of how easy it is for a single person (with or without checks and balances) to figuratively push a button and destroy millions if not billions people. Those weapons still exist, but the cost of using them is exorbitant - the access code is embedded the body of a young girl and the personal cost of using those weapons is that President must murder that girl. "As the Last I May Know" is perfectly told, painfully told - and it is a stunning perfect story.


My Vote:
1. "As the Last I May Know"
2. "Do Not Look Back, My Lion"
3. "Blood is Another Word for Hunger"
4. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island"
5. "And Now His Lordship is Laughing"
6. "A Catalog of Storms"


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

Top 9 Books of the Year

Some people do a top ten list, others do a top eleven (insert your Spinal Tap joke here), yet others may only do five. My list is 9 books long. Why? Partly to be a little bit different and partly because I want the tenth spot on my list to be reserved for that really great book which I simply did not get the chance to read during 2019. That really great book may also be something I have only heard whispers about and I may not discover for several more years. Whatever that tenth great book is, I’m holding a spot for it on my list.

Also, there is no doubt that this list, like every other list out there is built entirely on the combination of the books I've actually read with my own prejudices, taste, preferences, and the choices I made when selecting books to read across the breadth of 2019. That's really what we're saying when we say we've put together a list of the "Best Books of the Year". It's the best we've read, the best we can remember, the best based on what we appreciate in speculative fiction. One of the other best books I've read this year is Colson Whitehead's latest novel The Nickel Boy, but this is a speculative fiction blog focusing on more nerdy endeavors, so for the sake of theme I'll limit this list to science fiction, fantasy, and everything in between and around the edges.

This Top Nine List is more or less in order.  The top two or three slots are a complete lock, but ask me tomorrow and some titles may shift around a bit.  Whichever order the list is in, these are the nine novels published in 2019 which I feel were the strongest titles of the year.

1. The Light Brigade: The Light Brigade is a bold novel in the tradition of Starship Troopers, The Forever War, and Old Man’s War. I don’t use this as an opportunity to list the titles of three significant military science fiction novels I’ve read. I view this more as a recognition of where The Light Brigade should be considered in the larger science fiction conversation about canon (as if there is a singular canon) and of which novels get to be held up as classics of the genre which revitalize and engage with the genre’s past. That’s a bold statement to make about a novel that was published less within the last twelve months, but there it is all the same. The Light Brigade does all of that while telling a strong story about a soldier in the middle of an absolutely messed up war (is there another kind?) that is messed up even further when her combat drops sometimes place her in the wrong battle at the wrong time – the wrong “when”. Hurley ties together all of the complicated timelines and fits it together perfectly. The Light Brigade is a gem of a novel.  (Paul's review)

2. A Song for a New Day: You know how Sarah Pinsker’s stories are little bits of perfection? This novel is all of that, but even moreso. A Song for a New Day is an expansion and a complete reworking of “Our Lady of the Open Road”, one of my favorite stories from Sarah Pinsker. A Song for a New Day is a beautiful and romantic story about live music in a world where large gatherings of people have been made illegal as a result of terrorism. The novel deals with the struggle to hold on to that bit of authenticity and heart that comes from performing in front of a live audience, the humanity found in shared spaces, and yes, it is a gut punch of the best rock and roll. There is a visceral presence to the music and the passion in A Song for a New Day and it’s everything I hoped for from Sarah Pinsker’s debut, and more.

3. Gideon the Ninth: The tag line I’ve seen all year long is “Lesbian Necromancers in Space” and while that is technically correct and was absolutely a selling point for the novel (as was the spot on cover art from Tommy Arnold) that’s not really what Gideon the Ninth is. This is a love story. This is a hate story. This is a locked room mystery (locked citadel on an abandoned planet mystery?). There is beautiful swordfighting, necromancy, magic, absolutely foul mouthed characters, and it’s all a friggin delight. In her review, Adri wrote about the claustrophobic atmosphere and that’s an apt description – which is why the “in space” part doesn’t really apply. The “Lesbian Necromancers” – yeah, it’s very much that and it’s pretty spectacular. One of the most impressive aspects to Gideon the Ninth is that it lives up to the massive hype. Gideon the Ninth is a brutal, sharp, nasty, wonderful novel. Tamsyn Muir will gut you. (Adri's review)

4. The City in the Middle of the Night: If somebody told me that 2019 would bring us a novel that has the strongest resemblance and feeling to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish novels, I’d have been more than skeptical – but The City in the Middle of the Night is so very much that novel. Several times, I had to check the cover to remind myself that this wasn’t Le Guin. It’s not, but The City in the Middle of the Night is a worthy successor to Le Guin’s work while still very much being a Charlie Jane Anders novel and its own thing. There is a tidally locked planet, fascinating characters, absolutely original and creative alien creatures, and a conversation about morality. The City in the Middle of the Night is a novel of big ideas and just as important, it’s a book you don’t want to put down. Anders is doing the work here. This is an absolutely compelling novel that I cannot recommend highly enough.(Paul's review)

5. Jade War: To quote my review: The ongoing conflict between the No Peak and Mountain clans is the core of the story Fonda Lee is telling first with Jade City and now with Jade War, but the heart of the novel is the interplay within the Kaul family of the No Peak clan. The dynamic between Hilo and Shae as siblings and also Pillar with his Weather Man is painfully and perfectly drawn out. It is nearly impossible to not reference The Godfather (either Puzo's novel or Coppola's film) when discussing Jade War because Lee's novel has that feel of family and crime tinged with legitimacy and vengeance and hints of what it looks like from the wider world. Jade War fulfills the promise of Jade City and then raises the bar once again. The novel expands beyond the island of Kekon and Fonda Lee's rich description makes brings each new location alive with the smell and feel of the city and Kekonese in exile. Once again Fonda Lee has delivered a spectacular novel. (my review)

6. The Luminous Dead: Caitlin Starling’s debut novel is a claustrophobic story of deep cave exploration. Starling gets into the reader’s head – the deeper Gyre Price gets, the more fraught the caving, the increased paranoia of Gyre (and the reader!), the deteriorating relationship between Gyre and her guide on the other end of a comm, the isolation of being so deep underground with nobody to come get you if something goes wrong – The Luminous Dead is a deeply unsettling novel and it is a spectacular debut. Starling nails the storytelling and delivers an eerie combination of terror and madness that hits all the right notes.

7. Middlegame: Middlegame is perhaps the most ambitious novels from Seanan McGuire and is a showcase for her skill at telling a good and complex story. Twins, math, alchemy, murder, time-bending, family, secret organizations, impossible powers, and just about everything McGuire can throw into this wonderous novel. Seanan McGuire has blended together as much as she possibly could stuff into one novel and she makes the whole thing work. It’s impressive. McGuire goes big with Middlegame. Doubt Seanan McGuire at your peril. (my review)

8. The Deep: The Deep is a story borne out of the legacy of slavery, of the horrifying reality of slavers crossing the Atlantic Ocean and dumping the bodies of pregnant women over board. It is a story borne out of wondering about what life might grow out of that death. The Deep is a story of origins and new beginnings, of the horror of institutional memory and what it costs the individual. Solomon's writing is incredible. With only a few sentences I felt the water, the pressure of the deep, the movement of current and body. The water almost became a character and, not to mix metaphors too much, grounded the story into a particular location that the reader can sense.

The Deep is a novella filled with pain and despair and rage and a glimmer of hope. It is built off of real history and pulled in unimaginable directions, except that it was imagined and we're all better off because Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes, and Rivers Solomon saw the possibilities of building something beautiful out of raw horror. (my review)

9. Exhalation: It's been seventeen years since Ted Chiang's last (and first) story collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. Exhalation was a literary event that lived up to the hype. Exhalation contains three Hugo Award winners including the excellent The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate. Across the board, these are top tier stories from one of our best storytellers.



As I mentioned in the introduction, for as many books as I read in a year, there is always something amazing that I missed and that I just didn't have time to get to. Or, as plugged in as I try to be, that I just haven't heard of (or heard enough about). As much as I wanted to, I did not read A Memory of Empire (Arkady Martine), The Future of Another Timeline (Annalee Newitz), The Wanderers (Chuck Wendig), The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix E. Harrow), The Dragon Republic (R.F. Kuang), Ancestral Night (Elizabeth Bear), or Magic for Liars (Sarah Gailey), among others. The list of highly recommend and presumably stellar novels that I just didn't get to read this year is long and distinguished. That's the reason for the tenth spot on the list.

Also it is worth noting six books that just missed the list but were in serious contention: Alliance Ricing (C.J. Cherryh and Jane Fancher), Tiamat's Wrath (James S.A. Corey), Atlas Alone (Emma Newman), Gods of Jade and Shadow (Silvia Moreno-Garcia), In An Absent Dream (Seanan McGuire), Vigilance (Robert Jackson Bennett),


Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Cornell, Paul. The Lights Go Out in Lychford [Tor.com Publishing]
Publisher's Description

Be careful what you wish for... 

Paul Cornell's The Lights Go Out in Lychford continues the award-nominated Witches of Lychford series, described by Seanan McGuire as "Beautifully written, perfectly cruel and ultimately kind." 

The borders of Lychford are crumbling. Other realities threaten to seep into the otherwise quiet village, and the resident wise woman is struggling to remain wise. The local magic shop owner and the local priest are having troubles of their own.

And a mysterious stranger is on hand to offer a solution to everyone's problems. No cost, no strings (she says).

But as everyone knows, free wishes from strangers rarely come without a price . . . 

Why We Want It: The first three novellas in Paul Cornell's Lychford were delightful and I'm thrilled to see a fourth.

Morgenstern, Erin. The Starless Sea [Random House]
Publisher's Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea. 

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.

What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life. 

Why We Want It: The Night Circus was a fantastic debut and we were eager for another book from Erin Morgenstern. We didn't expect having to wait eight years, but we don't have to wait any longer. If The Starless Sea is even half as good as The Night Circus, we're in for a treat.

Roanhorse, Rebecca. Star Wars: Resistance Reborn [Del Rey]
Publisher's Description

In this pivotal prequel to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the heroes of the Resistance—Poe Dameron, General Leia Organa, Rey, and Finn—must fight back from the edge of oblivion.

The Resistance is in ruins. In the wake of their harrowing escape from Crait, what was once an army has been reduced to a handful of wounded heroes. Finn, Poe, Rey, Rose, Chewbacca, Leia Organa—their names are famous among the oppressed worlds they fight to liberate. But names can only get you so far, and Leia’s last desperate call for aid has gone unanswered.

From the jungles of Ryloth to the shipyards of Corellia, the shadow of the First Order looms large, and those with the bravery to face the darkness are scattered and isolated. If hope is to survive, the Resistance must journey throughout the galaxy, seeking out more leaders—including those who, in days gone by, helped a nascent rebellion topple an empire. Battles will be fought, alliances will be forged, and the Resistance will be reborn.

Why We Want It: Did you know that Rebecca Roanhorse was writing a Star Wars novel? I sure didn't! I've been behind on reading Star Wars novels ever since the Expanded Universe was scrapped and I just haven't managed to come back. Rebecca Roanhorse will get me back.

Roberson, Jennifer. Life and Limb [DAW]
Publisher's Description

A biker and a cowboy must stop the apocalypse in the first book of the Blood and Bone modern western fantasy series. 

His voice was rich, a much loved baritone, as he handed his seven-year-old grandson a gun. 

“It’s time we had a talk, you and I. You won’t remember it, but you need to know it, and one day, when it’s time, I’ll call it up in you. You’ll know who you are, and what you’re intended to do. You’ll be a soldier, boy. Sealed to it. Life and limb, blood and bone. Not a soldier like others are, for it’s not the kind of war most people fight on earth. But because we’re not ‘most people,’ you and I, it will be far more important. The fate of the world will hinge upon it.” 

Now no longer that wide-eyed child, Gabe is fresh out of prison, a leather-clad biker answering Grandaddy’s peremptory summons to, of all places, a cowboy bar in Northern Arizona. He is about to find out just how different he is from “most people”—and to meet the stranger with whom he will be sealed: life and limb, blood and bone, conscripted to fight an unholy war unlike any other.

For the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

When he does.

And Gabe, thrown into the unlikely company of a country-music-loving rodeo cowboy from West Texas, an ancient Celtic goddess of war, an African Orisha who sings volcanoes awake, a Chinese goddess of mercy, Nephilim, and Grigori, finds himself fighting a battle he was bred for, but wants no part of.

Why We Want It: I loved Roberson's Cheysuli novels, not to mention her collaboration with Kate Elliott and Melanie Rawn (The Golden Key), but after I bounced off of the first Karavans novels I've been looking for a new entry point back into Roberson. I think Life and Limb just might be it.

Solomon, Rivers. The Deep [Saga]
Publisher's Description

The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group clipping 

Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.

Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting. 

Why We Want It: This is a major, important novella. After An Unkindness of Ghosts, whatever Rivers Solomon decided to write next was something to take notice of. Their adaptation of Clipping's Hugo Award finalist song has been at the top of our list as soon as it was announced and it lives up to the hype.

Watts, Peter. Peter Watts Is an Angry Sentient Tumor [Tachyon]
Publisher's Description

Which of the following is true?

• Peter Watts is banned from the U.S. 

• Watts almost died from flesh-eating bacteria. 

• A schizophrenic man living in Watts’s backyard almost set the house on fire. 

• Watts was raised by Baptists who really sucked at giving presents. 

• Peter Watts said to read this book. Or else.

In these unpredictable essays and revenge fantasies, Peter Watts — Hugo Award-winning author, former marine biologist, and angry sentient tumor — is the savage dystopian optimist whom you can’t look away from. Even when you probably should. 

Why We Want It: The title. It's really just the title.



POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Microreview [book]: The Deep, by Rivers Solomon

The Deep is a novella filled with pain and despair and rage and a glimmer of hope. It is built off of real history and pulled in unimaginable directions. The Deep is a must read novella in a year full of must read books.

"Remember," she said.
This was their story. This was where they began. Drowning.
"Submit," Yetu whispered, talking to herself as much as to them.

The Deep is a story borne out of the legacy of slavery, of the horrifying reality of slavers crossing the Atlantic Ocean and dumping the bodies of pregnant women over board. It is a story borne out of wondering about what life might grow out of that death. The Deep is a story of origins and new beginnings, of the horror of institutional memory and what it costs the individual.

Rivers Solomon takes the song "The Deep" from Clipping and gives it further live and character, gives it a different perspective and richness that the song hinted at but that Solomon had the room to explore across 176 pages that wasn't possible in the same way Clipping could do in five and a half minutes. Clipping's song "The Deep" was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form in 2018.

"We grow anxious and restless without you, my child. One can only go for so long without asking, who am I? Where do I come from? What does this all mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after? Without answers, there is only a hole, a hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities."

As the sole historian for the wajinru, it is Yetu's role and responsibility to remember the history of their race. Except for the historian, the wajinru functonally do not have long term memory or a sense of identity. With that lack of memory for the individual, the annual Remembrance gives live to the group because without it they would continue to forget who they are and where they came from. That sounds superficial, but Rivers Solomon and Clipping are not concerned with the surface. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the novella's title (and the song's) is more than just the depth where the wajinru exist.

The wajinru's gradual forgetting of their cultural past causes great pain and desperation and it's tied to a loss of individual identity as well. It is the "endless longing" quoted above. It's more than symbolic. Born from the bodies of the pregnant women thrown into the ocean by slavers, the wajinru are something new and the creation of the wajinru is so awful, so painful, that over the course of generations they adapt so that only one must bear the weight of history. The rest are blessed and cursed to forget. Both are with heavy cost.

I have never read anything like The Deep.

Solomon's writing is incredible. With only a few sentences I felt the water, the pressure of the deep, the movement of current and body. The water almost became a character and, not to mix metaphors too much, grounded the story into a particular location that the reader can sense.

The Deep is a novella filled with pain and despair and rage and a glimmer of hope. It is built off of real history and pulled in unimaginable directions, except that it was imagined and we're all better off because Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes, and Rivers Solomon saw the possibilities of building something beautiful out of raw horror.

"What is belonging?" we ask
She says," Where loneliness ends"

The Deep is is a must read novella in a year stuffed full of must read books. This is essential reading.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 Despite the horror of history, The Deep recognizes the beauty and magnificence still present in the world.

Penalties: -1 Much of the story is Yetu's reluctance to subject herself to the performative memory, but if anything, The Deep may be a touch slow in moving Yetu to the Remembrance.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10, "very high quality/standout in its category" See more about our scoring system here.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. 

Reading the Hugos: John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

Welcome back to Reading the Hugos: 2019 Edition! Today we're going to look at the writers up for the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

I know. I know. The Campbell is "Not a Hugo". It is only "administered" by the World Science Fiction Society. It is sponsored by Dell Magazines. But, beyond those technicalities, I'm not sure I really care much about the distinction. It's not a Hugo. It's totally a Hugo. It's not a Hugo.

The Campbell is an award for a writer whose "first work of science fiction or fantasy was published in a professional publication in the previous two years." See here for eligibility rules, but it mostly follows the SFWA definition of professional publication or professional rates above a nominal fee. With the vagaries of publication, short story writers can be somewhat disadvantaged if they get one story published professionally and then years pass before they are truly noticed or place additional stories. Novels often make larger splashes, even if there is only one published in the eligibility window.

It is not unusual to have some overlap year to year, but a cursory glance through the last several decades of finalists suggests that it is unusual for four of the finalists to be the same from the previous year. With that in mind, I am going to recycle some of my thoughts from last year, making minor changes where appropriate.

Let's see how big of splash everyone has made over the last two years. It's a weird category.

Katherine Arden
S.A. Chakraborty
R.F. Kuang
Jeannette Ng
Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Rivers Solomon


Jeannette Ng: Ng is one of four writers on the Campbell ballot on the back of a single novel, which for a novelist is not necessarily unusual because there is only a two year eligibility window. Under the Pendulum Sun is Ng's debut novel. In Victorian England, a missionary who journeyed to the realm of faerie in order to proselytize and bring the fae to Christ, has disappeared. Catherine Helstone, his sister, undertakes her own search of faerie and the estate of Gethsemane to find him.

Under the Pendulum Sun is beautifully written and atmospheric as hell. The weight and weirdness of Arcadia shines through on every page. The novel feels Victorian without bogging the reader down with faux Victorian prose. The only problem, and this is quite clearly my problem and not Ng's is that there is something about the novel that I struggled to engage with and care about. There was a distance growing between me and Under the Pendulum Sun and it wasn't one I cared enough to overcome. It's a weird dichotomy, understanding the novel is a beautifully written piece of fiction and still not being able to fully appreciate it. Even so, that's where I'm at with this.


Vina Jie-Min Prasad: Prasad is on the Campbell ballot on the strength of four stories. Two of them, "A Series of Steaks" and "Fandom For Robots" were finalists last year for the Hugo Awards for Novelette and Short Story, respectfully. "Portrait of Skull with Man" (Fireside Fiction, 2017) and "Pistol Grip" (Uncanny, 2018) were not Hugo Award finalists.

It continues to be a difficult and uncomfortable thing to compare and rack and stack writers against each other. The stories, yes, but this is an award for Best New Writer. Are Prasad's four stories stronger than the single novels of Rivers Solomon, Jeannette Ng, R.F. Kuang, and S.A. Chakraborty or the two eligible novels from Katherine Arden?

That's the real challenge here. Both of the Hugo finalist stories are quite good and show an author I want to follow and read more from, the story from Fireside is a trippy bit of goodness, and I really have no idea what to say about "Pistol Grip". The stories are all high quality, but for this award, I'm not sure that they truly measure up to the best of the novels.


Katherine Arden: Arden is eligible for the Campbell following the publication of her novels The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl and the Tower. Comparatively, it is more similar to Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun in that the prose is more deliberate and beautiful on a sentence level than City of Brass or An Unkindness of Ghosts. That’s the only worthwhile comparison to the other novels because they are all so different in tone and function and story and emotion. The Bear and the Nightingale touches on Russian folklore and is a tight family story mostly set in remote regions of Russia.

I absolutely want to see more from Katherine Arden (and hey, she’s written two more books in the Winternight sequence that began with The Bear and the Nightingale). She’s an author to watch and follow and I’m as excited to read The Girl in the Tower as I am to see what she’s doing ten years from now. The Bear and the Nightingale is the announcement of a major new talent. It’s a slow burn of a novel, but it pays off and it sucks you in.


S.A. Chakraborty: Oh, how I regret having waited so long to read City of Brass. The novel had been on the periphery of my attention since it was published in 2017 and I'm not sure if I would have picked it up if not for Chakraborty making the Campbell ballot this year. I would have missed out. City of Brass is a spectacular debut and is damn near an instant favorite. Chakraborty blends 18th century Cairo with fantasy, the magic of the djinn are very real and there is a culture at war with itself and sometimes with the human world. I don't have the words to describe City of Brass in a way that the beauty of the novel comes across as deeply as it hit me from the start. Chakraborty's writing is smooth as silk and it draws the reader in to one hell of a story.

City of Brass would have been on my Hugo ballot had I read it upon publication, but I appreciate that I have this one more opportunity to recognize Chakraborty's novel. S.A. Chakraborty is a novelist to watch and I'll be there for this year's Kingdom of Copper (not eligible for consideration as part of Chakraborty's Campbell nomination, if you're more fortunate than me and have already read it).


R.F. Kuang: The age of a writer has no particular bearing on her ability to produce outstanding work nor does it say much about the amount of time that writer has put into learning her craft. A writer in her fifties may have only one or two years into developing as a writer while a writer in her twenties may have been writing every day for more than a decade and working to improve and tell better stories. Which is to say that I did a small amount of research to figure out who the youngest winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer was out of curiosity. R.F. Kuang was 22 when The Poppy War was published and when the Hugo / Campbell Award finalists were announced. She is now 23. As near as I can tell, the youngest winner of the Campbell was Lisa Tuttle, who was 21 when she tied Spider Robinson in the voting for the Campbell in 1974 (though I *think* E Lily Yu was fairly young when she won in 2012) . This really isn’t much more than an interesting data point because there is no one path to professional publication and the window for a Campbell nomination is so small for a writer to get noticed. It’s the sort of trivia I find interesting, if not particularly meaningful.

The Poppy War is an extraordinarily accomplished novel. It has echoes of a coming of age story set in a military academy, except that your average coming of age story doesn’t go a fraction as hard as R.F. Kuang goes with The Poppy War. Kuang is unrelenting. When I wrote about the novel in wrapping up my Top 9 Books of 2018, I wrote that “there’s a very real sense of ‘if this is what I did to get here, what do you think I’ll do to stay here?’ It’s brutal from the start.” That also means that even the part of the book that is about training and school is flipped on its head when the hinted war breaks out. At that point The Poppy War almost feels like two different novels, similar to how Full Metal Jacket plays out. It’s a difficult task to decide between R.F. Kuang and Rivers Solomon as the “Best New Writer”, though that difficulty is definitive of how good the new class of writers coming up is and I can’t wait to see what Kuang (and Solomon) have in store for us in the coming years.


Rivers Solomon: Solomon is here on the strength of An Unkindness of Ghosts, a debut that is as much a novel as it is a statement and announcement of arrival. I have long loved the concept and often the execution of a generation ship, but I have never read anything quite like An Unkindness of Ghosts. It is not uncommon to read a generation ship novel that focuses on the divide between the more affluent privileged class and the poor workers living in squalor in the underbelly on the ship. It is uncommon to read a generation ship novel that takes that conceit and drives a knife straight in the gut by running the ship like a plantation. The white overseers are in the upper decks and have significantly greater freedom and luxury. The darker skinned workers are exploited, stigmatized, and brutalized for their very existence.

An Unkindness of Ghosts is a deeply uncomfortable novel to read, but every time I put the book down for the night I immediately wanted to pick it up and keep reading deep into the night. Solomon describes their novel as "a science fiction meditation on trans-generational trauma, race, and identity" and if you take that into the novel, you can see what they are doing. Slavery and trans-generation trauma is central to the storytelling of Unkindess of Ghosts, but so is that idea of identity. Through the generational trauma, so much family and personal histories have been lost. Characters barely know who their parents were, let alone grandparents or farther back. More, Solomon's writing of their protagonist, Aster, is so vital and central to the novel. Aster's voice and characterization of a neurologically atypical narrator is so incredibly well done and distinctive that it is almost impossible to imagine the novel written any other way.

An Unkindness of Ghosts is an almost impossibly accomplished and incredible novel and marks Rivers Solomon as an essential writer to watch.


My Vote
1. Rivers Solomon
2. R.F. Kuang
3. S.A. Chakraborty
4. Katherine Arden
5. Vina Jie-Min Prasad
6. Jeannette Ng


Our Previous Coverage
Novel
Novella
Novelette
Short Story
Series
Related Work
Graphic Story 
Dramatic Presentation, Long and Short Form
Professional and Fan Artist 
Fancast 
Lodestar Award for Best YA Novel


Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Adams, John Joseph. Wastelands: The New Apocalypse [Titan]
Publisher's Description

The new post-apocalyptic collection by master anthologist John Joseph Adams, featuring never-before-published stories and curated reprints by some of the genre’s most popular and critically-acclaimed authors.

In WASTELANDS: THE NEW APOCALYPSE, veteran anthology editor John Joseph Adams is once again our guide through the wastelands using his genre and editorial expertise to curate his finest collection of post-apocalyptic short fiction yet. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.

Featuring never-before-published tales by: Veronica Roth, Hugh Howey, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Scott Sigler, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias S. Buckell, Meg Elison, Greg van Eekhout, Wendy N. Wagner, Jeremiah Tolbert, and Violet Allen—plus, recent reprints by: Carmen Maria Machado, Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kami Garcia, Charlie Jane Anders, Catherynne M. Valente, Jack Skillingstead, Sofia Samatar, Maureen F. McHugh, Nisi Shawl, Adam-Troy Castro, Dale Bailey, Susan Jane Bigelow, Corinne Duyvis, Shaenon K. Garrity, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Darcie Little Badger, Timothy Mudie, and Emma Osborne.

Continuing in the tradition of WASTELANDS: STORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE, these 34 stories ask: What would life be like after the end of the world as we know it? 

Why We Want It: The first two volumes of John Joseph Adams' Wastelands anthologies brought together classic stories of apocalypse, legendary stories of the field. Both volumes were spectacular. I love apocalyptic fiction, and John Joseph Adams is a master anthologist. This third Wastelands volume brings together brand new apocalyptic stories as well some more recent stories that may well stand the test of time. 

Brooks, Terry. The Stiehl Assassin [Del Rey]
Publisher's Description

After The Black Elfstone and The Skaar Invasion comes the next chapter in the Fall of Shannara, a saga more than four decades in the making. 

The Skaar have arrived in the Four Lands, determined to stop at nothing less than all-out conquest. They badly need a new home, but peaceful coexistence is not a concept they have ever understood. An advance force under the command of the mercurial princess Ajin has already established a foothold, but now the full Skaar army is on the march—and woe betide any who stand in its way.

But perhaps the Skaar victory is not quite the foregone conclusion everyone assumes. The Druid Drisker Arc has freed both himself and Paranor from their involuntary exile. Drisker’s student, Tarsha Kaynin, has been reunited with Dar, chief defender of what is left of the Druid order, and is learning to control her powerful wishsong magic. If they can only survive Tarsha’s brother, Tavo, and the Druid who betrayed Drisker Arc, they might stand a chance of defeating the Skaar. But that is a very big if . . . as Tavo now carries the Stiehl—one of the most powerful weapons in all the Four Lands—and is hellbent on taking his revenge on everyone he feels has wronged him. 

Why We Want It: I've been a Terry Brooks reader from my earliest days of being a fantasy reader and though the novels have gone through various peaks and valleys in terms of quality and also of my engagement, but we're in the final push to the end of the Shannara chronology. There is only one more novel after The Stiehl Assassin and I am on board for this journey.

Ford, Jackson. The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind [Orbit]
Publisher's Description

Full of imagination, wit, and random sh*t flying through the air, this insane adventure from an irreverent new voice will blow your tiny mind. 

For Teagan Frost, sh*t just got real. 

Teagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she’s got telekinetic powers — a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she’s normal for once.

But then a body turns up at the site of her last job — murdered in a way that only someone like Teagan could have pulled off. She’s got 24 hours to clear her name – and it’s not just her life at stake. If she can’t unravel the conspiracy in time, her hometown of Los Angeles will be in the crosshairs of an underground battle that’s on the brink of exploding . . . 

Why We Want It: The title. Honestly, it's just the title.

Gailey, Sarah. Magic for Liars [Tor]
Publisher's Description

Sharp, mainstream fantasy meets compelling thrills of investigative noir in Magic for Liars, a fantasy debut by rising star Sarah Gailey. 

Ivy Gamble was born without magic and never wanted it. 

Ivy Gamble is perfectly happy with her life – or at least, she’s perfectly fine. 

She doesn't in any way wish she was like Tabitha, her estranged, gifted twin sister. 

Ivy Gamble is a liar. 

When a gruesome murder is discovered at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches Theoretical Magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister—without losing herself. 

Why We Want It: Gailey's debut novellas (River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow) were delights, riffing of the real world idea of bringing hippopotamuses to America and taking it much farther so that feral hippos are extremely dangerous and "tame" hippos can be used for transport like horses. After those novellas, we were always on board for whatever she did next.

Lord, Karen. Unraveling [DAW]
Publisher's Description

In this standalone fantasy novel by an award-winning author, the dark truth behind a string of unusual murders leads to an otherworldly exploration of spirits, myth, and memory, steeped in Caribbean storytelling. 

Dr. Miranda Ecouvo, forensic therapist of the City, just helped put a serial killer behind bars. But she soon discovers that her investigation into seven unusual murders is not yet complete. A near-death experience throws her out of time and into a realm of labyrinths and spirits. There, she encounters brothers Chance and the Trickster, who have an otherworldly interest in the seemingly mundane crimes from her files.

It appears the true mastermind behind the murders is still on the loose, chasing a myth to achieve immortality. Together, Miranda, Chance, and the Trickster must travel through conjured mazes, following threads of memory to locate the shadowy killer. As they journey deeper, they discover even more questions that will take pain and patience to answer. What is the price of power? Where is the path to redemption? And how can they stop the man—or monster—who would kill the innocent to live forever? 

Why We Want It: Each of Karen Lord's three previous novels have been very highly regarded, but for no particular reason, I haven't read any of them. It's past time to rectify that.

Solomon, Rivers. The Deep [Saga]
Publisher's Description

The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’ rap group Clipping. 

Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.

Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting. 

Why We Want It: After the absolutely searing debut of An Unkindness of Ghosts it was clear Rivers Solomon was an important writer and that we needed to be there for whatever they did next. While we didn't expect that "expanding Clipping's song into a novel" was what was next, we're down for this.


Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Microreview [Book]: The Vela, by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Rivers Solomon and S.L. Huang

Serial Box's new space opera is an action-packed, politically-driven adventure written by an impressive author lineup.

The Vela, the latest exercise in collaborative serialised fiction from Serial Box, brings together an all-star quartet of science fiction writers: Yoon Ha Lee, creator of the mindbending mathemagical Hexarchate series; Becky Chambers, who brought the best kind of slice-of-life into space with the Wayfarers series; Rivers Solomon, Campbell nominee and creator of An Unkindness of Ghosts; and S.L Huang, whose action-packed Cas Russell series is being republished by Tor after an initial self-published run. Together, they take on a space opera that touches on the strengths of all four of these works, while being something very different. Welcome to the system home to Khayyam, Gan-de and Hypatia, where the careless extraction of hydrogen by wealthy inner planets is causing the slow collapse of the sun and the death, over centuries, of all inhabitable worlds - beginning, of course, with the blameless, impoverished outer worlds. Mix in a hardened soldier-for-hire who is herself an escapee from the dying worlds, and her naive non-binary sidekick, and you've got an indisputable recipe for success, right?

Pretty much. The Vela is written to be read in short novella-sized chunks over a period of time (although I managed to devour most of it in one sitting without losing interest) and the pattern of tension and plotting that goes with that style makes for a compelling, twisty experience that is more reminiscent of good quality TV than conventional literature. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the model - Serial Box releases its titles in "seasons" for a reason - but it's still an initial adjustment when reading, and those new to the format might have to experiment a little with how best to engage. The plot kicks off with Asala Sikou, the aforementioned refugee soldier, who is brought in by the leader of the wealthy, still-comfortable world of Khayyam to take on an unusual mission: locate the Vela, a ship carrying the last refugees from the latest world on the system's outskirts to have become uninhabitable, and do it with his child, Niko, in tow. Given that the slow extinction crisis has produced a ton of ships full of refugees, the mission to find one particular set of them is odd from the outset, but it soon becomes clear that this is more than a token gesture for a politician's election campaign. Khayyam is not the only political force interested in the Vela and what it carries, and soon the militaristic leader of Gan-De - the closed-off world closest to the refugees - and rebels from the barely-habitable orbiting stations which said refugees are forced into are all involved in a struggle for the system's already tenuous future.

As you'd expect, what follows is a mixture of fast-paced action, fundamentally irreconcilable political showdowns, and some highly entertaining twists and reversals, as Asala and Niko find their way in and out of trouble, make their way across the system, and uncover the true reasons behind the Vela's importance and what it means for their future. The lead pair have a great dynamic and there's plenty of other interesting characters too, representing a diverse, ethically messy version of humanity which contrasts individual capacity for kindness with a hopeless lack of positive collective action. The cultural differences between the different worlds are understated compared to the inequality and political tensions between them, but the touches are there to make these worlds feel lived in. The text also uses its science fictional elements to underscore the sense of inequality between the haves and the have-nots: interplanetary travel is technically accessible to most, but for ordinary people it depends on once-a-decade planetary alignments which allow ships to use gravity rather than burning expensive fuel; only the very wealthy can afford to transport themselves directly under normal circumstances.

In its treatment of interplanetary politics, there's a strong comparison to be drawn between The Vela and The Expanse, which takes place on a similar scale and with similar questions about privilege and inequality. Indeed, while I'm a big fan of The Expanse's current trajectory, The Vela comes stronger out of the gate with its political machinations and its representation, in contrast to the somewhat less inspiring "hardboiled bros in space" feel of Leviathan Wakes. Like The Expanse, The Vela manages to satisfyingly balance the sense of huge, irreconcilable political realities that the refugee crisis is creating, which is beyond the power of Gan-de and Khayyam to solve, and the individual personalities at the helm of some of those forces. I do enjoy stories which push hard on the tension between "good people" and "people working towards good things" (some of whom are terrible), and there's plenty of that here without descending into outright misanthropy.

That said, there were times when I was expecting a little more from The Vela, in terms of its plot and characterisation. In particular, I was frustrated by the tight focus on a few, relatively privileged characters. Asala's presence as the main character should, of course, be the counterweight to that, but despite the exploration of her past as a refugee, her characterisation is strongly shaped by an early display of indifference towards a ship of illegal refugees, which underlines the position of power that she has reached in a way that makes it uncomfortable to view her as representative of the powerless masses at the heart of The Vela's universe. Other than Asala, and a couple of characters who turn up in individual chapters, ordinary people are seen only in nameless glimpses, and that feels like an odd decision for the authors to make in a story of this kind. Additionally, while there's a cracking couple of climactic chapters here, which really blow the possibilities for future instalments wide open, the closing moments of the story leave things on a frustratingly massive end-of-season cliffhanger, and I'm already nervous about the lack of announcement for a sequel. There is enough thematic closure to still make this season a satisfying investment on its own, however, and if you're bothered by excessive cliffhangers then Serial Box's model may not be the one for you anyway.

All in all, The Vela has got a lot going for it, and I do want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that a space opera collectively written by an author team that is mostly queer and mostly people of colour not only exists, but is being published as a headline event with an objectively all-star creative team. If I'm being truly honest, I have to admit I'm a victim of my own high expectations for this title: I feel like this team could produce an Indisputable Best Book Of The Year for me, which this doesn't quite live up to despite its strengths. However, taken with realistic expectations, The Vela is a wonderful adventure, and this is, I hope, just the start of our adventures with Asala, Niko and their broken, beautiful world. I'll definitely be signing up for future instalments.

The Math:

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Satisfying interplanetary political machinations without an easy answer in sight.

Penalties: -1 A frustratingly elite cast for a story based on a refugee crisis.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.