Microreview [book]: The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

Yearning and suspense by the bucketload in the Burning Kingdoms' second instalment

Last year, I said that The Jasmine Throne was one of the strongest in an impressive year of diverse fantasy, introducing a new fantasy world full of history, intrigue and queer yearning. Now, we get to see how the story continues in The Oleander Sword, and this time both the yearning and the suspense have been turned up as high as they can go. Spoilers are ahead for the first book of the series, and it's very much worth starting there if you haven't already.

Like the first volume, The Oleander Sword largely follows the intertwined journey of two women, both of whom now occupy powerful roles in their respective lands. Malini, the imprisoned princess of The Jasmine Throne, has received a prophecy and declared herself empress in opposition to her despotic younger brother's rule, and now marches on said brother with support from several of the kingdoms that make up the empire of Parijatdvipa. In the former Empire territory of Ahiranya, former maid Priya has also come into an inheritance, becoming the first Elder in a generation and gaining the magic needed to turn back the Rot, a sickness which still threatens to overrun her people. For Malini, the rise to power is welcome but comes with the frustration of trying to keep the loyalty of men as a woman in a highly patriarchal society; for Priya, political leadership is an unwanted challenge, mostly left to her fellow elder and temple sister Bhumika while she takes a more hands-on approach to Ahiranya's problems.

Despite going their separate ways, and taking their countries down potentially conflicting paths, Priya and Malini are of course still obsessed with each other, and it doesn't take long for the understated but ill-advised personal letters to start. Once that boundary has been crossed, and with a difficult siege lowering the morale of her army and casting doubt on her prophesised leadership, it's a small step for Malini to call Priya to her side, and ask for her help in battle so that she can enact her promise of Ahiranya's future freedom. If there wasn't tension dripping off every page every time these women think about each other, Priya's answer would be an obvious "no thanks", but, of course, she's easily enough convinced. Within the first act, then, Suri reunites her would-be lovers and leaves the fate of Ahiranya to be told largely through the eyes of Bhumika, with a broader cast of occasional POV characters brought in to round out the storytelling gaps.

Almost immediately, the story in Ahiranya takes a turn for the pant-wettingly terrifying, as the resurgence of magic brought about by Priya and Bhumika ends up having unexpected consequences. I think it's better to go into this section unspoiled about the details, and so I'll talk around what exactly happens here, but there's a progression of the body horror elements from the Rot, an illness which causes people to grow progressively more plants on themselves until they are all plant. The idea of people sprouting flower buds and mossy growths is unpleasant enough, but it's taken to the next level when the origin of the illness and its intended purpose is explained. The events in Ahiranya also make us reconsider any views we might hold about the land being a straightforward underdog to Parijatdvipa's unjust rule: while there's no justification made for colonisation or prejudice, the events of the book also confront us with the shortcomings of backward-looking restoration, especially when the past one is trying to restore is not a well remembered one. Bhumika's storyline here is heartbreaking and offers her very little to celebrate, as she comes up against forces that are far, far beyond her own power.

Priya is cut off from her homeland, so its problems don't reach her for the bulk of The Oleander Sword. Instead, she joins Malini and is thrown into her own political quandry as other leaders treat her with everything from grudging acceptance to outright hostility due to her heritage and her magic. The pair are at their best when they are supporting each other through the challenges of patriarchy, and while The Oleander Sword doesn't close the gap between their overall goals, Priya's higher status as an Elder does bring greater equality to their relationship, even if her power is rarely exercised and goes mostly unrecognised by the men around them. Make no mistake, though, the real leveller is how often both of them think about that time they kissed during The Jasmine Throne, and how much they both want to do it again. The fact that the pair of them are in the middle of an army is brought up as an impediment to further kissing right up until it isn't any more, and if this feels a little convenient, let me reassure you that both of these disaster lesbians have plenty of ways to make new impediments to kissing all on their own, and oh boy do they ever make things complicated by the time everything has played out.

All the elements that make Suri's fantasy writing so interesting are on display here, particularly her depiction of how women wield power in patriarchal societies and particularly how they do so around norms that separate out the two genders. It's particularly satisfying to watch the men around Malini make jokes about how they'll have to bring their daughters to court instead of marrying them off, assuming that this will just be a different way of using daughters to serve their personal interests, only for one such daughter to immediately display political ambitions of her own and side against her father's betrayal. Malini's own power rests on a prophecy from the Mothers, a deified group of immolated women whose blessing could be twisted to "require" her own death, if certain religious authorities have their way. Priya, gets both the freedom and the prejudice of being a total outsider, with power that can't be taken away but can be dismissed and used to invoke disgust. It doesn't help that - surprise! - the Rot has left the borders of Ahiranya and the kind of magic Priya wields is now linked to a very immediate threat for the rest of Parijatdvipa, rather than a generations-ago conflict. Throw in some grappling with the limitations and drawbacks of that power, and you've got some great tension right there. With added dread, because oh god these plant powers, where are they going to lead, nowhere good it seems.

The Oleander Sword doesn't conclude so much as it sets up the pieces for its final volume. Will anyone kiss in that one? Maybe, but not without even more emotions, and perhaps a giant battle for the future of the entire world playing out in the background. If that sounds good, then I'll see you there.

POSTED BY: Adri Joy hasn't written her byline on the bottom of a review for so long that she might as well create a new one. She is a co-editor at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, an international politics nerd, a converted Londoner and a whippet owner, who would live her life submerged in the ocean with a waterproof e-reader - if she only had gills. Find her on Twitter @adrijjy or Mastodon @arifel@wandering.shop.

Microreview [book]: The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Epic fantasy! Core sapphic relationship! Giant middle finger to empire! This is the good stuff. 

Last time I reviewed a Tasha Suri book - the outstanding Realm of Ash, second in the Books of Ambha - I wrapped it up by saying I was very excited for more Books of Ambha. Awesome women, at the intersection of cultures, finding love and self-actualisation in ways that overcome the misogyny in their elite positions, while still exploring the ways that women hold and wield power in South Asian-inspired fantasy societies! Well, I did not get my wish for more Books of Ambha (that series is now listed as complete after its two excellent novels, seriously, read those books), but luckily Tasha Suri has me covered with all the above in The Jasmine Throne, kicking off The Burning Kingdoms series. All the above, plus it's sapphic now. We're off to a promising start indeed.

Like its predecessor series, The Jasmine Throne has the politics and cultural oppressiveness of empire at its heart. In this case, it's the empire of Parijatdvipa, ruled by an emperor who has brought back increasingly repressive and horrific religoius traditions in order to maintain his rule - culminating in the decision to burn his sister and her two handmaids alive for going against his rule. When his sister, Malini, refuses to go meekly to her death, he instead imprisons her in a ruined temple (the Hirana) in the city of Hiranapratha, capital of Ahiranya, keeping her in seclusion with only an abusive minder to watch over her. The Hirana, of course, has a long history of its own, and its downfall is inextricably linked to Parijatdvipa's rise. Once a place where children were raised and baptised in its holy (and dangerous) waters and given magical powers from its blessing, the Hirana has been empty for almost a generation, its last group of devouts and children burned to death under mysterious circumstances, and Ahiranya as a whole is suffering from a "rot" which transforms its people into living trees. However, not everyone with a connection to the old temple is gone, and one of them still climbs to its top on a regular basis: the maidservant Priya, who is one of a group of expendable servants making the Hirana liveable for Malini while keeping entirely out of sight.

This being an epic fantasy, of course, Priya and Malini are fated to meet and have their fates intertwine; this being a sapphic fantasy, they are of course also going to develop some high quality capital-F Feelings while doing so. But The Jasmine Throne is far from done with intertwining fates after just two characters and an evil emperor-brother. No, what brings The Jasmine Throne to life - and makes its opening chapters far more of a whirlwind of different perspectives and scenarios - is that Hiranapratha is full of relationships and movements that link to both Priya and Malini in different ways. Thus, we meet Priya's employer Bhumika, the Ahiranyi wife of the regent who rules the city on the emperor's behalf: a woman who has her own connections to the Hirana and to Priya's past, and who leverages her position and her husband's lack of respect for her abilities into helping the people of the city. We meet Rao, member of the royal family of Alor, who keeps his real name as a closely guarded prophecy and is seeking to release Malini so she can rejoin her other brother (the one that isn't a despotic emperor) and incite a revolution. And then there's Ashok, member of an Ahiranyi revolutionary movement whose aims, methods and past also intersect with the Hirana and Priya in various ways. 

The Jasmine Throne requires the reader to follow along as it establishes the players in Parijatdvipa and Ahiranya, but it rewards that patience with immense depth, constantly adding more shared history and context for its characters that complements their present adventures very well. There's a risk, when relationships or bits of information are universally known by the characters but withheld from the audience until it can be unveiled at the juiciest possible moment, that these reveals can feel artificial or cheap. However, The Jasmine Throne largely avoids any such moments, slotting revelations from the past, and the complications they bring, neatly alongside what we already know or suspect about particular characters and events in a way that makes it feel like the past and the present are both unfolding naturally before the reader. It helps a lot that the main narrative is so enjoyable to follow. Priya's magical self-discovery, and Malini's political one, intersect with the other characters and with each other in ways that produce plenty of set pieces and reversals and adventures (and things on fire, this is a book where things that should not be on fire are often on fire) and it's all very enjoyable, in a "relatively high fantasy bodycount and no right answers to the intersecting political problems" sort of way. You know what I mean.

Of course, without Priya and Malini's chemistry, that adventure wouldn't get off the ground, and its here where The Jasmine Throne really excels. Unlike fellow recent sapphic fantasy The Unbroken, The Jasmine Throne doesn't really trade in on the enemies-to-lovers" trope despite making the difference between Malini's goals and Priya's abundantly clear from the start. Malini and Priya are immediately drawn to each other and while each is constantly looking for ways to use the other to their advantage, there's also a core of trust that builds up between the two of them that their inevitably diverging paths, and the sacrifices that each is willing to make to follow them, never really manages to touch While it's no fault of books which keep their enemies-to-lovers more openly at odds, I personally enjoy this set-up immensely, and I found the slow build of feelings and the way Priya and Malini's think about each other to be very satisfying indeed. This being the start of a series, things between the two are left open ended, and there's plenty of time for things to get a lot worse (and, don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of ways in which they are kind of terrible to and for each other), but... in short, I ship it.

And so we reach the "pithy closing paragraph" point of this review. Do I have anything mo to say? Not really. The Jasmine Throne is really good secondary world fantasy, and it's adding to a 2021 shelf that (thanks in no small part to Orbit, the publisher of this, The Unbroken, Son of the Storm and other excellence) is filling up with really good fantasy. You know, ones that centres queer relationships, worlds that aren't "medieval Europe with dragons", raise giant middle fingers to empire and hereditary rulership in all its forms, and not coincidentally offer immensely satisfying, readable, intricate mixtures of political intrigue and character-driven adventure and self-actualisation that pushes all the right trope buttons. What's exciting about The Jasmine Throne is that it's kind of amazing, and yet it doesn't immediately stand out above other fantasy books I've read this year, because oh wow, they were all amazing too. Which is to say, read this book and also read everything else on every "best of 2021 book list" it's on. It's all good.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Intricate political history and character relationships woven into the fabric of the narrative; +1 Just the right flavour of lovers-at-odds

Penalties: -1 Requires a bit of patience with the original set-up and proliferation of point-of-view characters before said intricacy pays off.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10

Reference: Suri, Tasha. The Jasmine Throne (Orbit, 2021)

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

Microreview [Book]: Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri

Politics are once again deeply personal in the second instalment of the Books of Ambha

Tasha Suri is back in the world of Ambha, with another story of magic, power, self-actualisation and belonging that expands the world of the first book, Empire of Sand, while offering a continuation of its wider story. Realm of Ash is about Arwa, the younger sister of Empire of Sand's protagonist Mehr - and while you don't have to have read Empire of Sand to enjoy this one, it's going to help to have some background on who Mehr is, her own relationship with the Empire and its authorities, as well as making some of the mysterious plot points... a little less mysterious.

When we meet Arwa, she's been widowed at the age of 21, due to an incident at the fort where her husband was stationed at which led to a spirit possessing all the men within and driving them to kill each other and everyone else inside. Arwa only survived because of her basic knowledge of what her Amrithi blood allows her - as a distant relative of daiva spirits, Amrithi are able to seek protection from them, and Arwa is thus found alive and surrounded by a ring of her own blood, even as everyone else in the fortress dies. As an Ambhan noblewoman, Arwa is not allowed to marry again or to seek any fulfilment of her own, and thus chooses to join a hermitage for widows, where she meets Gulshera, another widow who appears to have strong connections to the Ambhan royal family. Gulshera tries to coach Arwa through her rage at her situation, and eventually discovers the secret of her blood and passes it on to her connection at the palace. This turns out to be Jihan, daughter of the current king and sister to his heir apparent, who is seeking a way to redress the death of the Maha and the subsequent curse which appears to have been unleashed on the land. Arwa is thrown into court politics, and into apprenticeship with Zahir, a bastard son of the Emperor by a mother who was part of an ancient dissenting order. As an unacknowledged and dangerously smart bastard, whose brothers are far less accommodating to his presence than his sister, Zahir is now at the forefront of trying to discover what happened to the Maha and has been learning how to walk in dreams to understand this. Arwa, with her Amrithi heritage, may just have the connections to magic that they need to try and move the research forward - but as the emperor's health fails, the question about the value of doing so, and of saving Ambha, become increasingly complex.

Arwa is a really interesting protagonist, and the book doesn't shy away from establishing her as a person with deep, complex feelings who has been left in a pretty bad place by her life so far. Ambhan society practices purdah - the ritual separation of men and women - and the power of women is portrayed as highly dependent on the men around them, with their choice in marriage being the one officially free decision they are allowed to make. In the wrong hands, Arwa's empowerment narrative could become entirely about rejection of this culture, but Suri takes a far more subtle path than that. While Arwa's need to suppress elements of her personality in marriage is shown as negative, other aspects of her upbringing and culture, like the fact that she veils and spends much of the book in women-only spaces and in the women's sections of the palace are not inherently shown as weaknesses, and the book goes out of its way to show the different levels of influence and power that women can wield even while their male relatives are theoretically the ones in charge. By doing so, the book challenges the assumptions made about Arwa's agency as a restricted elite woman from a misogynist culture, particularly for modern western audiences, and provides space for her to push back on what she needs to. The narrative also offers space for some of Arwa's class privilege to be challenged, as her status allows her to cling to notions of "respectability" and "honour" which aren't available to lower class women who have to find their own way through their culture's structural misogyny.

Likewise, Realm of Ash does a great job balancing Arwa's personal arc - which, as a woman of mixed heritage living among the elite of a racist empire, is very much bound up in wider political factors - with those political elements themselves. Suri provides no easy answers on any level to these questions, particularly not for readers who have read Empire of Sand and are aware of the brutal methods the Maha was using to magically maintain the empire. Rather than rely on primogeniture, the Emperor's successor is appointed by him from amongst his children, with an implication that up until now the choice has always been "obvious" with one sibling just being more inherently suited than all the others. As the current emperor's health fails, however, it becomes clear that the choice between politically safe but angry Akhtar, and the fanatical soldier Parviz, does not leave much in the way of a safe option. Like Arwa, we're forced to consider these choices not in terms of there being an objectively better option, but in terms of what will keep her safest. Its only as the narrative progresses that paths to more radical solutions open up, and even then the tension is still high by the end of the book, with a pretty fascinating setup for the end of the trilogy.

The romance between Arwa and Zahir is signposted from a mile off - and its centrality to the book shouldn't come as a surprise, particularly for readers of the first book - but it's delightfully handled, and I particularly enjoyed how Zahir's desirability is portrayed as being due to his beauty and intelligence rather than any sort of "masculine" ideal (the obvious comparison being, of course, with Arwa's soldier husband). As in every other aspect of the book, there's a deliberateness to the angle which the romantic element takes, and it's definitely not portrayed as Zahir somehow "showing Arwa how to live again" - her growing relationship with him is shown as one of mutual discovery and respect, and in many ways Zahir, as a royal bastard confined to a converted crypt within the women's quarters and acknowledged and saved from death or exile only by Jihan, has even less experience of the world than Arwa does. When Arwa, with her greater magical talents, is able to surpass Zahir's ability to walk in dreams, his concerns revolve around her safety rather than any sort of envy or desire to hold her back. In short, it's about as wholesome a relationship as one can get between an angry, traumatised magic wielder and a mysterious royal bastard in fantasy, and all the more refreshing for it. Their relationship and interactions anchor much of the book, although Arwa has plenty of other people (mostly women) around her as well; while she struggles to understand and maintain alliances in her constrained circumstances, her relationships with Gulshera, Jihan, and other characters are nuanced and never automatically antagonistic without good reason. The portrayal of a court that's restrictive but not outright hostile in the first part of the book is important, as it allows Suri to make full use of the shift when Parviz returns, and the atmosphere shifts to something altogether more oppressive.

Realm of Ash is ultimately a deceptive book, coming across as something slow and soft while sweeping its characters up in a tense and relentless plot. As this is the second in what looks to be shaping up as a trilogy, it leaves more pressing political cliffhangers than Empire of Sand, although Arwa and Zahir themselves do have a satisfying wrap-up to their relationship arc. I'm intrigued to see how the pieces fall into place for the third book, and the angle Suri takes to bring the wider political plot to its conclusion. In the meantime, Realm of Ash is a book that's well worth picking up on its own or with its predecessors, and Suri is certainly an author to watch when it comes to taking care over characters and crafting slow-burning arcs that satisfy both as personal growth narratives and as romances.

The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 Nuanced take on gender, marginalisation and self-actualisationin a South Asian fantasy world; +1 Delightful romance between characters who help each other without

Penalties: -1 Political cliffhangers mean you won't be fully satisfied until the trilogy ends!

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

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: Suri, Tasha. Realm of Ash (Orbit, 2019)

Microreview [book]: Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri

Empire of Sand is an immersive and compulsively readable epic fantasy that draws on traditions and cultures and milieus, the Mughal Empire, a culture and heritage hitherto rarely seen in the Western fantasy tradition.

Mehr is the daughter of the Governor of Irinah, the now-province of the Empire that her mother, long since estranged and gone from her life and her father’s, comes from. As he never married her mother, and now has a wife from the core of the Empire, the status of Mehr, and her younger sister Arwa is illegitimate and thus constantly imperiled. Her stepmother has very strong ideas what it means to be the daughter of the governor, and her control over the household, and the lives of Mehr and Arwa is ironclad. Worse, the sisters are of a persecuted and despised minority, the Amrithi. The desert dwelling Amrithi are treated with fear and scorn for the magical power in their blood, a power that Mehr does not think she shares herself, even as she tries to live within the traditions of their culture as best she can. But when Mehr’s very real ability comes to the forefront and manifests, the Empire suddenly has a use for Mehr, and a fate that she may not be able to escape.

This is the story of Tasha Suri’s debut novel, Empire of Sand.

Mehr and her story are the heart of this story. The novel opens with building up her life within the world of the Governor’s Palace and how her status is on the edge of a knife. Her absent birth mother, her stepmother Maryam, Arwa and her relations with the servants of the palace and people beyond provide a relationship map that helps define and highlight Mehr in the early stages of the book. Later, we meet her father, and we meet the man whom the Empire has determined she will marry, Amun. As the setting of the novel moves from the palace to the temple that the Empire has sent her, the relationships and connections around Mehr change sharply, and it is Mehr’s need to remain true to herself, even in a very foreign place, where trust is a dangerous card to play.

Empire of Sand reminded me as I started to read it and progressed deeper into the novel,  of Kare Elliott’s first Spiritwalker novel, Cold Magic. Non-European culture, check. Young female protagonist with the potential from a heritage she does not understand with supernatural ancestry, including an absent birth parent. Check. Growing up in a relatively sheltered and enclosed locale, and then taken away from that locale by means of an unexpected, forced marriage to a mage, whose relationship is thorny and a subsequent plot driver. Check. I do think that readers who enjoyed the Spiritwalker series would really enjoy what Suri does here in Empire of Sand.

The world that the author portrays is also fresh and interesting and something new and different. The author was inspired by the Mughal Empire in Northwest and North India for the cultures and society we see in the novel. Using that template, we are portrayed a world of a grasping empire, seeking to conquer all and sundry, including cultures and kingdoms very different than the center. Setting a novel in a distant desert province of an Empire doesn’t *sound* new, but there is a rich authenticity that is portrayed on the pages. With sleeping gods, supernatural beings, and the reality bending Dreamfire storms that periodically afflict Irinah and beyond, it is a rich and well developed world. From the corridors of the palace, to the stark beauty of the desert, to the temple of the Maha, all of the locations that Suri invokes in the novel richly put me as a reader into the setting. I particularly liked the daiva, which we meet early in the novel, and their ties and connections to both humans and Gods a mystery and piece of the world that is slowly revealed as the plot unfolds.

While I see the necessity of the strand, I think that the chapters where we break Mehr’s point of view to show other points of view, particularly her friend Lalita, do not feel as crisp and does not feel as deep, as the main narrative with Mehr. This secondary strand does provide for a lot of shorthand for when that strand finally intersects Mehr, but I don’t think the story in that strand is anywhere near as cohesive as Mehr’s story. I was always ready to go back to Mehr and what she was doing, instead. I had a lot of buy in to her story and her relationships, much more than any other character.

Overall, Empire of Sand is a rich and very promising debut in a world with a central character that I want to know much more about. Empire of Sand delivers on fantasy “Beyond the Great Wall of Europe”, and in spades.The ending of the novel makes it clear that this is the first in a series, but the ending of this novel is a satisfactory one for those who want an “off ramp”. A complete, and most excellent story, is told in this volume.

---
The Math

Baseline Assessment 7/10

Bonuses : +1 for a strong main character with believable and deep relationships
+1 for rich and immersive worldbuilding

Penalties : -1 for less effective switches in point of view that do not resonate as well as the main narrative.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10: well worth your time and attention


Reference:  Suri, Tasha Empire of Sand  [Orbit, 2018]


POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

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!

Hutchinson, Dave. Europe at Dawn [Solaris]
Publisher's Description

The phenomenal conclusion to the Fractured Europe sequence.

Alice works at the Scottish Embassy in Tallinn in Estonia as a member of the Cultural Section. When two men bring her the jewelled skull of a Scottish saint her world gets turned on its head, and she becomes the latest recruit to Les Coureurs des Bois.

On a Greek island Benno is just one of hundreds of refuges dreaming of a new life in Continental Europe. After hatching an audacious escape plan, he may just get his dream, but at the price of serving some powerful mysterious new masters.

Rudi and Rupert, the seasoned Coureur and the scientist in exile from a pocket universe, discover that someone they thought long dead is very much still alive. Not only that, but the now defunct Line – the railway that once bisected the European continent – may be being used for nefarious means.

Why We Want It: Dave Hutchinson has been a favorite of the flock here at Nerds of a Feather. Each of his three previous Fractured Europe novels have been very highly reviewed (Autumn, Midnight, Winter). Of course we're super excited about a new Fractured Europe novel.

Jemisin, N.K. How Long Til Black Future Month [Orbit]
Publisher's Description

Three-time Hugo Award winner N. K. Jemisin’s first collection of short fiction challenges and enchants with breathtaking stories of destruction, rebirth, and redemption. 

N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story “The City Born Great,” a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis’s soul.

Why We Want It: It's like this: N.K. Jemisin was awarded three consecutive Hugo Awards for Best Novel for each volume of her Broken Earth trilogy. It was a monumental achievement and one richly deserved because those novels are the new benchmark of what excellence looks like. We're much more familiar with those novels than we are Jemisin's short fiction. How Long Til Black Future Month is our opportunity to remedy that. This is her first short story collection and we're ready for it.

Kress, Nancy. Terran Tomorrow [Tor]
Publisher's Description

Nancy Kress returns with Terran Tomorrow, the final book in the thrilling hard science fiction trilogy based on the Nebula Award–winning novella Yesterday's Kin. 

io9—New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books You Need to Put on Your Radar for Fall 

The diplomatic mission from Earth to World ended in disaster, as the Earth scientists discovered that the Worlders were not the scientifically advanced culture they believed. Though they brought a limited quantity of the vaccine against the deadly spore cloud, there was no way to make enough to vaccinate more than a few dozen. The Earth scientists, and surviving diplomats, fled back to Earth.

But once home, after the twenty-eight-year gap caused by the space ship transit, they find an Earth changed almost beyond recognition. In the aftermath of the spore cloud plague, the human race has been reduced to only a few million isolated survivors. The knowledge brought back by Marianne Jenner and her staff may not be enough to turn the tide of ongoing biological warfare.

Why We Want It: We've been following Nancy Kress's Yesterday's Kin trilogy since the first novel Tomorrow's Kin (review) and while it has never quite reached the heights we had hoped for, the first two books have been solid and enjoyable reads and we're looking forward to seeing how she wraps up the story with this third volume.

Martin, George R.R. Fire and Blood [Bantam]
Publisher's Description

The thrilling history of the Targaryens comes to life in this masterly work by the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the inspiration for HBO’s Game of Thrones.

With all the fire and fury fans have come to expect from internationally bestselling author George R. R. Martin, this is the first volume of the definitive two-part history of the Targaryens in Westeros.

Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen—the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria—took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire & Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart.

What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why was it so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What were Maegor the Cruel’s worst crimes? What was it like in Westeros when dragons ruled the skies? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley. Readers have glimpsed small parts of this narrative in such volumes as The World of Ice & Fire, but now, for the first time, the full tapestry of Targaryen history is revealed.

With all the scope and grandeur of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Fire & Blood is the ultimate game of thrones, giving readers a whole new appreciation for the dynamic, often bloody, and always fascinating history of Westeros.

Why We Want: Okay. This is not The Winds of Winter, but it is a return to Westeros. Fire and Blood is not a novel, rather a history of the Targaryens. I'll take what I can get.

Suri, Tasha. Empire of Sand [Orbit]
Publisher's Description

A nobleman’s daughter with magic in her blood. An empire built on the dreams of enslaved gods. Empire of Sand is Tasha Suri’s captivating, Mughal India-inspired debut fantasy. 

The Amrithi are outcasts; nomads descended of desert spirits, they are coveted and persecuted throughout the Empire for the power in their blood. Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor and an exiled Amrithi mother she can barely remember, but whose face and magic she has inherited.

When Mehr’s power comes to the attention of the Emperor’s most feared mystics, she must use every ounce of will, subtlety, and power she possesses to resist their cruel agenda.

Should she fail, the gods themselves may awaken seeking vengeance…

Empire of Sand is a lush, dazzling fantasy novel perfect for readers of City of Brass and The Wrath & the Dawn.

Why We Want It: We're always excited about a debut. There's so much promise and so much unknown. This could be our new favorite writer and a career we'll avidly follow for decades. We love us some epic fantasy here at Nerds of a Feather and it's always thrilling to see one take another path away from standard European inspired epic fantasy. We're here for Empire of Sand.

Willams, Sheila. Asimov's Science Fiction: A Decade of Hugo & Nebula Winning Stories, 2005-2015 [Prime]
Publisher's Description

Veteran editor and two-time Hugo winner Sheila Williams picks the best of recent award-winning stories first published by Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, the world's leading science fiction magazine. 

Why We Want It: The Hugo Awards are on brand for Nerds of a Feather. So are the Nebula Awards, though we haven't spent much time talking about them in recent years. If you've followed the Hugo Awards for any length of time, you'll have seen the shift of stories on the final ballot from the traditional print magazines to online only magazines which have made their fiction available for free. It's about ease and accessibility (and a slightly changing demographic of voter), but that's a conversation for another time. Asimov's hasn't gone anywhere, but the recognition of the fiction published there has dipped. Sheila Williams wants to remind everyone just how kick ass Asimov's is. Details are weirdly hard to find, but there should be plenty of excellent award winning stories to be found here.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.