New Books: 25 April 2023
Binge, Nicholas: Ascension (Penguin Random House/Riverhead 978-0593539583, $28.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, and audio, 4/25/2023)
This is a science fiction cosmic horror novel. A mind-bending speculative thriller in which the sudden appearance of a mountain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean leads a group of scientists to a series of revelations that challenge the notion of what it means to be human.
Brust, Steven: Tsalmoth (Tor 978-0-7653-8284-9, $27.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook, 4/25/2023)
In this fantasy novel, 16th in the Vlad Taltos series, first comes love, then comes marriage…. Vlad Taltos is in love with a former assassin who may just be better than he is at the Game.
Claycomb, Ann: Silenced (Titan Books UK 9.7818033606e+12, $16.95, 368pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
In this fantasy novel, four women. Four enchantments. One man. But he is no handsome prince, and this is no sugar-sweet fairy tale. Jo, Abony, Ranjani, and Maia all have something in common: they have each been cursed by the CEO of their workplace after he abused his power to prey on them. He wants them silent and uses his sinister dark magic to keep them quiet about what he did. But Jo, Abony, Ranjani and Maia are not fairy-tale princesses waiting to be rescued. They are fierce, angry women with a bond forged in pain, and they’re about to discover that they have power of their own.
Deas, Stephen: Herald of the Black Moon (Angry Robot UK 978-1-915-20265-9, $19.99, 480pp, formats: trade paperback, and ebook, 4/25/2023)
This fantasy novel is the third book in the Black Moon Trilogy following protagonists Seth, Myla and Fings as they commit petty crimes and try their hardest to avoid world-ending destruction. That they may or may not have started…
Doctorow, Cory: Red Team Blues (Tor 9.7812508658e+12, $27.99, 224pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook, 4/25/2023)
This is a cyberpunk noir thriller novel from a New York Times bestseller. A grabby next-Tuesday kind of story about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works, through the eyes of Doctorow, who works for he Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, and a super smart guy who pays attention to this stuff. And he’s a Locus Magazine columnist!
Douglas, Ian: Alien Agendas (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-329946-7, $19.99, 432pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
In this military science fiction novel, reptilian aliens, Nazis in space, time-traveling humans, kidnapped girlfriends, government psychics—it all comes down to this: New York Times bestselling author Ian Douglas delivers the jaw-dropping finale to his action-packed military sci-fi Solar Warden adventure series.
Egan, Greg: Sleep and the Soul (self-published 978-1-922240-46-0, $25.00, 382pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, and ebook, 4/21/2023)
Collection of ten stories from the last four years from Hugo Award-winning author Greg Egan, who specializes in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.
Howard, Kat: A Sleight of Shadows (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1-5344-2681-8, $26.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
In this fantasy novel, after taking down the source of the corruption of the Unseen World, Sydney is left with almost no magical ability. Once one of the world’s most dangerous magicians, and feeling estranged from herself, she is determined to find a way back to her previous status. But she needs to do this quickly: the House of Shadows, the hell on earth that shaped her into who she was, the place she sacrificed everything to destroy, is rebuilding itself.
Kirby, Matthew J.: Star Splitter (Penguin Random House/Dutton 9.7807352317e+12, $18.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
This young-adult science fiction mystery novel is set in 2199, where deep-space exploration is a reality and teleportation is routine. But something goes wrong, and Seventeen-year-old Jessica Mathers wakes up in a lander that’s crashed onto the surface of Carver 1061c, a desolate, post-extinction planet fourteen light-years from Earth, instead of where she was supposed to: viewing the planet from a ship in orbit…
Klune, TJ: In the Lives of Puppets (Tor 978-1-250-21744-8, $28.99, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
This is a queer dystopian science fiction novel, In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots―fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.
Orhan, Keenan: I Am My Country and Other Stories (Penguin Random House/Random House 978-0-593-44946-2, $27.00, 240pp, formats: hardcover, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
This is a collection of stories set in Turkey, about ordinary people who confront the absurd: talking animals, flying houses, omniscient prayer-callers, talking to birds….
Patrick, John: Time Bomb (Rebel Satori/Queer Space 978-1-60864-244-1, $16.95, 216pp, formats: trade paperback, and ebook, 4/25/2023)
This is a science fiction time-travel novel with elements of queer romance, inspired by the Bhagavad Gita, about an effort to save the world from global warming by stopping the Los Alamos atomic bomb project.
Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou: Remnants of Filth: Yuwu (Seven Seas 978-1685794675, $19.99, 444pp, formats: trade paperback, and ebook, 4/25/2023)
Danmei fantasy novel set in the universe of The Husky and His White Cat Shizun series. A historical fantasy epic about two war generals who were once close… until dark circumstances ripped them apart.
Shipp, Jeremy C.: The Merry Dredgers (Meerkat Press 978-1-946154-46-0, $16.95, 200pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
This is a weird horror novel with touches of wry humor. In it, Seraphina, investigating why her sister is in a coma, infiltrates a cult living in a once-abandoned amusement park.
Smith, Michael Farris: Salvage This World (Little, Brown 978-0-316-41363-3, $28.00, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
This is a literary science fiction, horror novel set in the same world as Desperation Road, about a young mother on the run with her toddler, and her “ghost-ridden”, forced to take them in a storm-ravaged South, where a religious cult leader searches for a girl to give him the key to the apocalyptic future.
Tiptree, James: The Voice that Murmurs in the Darkness (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-107-2, $45.00, 376pp, formats: hardcover, 4/30/2023)
This is a collection of 13 stories and one essay from 1968-1987, most selected from a list made by the author of “the cream of Tiptree; none in the collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler. Tiptree is a pen name for Alice Sheldon. This is a limited edition of 1,000.
Valente, Catherynne M.: The Best of Catherynne M. Valente, Volume One (Subterranean Press 978-1-64524-077-8, $40.00, 800pp, formats: hardcover, 4/30/2023)
The first comprehensive collection of Valente’s short fiction, soaring through 18 years of storytelling. Among her award-winning stories, you’ll find stories from melancholy robot girls to Eurydice and Orpheus; from detectives in Purgatory to time-traveling squirrels to a very different Santa Claus; from the grey coast of Washington to Alice’s Wonderland. Valente’s work is sumptuous and complex, with rich language and an open beating heart.
Weeks, Brent: Night Angel Nemesis (Orbit US 978-0-316-55490-9, $30.00, 848pp, formats: hardcover, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
This fantasy novel is the return to the New York Times bestselling world of the Night Angel, where master assassin Kylar Stern embarks on a new adventure as the High King Logan Gyre calls on him to save his kingdom and the hope of peace.
White, Tyriek: We Are a Haunting (Astra House 978-1-6626-0171-2, $25.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook and audio, 4/25/2023)
This is a fantasy novel set in 1980s Brooklyn. A doula dies and her son Colly learns he’s inherited her gift, and learns to slip into the space between the worlds of the living and the dead; eventually going to college, he returns to help deal with crumbling public housing in New York.
