New & Notable Books, May
Cory Doctorow, The Bezzle (Tor 2/24) Forensic accountant Martin Hench returns in this noir thriller, a prequel to Red Team Blues set during the dot-com bubble. Hench and a friend bring down an amoral millionaire running a pyramid scheme, who retaliates with a slow, vicious revenge, in a tale that introduces some moral complexities that will leave this younger Hench a bit wiser in the future.
Harlan Ellison, Greatest Hits (Union Square 3/24) This collection of 19 stories, most of them nominees or winners of major awards, offers an excellent introduction to Ellison’s work, with some later pieces fans might have missed, plus a hand-edited draft of one story and photos from across four decades. Edited and with a preface and notes by J. Michael Straczynski. “A solid sampling of some of Ellison’s best… his fiction can still scream.” [Gary K. Wolfe]
Hadeer Elsbai, The Weavers of Alamaxa (Harper Voyager US 3/24) This second feminist fantasy novel in the Egypt-inspired Alamaxa duology ups the action and adventure as fundamentalists take military-style action against the Daughters of Izdihar, a group of women with elemental weaver magic fighting politically against patriarchal rule.
Justinian Huang, The Emperor and the Endless Palace (Mira 2024) Huang’s impressive first novel presents an opulent queer fantasy romance steeped in Chinese history and folklore, following two men destined to meet in three different lifetimes across two millennia, from 4 BCE China to present-day Los Angeles.
Vanessa Le, The Last Bloodcarver (Roaring Brook 3/24) A first novel getting critical acclaim, this young-adult fantasy is the first in a duology inspired by Vietnam, following the bloodcarver Nhika, a young woman with the outlawed magical ability to heal or harm with just a touch. Considered a monster, she’s captured and sold to a wealthy family that wants her to help catch a killer by healing a comatose witness to a high-profile murder, leading to a dangerous investigation.
Téa Obreht, The Morningside (Random House 3/24) A girl and her mother are forced to move into a crumbling luxury tower in half-underwater Island City in this near-future novel with elements of magical realism, which explores the power of stories as young Silvia’s aunt fills her head with folktales of her demolished homeland.
Zalika Reid-Benta, River Mumma (Erewhon 2/24) This impressive first novel, first published in 2023 by Penguin Canada, follows Alicia, a young Black woman recently out of grad school and lacking career prospects. Then the Jamaican water deity River Mumma appears, and sends Alicia on a mythical quest in Toronto, a journey that also helps her find herself, for “an exciting, and quite illuminating, reading experience.” [Colleen Mondor]
Waubgeshig Rice, Moon of the Turning Leaves (Morrow 2/24) Anishinaable survivors from the apocalypse in Moon of the Crusted Snow face new challenges in this post-apocalyptic SF thriller set 12 years later. Withnatural food sources decreasing, they send a scouting party to find out if it’s safe to return to their ancestral lands; a previous mission years before never returned. Publishers Weekly calls this “a refreshing, indigenous perspective on postapocalyptic tropes… a showstopper.”
Brandon Sanderson, The Sunlit Man (Tor 3/24) The fourth of Sanderson’s Secret Projects, this fantasy novel was available in 2023 through Kickstarter and is now in its first trade print edition. More in the main Cosmere series than previous Secret Projects, this has gotten a good response from series fans. It features Nomad, a man on the run who gets himself trapped on a planet where sunrise is deadly.
Wole Talabi, Convergence Problems (DAW 2/24) This impressive collection offers 16 stories, three new, a mix of science, technology, and African folklore, with notes on each by Talabi. “Talabi finds intriguing ways of linking his SF ideas to Nigerian traditions and culture… Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay to Talabi’s collection is that it leaves us with no idea of what to expect from him next.” [Gary K. Wolfe]
Ben H. Winters, Big Time (Mulholland 3/24) An FDA bureaucrat tries to rescue a girl subjected to a mysterious procedure and uncovers a conspiracy in this entertaining SF thriller, a cautionary near-future tale in which new technology allows the harvesting and transplanting of pieces of people’s lifespans, giving new meaning to the expression “time is money.”
From the May 2024 issue of Locus.
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