New Books, 29 October 2024
Anderson, Kate: Lonely Places
(North Star Editions/Flux 9781635831016, $14.99, 304pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/29/2024)
Young-adult horror novel. After a traumatic experience steals Chase’s younger sister’s voice, the family moves to an isolated fire lookout in Pando, a grove of Aspen tree clones connected by a massive underground root system. They moved hoping for stability, but Chase learns that something bad happened at the lookout, and Pando appears to be changing her sister.
Anderson, Kevin J.: Nether Station
(Blackstone Publishing 9798200688449, $27.99, 316pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
SF/Lovecraftian horror novel. A wormhole, Nether, is found in the solar system, potentially a shortcut to Alpha Centauri. Astrophysicist Cammie Skoura joins the first research team investigating the anomaly, and they find remnants of an ancient race of aliens, with gigantic temples built to horrific beings.
Asher, E.B.: This Will Be Fun
(HarperCollins/Avon 9780063371361, $17.99, 416pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Cozy fantasy romance novel. A group of former heroes who saved the realm ten years ago reunite for the queen’s wedding. There they must deal with many unresolved issues in the group, and also dark forces from their past have returned.
Bond, Charlotte: The Bloodless Princes
(Tordotcom 9781250290779, $20.99, 160pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Fantasy novella, second in The Fireborne Blade series. The cursed and newly-promoted High Mage Saralene must visit the afterlife to ask a favor of the Bloodless Princes who run the underworld.
Burke, Sue: Usurpation
(Tor 9781250809162, $28.99, 240pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
SF novel, third in the Semiosis series. Stevland, the dominant sentient lifeform of Pax, has clandestinely sent some of its progeny to Earth. To explore, to spread, to report back. As more and more conflicts break out across Earth, Stevland’s children work in the background, in an attempt to control human behavior and perhaps, bring peace to the planet.
Cutter, Nick: The Queen
(Simon & Schuster/Gallery 9781668020975, $28.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
SF horror novel. Margaret wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater, who has been missing for months and everyone assumes is dead. Charity wants Margaret to know what really happened, and the destructive secret that has been kept hidden from them both.
Deal, Ef: Aéros & Héroes
(eSpec/NeoParadoxa 9781956463552, $17.95, 238pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 11/01/2024)
Steampunk fantasy novel, sequel to Esprit de Corpse in the Twins of Bellesfées series. Jacqueline Duval’s wedding party for her twin sister is threatened by vampires, insurrectionists and rogue monarchs.
DeCandido, Keith R.A.: Feat of Clay
(eSpec Books 9781956463439, $16.95, 214pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 11/01/2024)
Urban fantasy novel, second in the Adventures of Bram Gold series. Bram’s been a supernatural hunter for hire for 12 years since his parents were killed by a golem, and now another out-of-control golem has been sighted by his Aunt Esther’s synagogue.
Drews, CG: Don’t Let the Forest In
(Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends 9781250895660, $19.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Young-adult LGBTQ+ novel of toxic romance and botanical horror. High school senior Andrew writes twisted fairytales for Thomas, who draws whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters in Andrew’s stories. But something strange is going on with Thomas, and when Andrew follows him into the off-limits forest one night, he sees him fighting a nightmarish monster, one of his drawings come to life.
Dudek, PJ: Earth’s Door
(Ballast Books 9781962202602, $24.99, 522pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Science fantasy novel, the first in the Song of Immaru series. Tarin has disturbing dreams of an unknown past while the threat of a new global war looms and strange things are sighted in the sky. Then a stranger dressed as a medieval traveler enters town, seeking Tarin, and Tarin begins to discover that all is not as it seems.
Gold, Lyta: Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality
(Soft Skull Press 9781593767709, $27, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Non-fiction collection of eight essays on fiction as a source of cultural conflict, exploring what it is about fiction that provokes moral panic and censorship, and arguing any panic about art is primarily a disguised panic over power, offering examples historical and contemporary.
Guran, Paula, ed.: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: Volume 5
(Start/Pyr 9781645060925, $28.95, 300pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/15/2024)
Year’s Best anthology with 19 stories from 2023, the fifth volume in the series from Pyr (after ten from Prime). Authors include Isabel Cañas, Tananarive Due, Alex Irvine, and Lavie Tidhar.
Hopkinson, Nalo: Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions
(Tachyon Publications 9781616964269, $16.95, 224pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/29/2024)
Collection of 15 short stories with Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences.
All of the sixteen stories in Nalo Hopkinson’s Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions were published while Hopkinson was working on her major new novel Blackheart Man (reviewed here in July), and while none of them are directly related to that novel, they reveal aspects of her imagination, techniques, and preoccupations in a way that can’t always comfortably be packed into a tightly plotted and thematically unified tale.
–Gary K. Wolfe, Locus, October 2024
Maniscalco, Kerri: Throne of Secrets
(Little, Brown 9780316557542, $29.99, 512pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Standalone fantasy romance novel, the second in the Prince of Sin series begun in Throne of the Fallen. Reporter Adriana has been on the hunt for years for something to report about demon Gabriel Axton, the Prince of Gluttony, to make the world aware of what he’s really like, but after investigating a terrifying rumor she winds up in his infamous court and they must work together to save the kingdom.
McDermott, Shannon: The Time Door
(Enclave 9798886051544, $26.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
SF novel, first in the Eternities series. After the Great Collapse, Earth has abandoned the Mars explorers to their fate, but Reuben Jackson is determined to save them. Meanwhile on Mars, willing to accept a death quicker than starvation, the explorers undertake a dangerous mission deep inside the ancient volcano of Arsia Mons, where secrets have been long buried.
Mesa, Desideria: Bindle Punk Jefe
(Harper Voyager US 9780063056121, $17.99, 368pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Historical fantasy novel, second in the Bindle Punk series. As prohibition is in full swing, living a double life as Luna and Rose becomes even more complicated when people want her influence as a land developer’s wife and successful club owner, and her community of brujas objects to her using magic for economic and social gain, and consorting with northern witches.
Sandner, David & Weisman, Jacob: Egyptian Motherlode
(Fairwood Press 9781958880210, $18.88, 246pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 11/01/2024)
Fantasy novel. The Prophet is a musician with the ability to warp reality through his music. His dreams bring him to other realms, to places he should not go, into contact with entities with the power to threaten the existence of our world.
St. Clair, Scarlett: Apples Dipped in Gold
(Sourcebooks/Bloom Books 9781464216886, $12.99, 240pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Dark fantasy romance novella, second in the Fairy Tale Retelling series, based on Grimm fairy tales. Orphan Samara has been suffering under the abuse of her brothers until at last, a handsome prince asks for her hand in marriage, but on the way to her new kingdom her carriage is ambushed and it turns out a wicked prince is in love with her too.
Turtledove, Harry: Other People’s Playgrounds
(Subterranean Press 9781645241904, $50, 312pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/31/2024)
Collection of 13 stories written by Turtledove but set in other authors’ worlds, including the worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Jerome K. Jerome, Philip José Farmer, S. M. Stirling, J. D. Salinger, and Fred Saberhagen.
Varga, Emily: For She Is Wrath
(St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 9781250877383, $20, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Young-adult fantasy novel, A Pakistan-inspired, gender-bent retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo. After being imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit, Dania uses forbidden magic to get revenge on the boy she once loved, but believes betrayed her. A first novel.
Vaughn, Carrie: The Naturalist Society
(Amazon/47North 9781662519031, $16.99, 395pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 11/01/2024)
Fantasy novel set in Victorian era New York. The magic of Arcane Taxonomy dictates that every natural thing in the world, from weather to animals, can be labeled, and doing so grants the practitioner some of that subject’s unique power, but only men are permitted to train in this philosophy, meaning that when her husband dies, Beth Stanley’s life’s work is in jeopardy.
Vrana, A.J.: Wildblood
(Parliament House Press 9781956136869, $18.99, 494pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 10/29/2024)
Urban fantasy/noir novel, companion to the Chaos Cycle Duology. Kai is a monster from a fable, who makes a living as an underground fighter, until he loses a match against a mysterious opponent and is pulled into the underworld where he must recover an elusive prize. Meanwhile Kai’s partner Miya with the ability to traverse dreams, spends her days investigating supernatural phenomenon, and receives a shadowy proposal to find a missing teenager.
Walsh, Kevin: Planets of the Known Galaxy: Facts and Fiction About the Nearest Stars and Their Worlds
(Springer 9783031682179, $32.99, 235pp, formats: trade paperback, 11/01/2024)
Non-fiction, reference book exploring the concept of “the known galaxy” and how this idea has developed in current scientific knowledge, speculative fiction, and myth. Part of the Science and Fiction series.
Wang, M.L.: Blood Over Bright Haven
(Penguin Random House UK/Del Rey UK 9780593873359, $29.99, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 10/29/2024)
Steampunk fantasy novel. After twenty years of studying magic, Sciona is finally admitted as the first woman to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry, but when she finally passes her exam and becomes a highmage, her colleagues reject her and instead of a lab assistant, she gets a janitor. But this janitor has hidden motives for working here, and together they uncover an ancient secret.
