My standard spoiler warning for this series: Antiagon Fire is the seventh novel in L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s Imager Portfolio series, and the fourth one following the adventures of Quaeryt Rytersyn. The first three novels in the series had a different protagonist and were set in the same fictional world but several centuries after the events portrayed in the Quaeryt novels.

In other words, you may want to stop reading this review if you haven’t at least read the first three Quaeryt novels: Scholar, Princeps and Imager’s Battalion. If you’d like a refresher, you can find my reviews of those novels here, here and here. (You can also find my look at the initial Imager trilogy here.)

So, in summary: if you’re not familiar with this series yet, please check it out because it’s excellent—but stop reading this review here to avoid spoilers.

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Who better to interview a living legend than another living legend? “Talking with Tom” is the third installment of a Tor.com series in which Tor publisher Tom Doherty chats with one of the many authors and industry icons whose careers he influenced. Previous installments covered conversations with L.E. Modesitt Jr.and Harriet McDougal.

Please enjoy this fascinating and wide-ranging conversation between Tom Doherty and award-winning science fiction author Gregory Benford.

[The sound of time’s sure falling]

Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee is a terrifying collection of short stories to review. The stories themselves are rarely scary in the traditional sense, but their individual complexity and astonishing level of variety make this an impossible book to encompass in just a few paragraphs.

It’s not that there aren’t any hooks or approaches; it’s more that there is such a bewildering number of them that, as a reader or reviewer, you feel somewhat like you’ve wandered onto a hitherto undiscovered island full of skittery, unfamiliar species that keep turning out to be something else than what you initially expected. More than a review, Conservation of Shadows needs its own monograph. Towards a Taxonomy of Yoon Ha Lee’s Short Fiction, maybe.

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It’s 1976, and the rule of the Roman Catholic Church is absolute. A stable theocracy prevails across Europe. The Reformation never happened. A papal crusade prevented Henry VIII from taking the throne. Martin Luther became Pope Germanian I. The Church is in charge of all aspects of life, from government and culture all the way down to personal relationships.

Ten year old Hubert Anvil is an incredibly gifted soprano, but as puberty approaches, his voice will break, inevitably destroying his ability to sing in the higher registers. Hubert’s superiors are considering an “alteration”: removing the offending parts of his anatomy before hormones ravage his angelical voice….

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Lucius Shepard’s new collection Five Autobiographies and a Fiction is required reading for fans of the author. People who have never read anything by Shepard may love it too, but because of the specific nature of this set of stories, it’ll definitely have more impact on readers who are familiar with the author. If that's you, I’d go as far as saying that this is nothing less than a must-read, because it will dramatically change and enrich your understanding of the author and his works.

As the title of this new collection indicates, Shepard approaches aspects of his own life and personality from five different directions.  Calling these stories “autobiographies” is as meaningful as it is deceptive. “Pseudo-autobiographies” or even “meta-autobiographies” would be more appropriate, but it’s understandable why Shepard and Subterranean Press avoided those horrible mouthfuls.

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Heath Ransom, the main character of Jamil Nasir’s new novel Tunnel Out of Death, is an endovoyant investigator, which means he uses his enhanced sense of empathy, combined with futuristic immersion tank technology, to solve mysteries and track people in the etheric world. While trying to find the consciousness of a rich comatose woman in the astral sphere, he encounters something he’s never seen before: a black tear in the not-quite-reality he accesses during his investigations.

Inexorably pulled into this odd black tunnel, Ransom’s mind enters the body of a young man who has just been given a drug overdose in an attempt to make his death seem like a suicide. While inhabiting this unfamiliar reality and body, Ransom discovers that the initial investigation he was contracted for has much farther-reaching implications than he could have possibly imagined….

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Over the last few years, Mercurio D. Rivera has published some great, intriguing science fiction short stories in markets such as Interzone and Asimov’s. He’s been anthologized in one of Hartwell & Cramer’s annual “Best of” collections, received several honorable mentions in the Gardner Dozois ones, and had a story included in the John Joseph Adams anthology Other Worlds Than These. Thanks to NewCon Press, you can now find a goodly number of his short stories in the excellent new collection Across the Event Horizon.

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Former police inspector and current private investigator Adamat is summoned to the Skyline Palace to help resolve a baffling mystery: during a brutal coup against Adro’s monarchy, every single member of the Royal Cabal uttered the same cryptic phrase right before dying: “You can’t break Kresimir’s Promise.” Field Marshal Tamas, who coordinated the coup with a small group of other powerbrokers, needs Adamat’s perfect memory and investigative skills to figure out what this may mean.

Adamat conducts his investigation while Tamas begins the brutal work of purging the country’s nobility and pacifying the capital during the inevitable civil war. His first priority is hunting down an uncommonly powerful member of the Royal Cabal who managed to escape the palace during the coup. Tamas assigns this duty to his son Taniel, a talented powder mage who has just recently returned to the city with a mysterious young savage named Ka-Poel. Gradually it becomes clear that the overthrow of the monarchy was just the start of a series of events that will change the world forever....

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This is somewhat irregular, but I’d like to start off this review with a painful confession: I somehow wasn’t familiar with Tom Piccirilli and mistook his new novel What Makes You Die for a debut.

Come back. Stop laughing.

In my defense, so far Piccirilli seems to have written mostly (though not exclusively) in the horror and thriller genres, which aren’t really my bailiwick. The ARC for What Makes You Die came in from Apex Book Company, a relatively small press. It’s a short little book, just 150 pages in my Epub review copy. The blurb somehow yelled “autobiographical first novel” at me. Obviously, I’d somehow never heard of Tom Piccirilli, and of course I assumed that must mean he’s new.

So after about 30 pages, I’m sitting here thinking “whoa, this guy can write,” and I decide to fire up the ole Google. Turns out Tom Piccirilli has written over twenty novels and a gabillion short stories. He won a number of major awards, including the Bram Stoker Award on more than one occasion, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award. I was so shocked at my own painful ignorance that I decided the only way to atone for it was to display it in grand fashion at the start of this review.

If everyone’s done laughing, we can now move on to the actual review.

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Who better to interview a living legend than another living legend? “Talking with Tom” is the second installment of a new Tor.com series in which Tor publisher Tom Doherty chats with one of the many authors and industry icons whose careers he helped launch and shape.

Please enjoy this fascinating and wide-ranging conversation between Tom Doherty and Harriet McDougal, who collaborated for decades on many iconic science fiction and fantasy titles, including of course every novel in The Wheel of Time series. Tom and Harriet discussed Harriet’s work as an editor, her late husband’s career (including information about an as-yet unpublished fantasy novel by Jordan), the Wheel of Time’s famous artwork, and of course the recently released final installment in the series, A Memory of Light. Also present was Irene Gallo, Art Director for Tor Books.

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The Iron King by Maurice Druon is a historical novel that is about to be read by a large number of fantasy readers, mostly on the strength of a little quote by one George R.R. Martin on its cover. Ready for it? Here it comes: “This is the original Game of Thrones.”

I have to admire the decision to place this quote at the very top of this book cover, because there is no other way that an almost sixty-year-old historical novel set mostly in 14th Century France would cross over to fantasy fans as successfully as this one is about to. (The fact that fantasy is being used to market historical fiction also speaks to the way popular culture has changed in the last decade or two, but that’s another discussion.)

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Christopher Sinclair is an alchemist who cares about only one thing: discovering the quintessence, the mystical fifth element that may be able to transmute base metals into gold and even bring the dead back to life. Stephen Parris, a physic in the court of England’s sickly Edward VI, strives in his own controversial way to extend life by practicing the forbidden art of human dissection to further his medical knowledge. Neither man is willing to accept the strictures imposed on their research by religion: they are guided by scientific principles and rational discourse, not the limits of revealed knowledge.

This puts them in direct conflict with the religious powers of the day, at a time when the Counter-Reformation is on the verge of sweeping over England and making life for heretics of various persuasions extremely unpleasant. Parris and Sinclair strike out for Horizon, an island on the edge of the world where the Inquisition won’t be able to reach them and, more importantly, where they may discover more about the quintessence….

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Over the years, Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings has become one of fantasy’s most beloved settings. So far, the series consists of three completed trilogies (Farseer, Live Ship, and Tawny Man), as well as the Rain Wilds Chronicles, a four book cycle whose final installment is due out in March. In addition, there are a number of shorter works set in this fantasy universe. The most recent of these is The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince, a brand new novella due out from Subterranean Press February 28.

It’s best to think of The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince (excerpt) as a prequel to the Farseer Trilogy, and like almost all prequels, it’s better to read it after you’ve read the books that take place later in the internal chronology. So, if you’re new to the Realm of the Elderlings, grab a copy of Assasin’s Apprentice instead.

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It doesn’t happen to me very often, but ever so rarely I come across a book that’s so purely brilliant that it almost stuns me, a story that’s so gorgeous and rich that I feel paralyzed: not just unable to verbalize how much I love it but actually almost reluctant to, because trying to encapsulate it in a review feels like sullying it, like tacking on extraneous words that it really doesn’t need.

In the case of Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente, which is—in case it wasn’t clear yet—one of the most gorgeous works of speculative fiction I’ve read in years, that odd reluctance is even stronger, because it’s such a short, tight piece of writing. No word is wasted. I am frequently impressed by an author’s facility with words, but in the case of Valente, I feel almost intimidated. Here is a novella that carries within itself more depth and richness than lesser authors manage to bring to a series.

[Funny how a gun can speak your pain so clear.]

In Gordon Dahlquist’s new novel The Different Girl, Veronika, Caroline, Isobel and Eleanor are four young girls who live on a small island with their two adult caretakers Irene and Robbert. The girls are completely identical aside from the color of their hair: one is blond, one brunette, one red, and one black. They don’t know exactly why they’re on the island; all they’ve been told is that their parents died in a plane crash so Irene and Robbert are raising them there. Each day passes more or less like the last: the girls wake up, do a number of learning exercises under the guidance of the adults, help with meal preparation, and go to bed.

Everything changes when a different girl arrives on the island under mysterious circumstances. She looks different, she speaks differently, she knows and says things the other girls don’t understand. Gradually everything begins to change as the four girls learn more about their true nature and their origins.

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Mona Bright used to be a cop. She was married. They were expecting a baby. Then, abruptly, everything fell apart and her life collapsed. Since then, she’s been drifting from town to town, taking short term jobs, drinking heavily, looking for oblivion... until she learns that she’s inherited her mother’s house, somewhere in a small New Mexico town called Wink.

When Mona starts trying to find Wink, it turns out that the place is incredibly hard to track down. Resolved to grasp the chance at stability that this house represents, she digs in and finally manages to reach the isolated little town. Wink turns out to be picturesque and quiet, a quintessential American Small Town complete with lovely houses, healthy lawns and white picket fences, but it soon becomes clear that there’s something very odd about the people who live there….

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Rojan Dizon is a bounty-hunter in the vertical city of Mahala, an ancient, towering structure where neighborhoods are built on top of neighborhoods. The rich and powerful live at the top, enjoying sunshine and fresh air, while the poor live in the dank and dirty atmosphere of the lower levels. Those bottom-dwellers also have to deal with the residual poisonous seepage of “synth,” a fuel source that has recently been discontinued in favor of the—supposedly—cleaner magical “Glow” because, as it turns out, exposure to synthtox leads to a slow, painful death.

Rojan is successful at chasing down runaways and criminals in part because he’s secretly a pain mage, which allows him to locate people or change his appearance as long as he can draw magical strength from pain. He has a tiny office in a bad part of town, a secretary who is never happier than when the constant womanizing that Rojan calls his love life results in chaos, and a serious case of unresolved anger towards the Ministry, the shadowy religious organization that rules Mahala with an iron fist.

[You Don’t Mess with the Rojan]

To prepare for Homeland, the sequel to Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful 2007 YA novel Little Brother, I decided to give that first book a quick re-read. Not for the first time, I was struck by how clever and awesome it is that Doctorow offers his novels as free downloads under a Creative Commons license because, even though I’m positive that I own at least two physical copies of the book, I couldn’t find them anywhere. (Hey, I just moved, give me a break. They’ll turn up.) So, I happily downloaded a copy and tore through it at more or less the same breakneck speed as I did back when it just came out.

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With last year’s Shadow Ops: Control Point, Myke Cole burst onto the scene with a bang, launching a cool, action-packed new series that combines elements of military fantasy and superhero fiction in a contemporary setting. The novel introduces a world in which random people suddenly find themselves with magical powers, able to control the elements, create portals to another realm, even raise the dead. The U.S. military has taken control of these powerful new abilities because, as they say, “magic is the new nuke.” People who discover they are “Latent” must report themselves or face persecution as “Selfers.” On that first novel’s cover, Peter V. Brett called it “Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men,” and that’s still the best summation of this series I’ve seen so far. (The publisher seems to agree, as that quote is in the same prominent spot on the new book’s cover.)

Now, about a year later, Myke Cole delivers Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier, the eagerly awaited sequel to that spectacular debut. (You can find an excerpt and the rather awesome book trailer here, and a review of the first novel here.) Quick summary for people who haven’t read Control Point yet: this new installment is just as good as the first one, so if you were waiting to see if Cole manages to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump, rest assured and jump right in. For more info, including some vague plot details from the first novel, read on.

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