2016. Hell, 2016. How is it coming up 2016 already? I’d only just got used to it being 2015. Now I’m going to have to get used to a whole new year.
But in compensation for none of us being as young as we used to be, there are new and interesting-sounding books coming out in the next six months. So many, in fact, that I can’t keep track of them. I’m sure I’m missing plenty, but here are a few I’m looking forward to in advance.
As the long year draws to its close, I think it’s time we looked back at some of the highlights from 2015. I’m not normally a fan of “Best Of” lists, but I think this is a good season for “Favourites.”
I read short fiction seldom, which makes me an odd choice to review an anthology of it. Let me get that caveat out there before everything else: although I know what I like, my ignorance of the form is vast.
Meeting Infinity is the fourth in a series of science fiction anthologies out of Solaris, curated by award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan. It comprises sixteen pieces of short fiction by James S.A. Corey, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Simon Ings, Kameron Hurley, Nancy Kress, Gwyneth Jones, Yoon Ha Lee, Bruce Sterling, Gregory Benford, Madeline Ashby, Sean Williams, Aliette de Bodard, Ramez Naam, John Barnes, An Owomoyela, and Ian McDonald, as well as an introduction by the editor.
How is it the middle of December already? I could swear that the last time I looked around, it was only October. This whole business of time travel only taking us to the future is terribly infuriating: how am I ever supposed to catch up on my reading?
(It might not really be time travel, but damn does it feel like time sped up when I wasn’t looking.)
Abaddon’s Gate is the third novel in James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series. The powers-that-be here at Tor.com asked me to revisit it in advance of the premiere of the television series based on the books. To talk about the good, the bad, the ugly, and the adaptable…
In my case, though, it’s less revisit than visit for the very first time. I’ve only just read Abaddon’s Gate, and I haven’t yet made it to books four and five. What long threads does Abaddon’s Gate lay down that will be taken up later on? I don’t know. But I do have opinions on what should come out of this section of the narrative arc in a television adaptation—as well as rather less optimistic opinions on what we will, in the end, eventually see.
I’ve been reading several books that I’d like to be able to tell you about in detail. Unfortunately, a feverish chest infection is really really good at wiping the details from my mind, so I can only talk about these excellent books in the broadest strokes. Still, if you need a pick-me-up? Here’s some reading I’d very much like to recommend to you.
Today we’re joined by S.L. Huang, author of the Cas Russell books—superhero stories in where the main character is less of a hero than the protagonist of batshit pulp noir. Huang’s novels are independently published, and I for one find them an awful lot of fun. Explosions, mysteries, mathematics, and compelling characters: it’s a good mix.
She’s agreed to answer a few questions for us, so without further ado—
My reading has slowed down this autumn. (Well, it’s winter now, and it still hasn’t sped back up.) I’m told this is understandable when one comes to the end of a large and demanding project, but it’s peculiarly frustrating. There are several shelves of books I want to read and talk about! Like Genevieve Cogman’s The Masked City and Becky Chambers’ The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, and Jacey Bedford’s Winterwood, and Julia Knight’s Swords and Scoundrels, and Charlie Jane Anders’ All The Birds In The Sky. To say nothing of books published in years previous to this one…
But such is, as they say, life. This week I hope you’ll let me tell you about three interesting novels that I have managed to read recently.
And the first thought is wow.
And the second thought is: I didn’t think the Marvel Cinematic Universe was allowed to make anything this good. Or this female-focused.
Today we’re joined by Tanya Huff, whose writing career spans more than two decades and a good handful of subgenres. Whether urban fantasy (her Vicki Nelson series was adapted for television in Canada) or epic, or space opera, she writes really entertaining novels. Her latest, An Ancient Peace, is a space operatic adventure involving tomb robbery and explosions. It’s out from DAW in the US and Titan Books in the UK, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
And she’s agreed to answer a few questions for us, so let’s get to them!
Towers Fall is the third and final volume in Karina Sumner-Smith’s debut trilogy from Talos Books. I’m tempted to call it a tour-de-force, but that’s mainly for the strength of my emotional reaction to this, the climax and conclusion of a very strong arc. Sumner-Smith’s career, I think, will be well worth watching.
Towers Fall is impossible to discuss without reference to its predecessors, Radiant and Defiant, so be warned for spoilers ahead.
There are always so many books, and always so little time. I think I’ve read one hundred and sixty unique titles so far this year, and I’m still falling behind on new and interesting things. Not so far behind, though, that I don’t want to tell you about three new books and a novella.
(One of which I didn’t like, but I want to talk about in the hopes that maybe someone can tell me of a book that does similar things but isn’t frustratingly made of plothole.)
Elizabeth Bear is a frighteningly prolific writer. In a novel-writing career that’s just about to enter its second decade, she’s published twenty solo novels, three novellas and mosaic novel in her New Amsterdam series, one trilogy co-authored with Sarah Monette, and two collections of short fiction—which do not, by the way, collect all her extant short fiction. She’s collected a John W. Campbell Award and two Hugo Awards for her fiction, putting her in a fairly small club…
…and she keeps writing more. Which means if you haven’t been reading her stuff all along, you might feel a bit daunted trying to figure out where to start. Because the thing about Bear? She’s not just a prolific writer. She’s a writer who jumps subgenres, and sometimes styles, from book to book and series to series, and absolutely in her short fiction. She’s always trying something new.
I’m not sure that any review I write can do adequate justice to Kate Elliott’s Black Wolves. Here are the basic facts: it’s the first book in a new series. It’s set in the same continuity as her “Crossroads” trilogy (begun in 2007 with Spirit Gate), but several decades on, and with an entirely new cast of characters. It’s out today from Orbit. And it’s the work of a writer who’s reached a new peak in skill and talent, and has things to say.
On one level, this is good old-fashioned epic fantasy. A kingdom in turmoil; young men and young women in over their heads, secrets and lies and history, power struggles and magic and people who ride giant eagles. It has cool shit.
[On another level, this is a deconstruction of epic fantasy.]
According to their marketing, Sarah McCarry’s first three novels are Young Adult books, though there is very little that’s solely young about them. All Our Pretty Songs. Dirty Wings. About A Girl. They form a triptych, as rich and deep and strange a tapestry as any piece of literature I’ve ever come across. Drenched in mythology, saturated with metamorphoses, they’re books about liminality. About the edges of things. About the border between youth and adulthood, between the familiar and the strange, between being and becoming, loss and belonging.
They’re books about transition and transformation, and it’s far from astonishing that the main character of About A Girl is offered a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses as she finds herself falling in love with a girl who is also a monster, who is also a version of a woman in a myth: no, it’s no surprise at all.
