1. Never trust anyone.

2. Remember they are always searching.

3. Don’t get involved.

4. Keep your head down.

5. Don’t fall in love.

Those are the rules Ariane Tucker lives by, the rules that keep her safe and out of sight. For Ariane…is not human.

She looks human, albeit with the aid of colored contacts and lowlights in her hair. She acts human, thanks to intense study, careful routines, and the above rules. She has a human name, borrowed from a girl who died years ago. She even has a human father…the man who helped rescue her from the laboratory when she was younger, who’s sheltered her ever since, right under her enemy’s noses. No one knows that her bones are fragile, that she can read minds, that she possesses immense telekinetic powers that refuse to manifest themselves.

[Read more]

When Verity Price came to New York, she was given a year to make up her mind: did she want to follow her dreams as a professional ballroom dancer, or follow the family tradition as a cryptozoologist? Unfortunately, when passions and duties collide, you don’t always get to choose the option you like. More and more, she’s been called upon in the latter role, both protecting and hunting the cryptids of New York as the occasion demands. And as that year draws to an end, she’s about to face the roughest challenge of her career.

It starts when Verity’s boyfriend Dominic tells her that his own bosses, the Covenant of St. George, have dispatched a team to check on his work. Problem 1) When the Covenant shows up, cryptids die. Problem 2) The Covenant regards Verity’s family as traitors to the human race, and thinks they’re all dead. If they show up and find Verity and realize just who she is…things could get really ugly.

[Read more]

Like so many of us, I grew up with the Oz books. I was lucky: not only did I have access to the first fourteen of the series, those written by L. Frank Baum himself and thusly considered wholly canonical, I also encountered a fair number of the subsequent books, those making up the rest of the “Famous Forty.” From the elegant reproductions of the first fourteen, as released by Rand McNally in the early 1970s, to the colorful paperback releases of the sequels put out by Del Rey in the 1980s, and including a fair number of other editions picked up over time, I’ve read most, if not all, of the available and mostly canonical, installments. I still remember fondly the times I went to visit one set of relatives, and discovered much older versions of the books in their mindbogglingly expansive library. (I still dream of someday “liberating” those editions….)

When my esteemed and knowledgeable colleague Mari Ness undertook the epic task of rereading the Famous Forty, I followed her progress with great interest, rediscovering so much of what I’d forgotten, seeing with new eyes what I’d either overlooked or missed as a child. What I took away from that series of posts is that Oz is not one singular vision, it’s a wide array of experiences seen through a specific lens. Oz is a place where magic infuses every corner, where talking animals roam, where people never age, where money is (mostly) unheard of, where lunchboxes grow on trees. It’s an escape from the real world, and yet a necessary contrast to our mundane existences. Oz just…is.

[Read more]

Imagine learning that you were dead, that someone wearing your clothes, carrying your possessions, bearing your features, had been struck by a bus and killed.

Imagine your mother, already fragile from alcoholism and depression, having to identify your corpse, and trying to kill herself out of grief.

Now imagine that you’ve found a coin which can change your life with every flip. Imagine having the power to make things better or worse, but never knowing what the change will be until it’s too late.

Imagine, then, that with every wish granted by the coin, you end up in a different world, where people act in unfamiliar ways. Where the girl of your dreams is your girlfriend, where your best friend goes from geek to jock, where your mother is perfectly fine but doesn’t understand why you’re weirded out.

Ephraim Scott has just experienced all of those things, and now he’s worried that he may never return to the world he called home….

[Read more]

Previously, in the Article 5 series:

After a horrendous war which devastated the United States and left most of its major cities in ruins, an oppressive new government, one formed on a “One Whole Country, One Whole Family” platform, has taken over. Ember Miller, a young woman who never knew her father, was arrested for the crime of coming from a broken family. She promptly escaped from prison with the help of Chase Jennings, her old crush. Together, they vanished into the underground resistance, where they strive to help others terrorized by the increasingly ruthless Federal Bureau of Reformation. And as we pick up the narrative in Breaking Point, things seem to be getting worse….

[Read more]

HELP!

BEING HELD PRISONER BY TELEPORTING ALIENS!

KEPT FROM NORMAL LIFE.

SEND FRIENDS.

ALSO ICE CREAM.

Cent’s not your everyday average teenage girl. For one thing, she doesn’t officially exist. She’s lived her entire life in isolation, raised by her parents in the middle of nowhere. But she’s received the best education the world can offer her, for her parents—Davy and Millie Rice—are teleporters, able to travel vast distances in the blink of an eye. Some…unfortunate incidents involving the government and other conspiracies many years ago caused Davy and Millie to withdraw from society and lead a life of paranoid secrecy. As a result, their daughter has had a decidedly nonstandard upbringing. She’s extremely smart, self-assured, sarcastic, quick-witted, resourceful, and well-read, but when it comes to dealing with her own kind (teenagers) she’s about as socialized as a Pekingese running feral in the big city. She’d love to have a normal life, but as long as people are looking to capture and exploit the so-called “jumpers,” she and her family must stay off the grid.

And then, one day, Cent discovers that she too is a jumper.

And all bets are off.

[Read more]

eDiscover is a new series on Tor.com that highlights sci-fi/fantasy titles recently brought back into print as ebooks.

Dear Disney,

Can we talk? I’ve got something of a proposal for you. It’s about the new Star Wars movies you want to produce, that trilogy that will pick up where the original left off. Now, I think you may be on to something. Star Wars is, like, Elvis huge, and I’m not opposed to the idea of more movies just on general principle. (We can all agree that some ideas should not be attempted, but this isn’t one of those articles.) The thing is, Disney, you have a LOT to choose from when it comes to Star Wars material, to the tune of what, several hundred novels, comics, games, and Holiday Specials? But I have a story for you that doesn’t come from the Extended Universe. Hear me out.

Imagine if Princess Leia, former Rebel leader, diplomat, war hero, is assassinated. Her grieving husband, Han Solo, former smuggler and war hero, sells his famous ship, the Millenium Falcon, to their daughter, Jaina. The price our heroine must pay for getting her own ship and being allowed to make her way in the galaxy as a starship captain: hunt down those responsible for her mother’s death and make them pay. So, taking on a certain long-missing Jedi as her co-pilot, she fakes her death and sets out to unravel the mystery of her mother’s killer. Meanwhile….

[Read more]

Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told she’d kill her true love.

With these haunting words Maggie Stiefvater, author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, launches a new four book series initially set in the mysterious wilds of Virginia.

Blue Sargent comes from a family of seers, psychics, and mediums. Though she’s not particularly gifted in her own right, her mere presence seems to help amplify the abilities of her sprawling, eccentric family. Impressed from her childhood with the sure knowledge that her kiss will doom her true love, she’s sworn off love forever, with all the confidence and surety only a teenager can make. But now she’s sixteen, and she’s been informed that this is the year she’ll fall in love.

It’s April 24—St. Mark’s Eve—and Blue joins family friend Neeve in standing vigil outside of an old church, where they wait to see who will walk the ancient roads of the dead on that night. In this fashion, it’s possible to know who will die in the year to come. This year, a spirit actually talks to Blue. His name is Gansey.

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve, Blue. Either you’re his true love…or you killed him.”

[Read more]

The greatest mystery any of us will ever experience is the afterlife. Who knows what really happens when we die? What’s out there waiting for us: Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Purgatory, Valhalla, absolute nothingness, the Great Recycling Bin in the Sky? Not even Bobby Dollar knows for sure, and he’s an angel. To be specific, Bobby Dollar is an earthbound angel, an advocate who lives among us when he’s not arguing on Heaven’s behalf for the souls of the deceased. He’s a tiny, flawed cog in an immense, unfathomable bureaucracy, and that’s just the way he likes it. He does his job, he gets to drive a fast car and enjoy Earthly experiences, and he gets to stick it to Hell every time he wins a case. It’s a system that works. That is, until the unprecedented happens, and a soul actually goes missing. Impossible?

[Read more]

Once upon a time, Celaena Sardothien was one of the greatest assassins in all the lands of Erilea, despite being a teenager. Notorious, deadly, ruthless, she earned her reputation through blood and skill, before being betrayed, arrested, and sent to the Salt Mines of Endovier. She was supposed to die there, in the dark. Instead, she survived, lasting months longer than anyone expected. And then they came for her, dragging her out into the light once more. They needed her skills, her unique set of talents, her ability to persevere and overcome. If she’d known what was in store for her, she might just have chosen to stay in the mines….

[Read more]

“If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?” —Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk

If you asked A this question, they’d tell you that it was a done deal. For A has no fixed body, no set identity, no normal daily routine. Every day, A wakes up inhabiting a different body corresponding to A’s approximate age. For six thousand days and counting, A has flitted from one person to the next, borrowing their life for twenty-four hours. A has been male and female, black and white and Asian and Hispanic, straight and gay and lesbian and transgender, jock and nerd, scholar and junkie. A tries not to disrupt the lives they’re briefly assuming, but sometimes, things happen. Even though A has access to necessary memories and experiences, and is an expert at playing along with friends and family, sometimes, there are disruptions. And then A finds a reason to try and carve out a life for themselves. A falls in love.

[Read more]

“Where does he get those wonderful toys?”
—The Joker, Batman (1989)

Isaac Vainio is a librarian, but not like any you’ve ever met. He’s secretly a libriomancer, a magician capable of working amazing feats through the power of the written word. In short, he can reach into a book and pull out anything he needs. Within reason. There are rules for this sort of thing, after all, as established by the Porters, the secret society founded by Johannes Gutenberg centuries ago. (Yes, that Gutenberg, he of the printing press. Who knew he was actually a sorcerer?)

Because of a few mistakes, Isaac’s been retired from the field, now working to catalogue books, recording the useful and dangerous ones for future consideration or protective binding. (Do you really want people accidentally bringing through the Kellis-Amberlee virus from the Mira Grant books? I thought as much.) It’s a quiet life, if somewhat unfulfilling after the excitement of field ops, but that monotony is disrupted when Isaac’s attacked by vampires. Yeah, it’s going to be one of those days….

[Read more]

It never ceases to amaze me what lengths writers will go to in order to set up their perfect post-apocalyptic dystopias. Take, for instance, Struck. Set a month after an 8.6 earthquake utterly devastates the heart of Los Angeles, it features Mia Price, a young woman with an uncanny, superhuman affinity for lightning, who’s been struck numerous times and always recovered afterwards. As she wanders the ruined streets of Los Angeles, she’s drawn up into a struggle between two different factions who both believe she’s the key to preventing or kick starting the final apocalypse.

When you look at Struck from that sort of distance, things seem to work. After all, Los Angeles is pretty much ripe for an earthquake, and we’re all just waiting for California to fall into the ocean any day now, right? The problem is, this book asks us to accept a lot of little details that don’t quite add up. The first of which is the way things get to be so bad in the first place….

[Read More]

The Droods, that ancient, enigmatic, terrible family which protected humanity from all the things which went bump in the night, are dead. Their ancestral Hall is destroyed, their defenses shattered, their artifacts plundered. Only Eddie Drood, semi-estranged agent, remains to figure out who could have annihilated his family, and avenge them. With his ladylove, Molly Metcalf, Wild Witch of the Woods, he’ll tear apart every corner of the secret world until he’s brought his enemies to justice. No matter what the cost to his soul.

There’s just one wrinkle: The Droods aren’t dead, just misplaced in an infinity of alternate realities, and the only man who can find them is the one responsible for their exile. And he’s the Most Evil Man in the World.

Eddie Drood’s about to make someone pay.

[Read more]

It’s barely exaggerating to say that everyone knows Batman’s origin story by now. It’s one of those universal constants, as ingrained in popular culture as Mickey Mouse and the Coke logo. It’s easy to sum up: As a kid, Bruce Wayne witnessed the murder of his parents, and subsequently dedicated his life towards eradicating crime. And because criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, he decided to do it while dressed as a giant bat.

And yet for as many times as the story’s been told, in comics and books, film and radio and on television and on stage and shaved into the fur of slow-moving long-haired cats, people keep trying to find new ways to interpret the mythos, to say something new and profound. Bruce Wayne and Batman change with the times, and in Batman: Earth One, we have the latest attempt to reinvent the wheel, to create an all-new Batman legend. A younger, hipper, edgier version, if you will. But writer Geoff Johns—currently one of the major movers and shakers at DC Comics, renowned for his ability to breathe new life into the classics such as Green Lantern and Aquaman—takes the opportunity to make more than a few tweaks. The result?

[Read more]

Meet Angel Crawford. High school dropout, recovering drug addict, convicted felon, zombie. She’s finally started to turn her life around, following the accident and subsequent intervention which saved her life (kinda) and left her with a permanent craving for human brains. As a van driver and morgue assistant for the local Sheriff’s Office, she has easy access to all the tasty, tasty brains she needs to stay sane, ambulatory, and relatively intact. She’s dating a cop, looking forward to the end of her probation, and drug-free. So why aren’t things going better?

Because she’s still a zombie, and the world is a very strange, occasionally hostile, place, and there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in her philosophy.

[So what’s she have to worry about?]

In 2129, the world would seem to be a much better place. Peace and prosperity are available to all, with only a small percentage of the population needed to perform essential functions. Technology has advanced to the point where robots and automation handle almost everything, genetic engineering is common, and in-system space travel is well-established.

Under the aegis of the Permanent Peace and Prosperity (PermaPaxPerity), 96% of the population have become classified as “mineys,” those who live on the social minimum and pursue their various hobbies. Less than 1% are “meanies,” the sociopaths and criminals who aren’t satisfied with the status quo. 3% fall into the “eligible for employment,” or “eenies.” They’re the celebrities, superstars, entertainers. The truly rich and powerful. You’re not born an eenie, you become one. Even the children of eenies must work towards this goal; nothing is given, only earned. And so there are the inevitable disappointments, the failures, the losers. Or, as they put it, the “moes.” (Tell me you didn’t see that one coming.)

This is the story of a group of moes with a grandiose, foolhardy, even reckless plan to become eenies: They’re going to stowaway on a flight to Mars, become famous, and use that to jumpstart their eenie careers. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

[Read more]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A disparate assortment of kids are forced together by desperate circumstances to form a mini-society in order to survive. That’s right, I’m getting the Lord of the Flies references out of the way early. Because this? Is not really like that. Monument 14 is your basic end-of-the-world, apocalyptic scenario, where a natural disaster is just the beginning of a harrowing ordeal for a group of teens and pre-teens.

The time? 2024. The place? Monument, Colorado. The problems? Are just starting.

[Read more]

This week we’re looking at the novels nominated for this year’s upcoming Hugo Awards. Today we look at Deadline by Mira Grant, the second installment of the Newsflesh trilogy, as well as its recently released conclusion, Blackout.

Here’s what you need to know: In 2014, we cured cancer and the common cold. Unfortunately, the two viruses created to tackle these problems combined in ways no one ever could have expected, creating the Kellis-Amberlee virus, which promptly took up residence in every mammal large enough to contain it. End result? Zombies.

It’s decades later, and mankind has clawed its way back from oblivion, surviving what has been dubbed The Rising. While vast areas of the world are inhabitable, written off as death traps and wastelands, we’ve managed to secure enough territory that life has resumed. People are born, educated, entertained. They live, love, vote and eventually die. They also dwell in a constant state of paranoia, with mandatory blood tests just about every time they go through a door, go outside, or do anything remotely dangerous. They live on the edge of fear, wondering if this is the time their test will go red and warrant prompt termination before they can “amplify” and turn into a bloodthirsty, mindless monster. The rich stay protected, the poor take their chances, and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has become one of the most powerful agencies around.

[Read more. Spoilers!]