Last November, we shared the news that Gollancz will be publishing Aliette de Bodard’s two new books, The House of Shattered Wings and its as-yet-unnamed sequel, in the UK. Now, Roc Books (a division of Penguin) has acquired the U.S. rights to the urban fantasy duology set in Paris after the destruction wrought by the Great Magicians’ War.
The two-book deal was negotiated by John Berlyne at Zeno Agency and Roc editor Jessica Wade.
De Bodard also posted the “squee-worthy” news on her blog, expressing her excitement over her first hardcover release and working with Roc:
Among other squee-worthy things, I get to share a publisher with the fabulous Zen Cho (whose own book I’m very much looking forward to); and other people whose books I read as a child/teen (I’ll actually always associate Roc with Guy Gavriel Kay, which makes me feel… very outclassed).
…Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go jump up and down for joy…
Here’s the synopsis for The House of Shattered Wings:
A superb murder mystery, on an epic scale, set against the fall out—literally—of a war in Heaven.
Paris has survived the Great Magicians War—just. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens continue to live, love, fight and survive in their war-torn city, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over the once grand capital.
House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.
Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires’ salvation. They may be the architects of its last, irreversible fall…
Both Roc and Gollancz will release The House of Shattered Wings on August 20, 2015, in hardcover.
