Graff has been keeping a big secret from his closest friends, the captain and crew of a pirate-hunting starship. He expected to die before they ever discovered what he really is. But he’s not dead, and now he has to explain.
Dr. Feyrouz Hanafusa is a curator at Yale in the 23rd century. Space exploration is still ongoing, and signs of life have been discovered on a planet near TRAPPIST-1. Signs, Dr. Hanafusa realizes, that suspiciously resemble drawings in the Voynich manuscript, which no one has been able to decipher for over eight hundred years.
As an ex-smuggler and two-time reluctant revolutionary, Alyssa is used to staring into the razor-sharp jaws of death. But now she’s embarking on the most terrifying adventure of her life—journeying into the darkness to become a new type of being, one who can help humanity to survive. And deep at the heart of the city in the middle of the night, the price of transformation could be higher, and more terrible, than Alyssa ever expected.
All magical requests come with a price. A girl with witchcraft, no friends, and only her mother’s bees to confide in will pay whatever’s necessary to keep the girl she loves safe.
Sir Magnus Holmes, cousin to the more famous Sherlock, is asked to investigate the appearance of an otherworldly knight carrying a legendary sword in the cellar of a Victorian London pub.
Gods won’t save you. Gods will break you. Nevertheless, you will persist, and become anew.
Heist stories always seem so straightforward at the beginning. All that stands between our protagonists and possession of whatever it is they covet or require is a team with the right skills, a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a fox, and a bit of concerted effort. What could possibly go wrong? And yet, something always does.
It doesn’t matter if the heist takes place in a mundane world or a science fiction world or a fantasy world. There are always complications…because otherwise, where’s the fun?
In this scattershot series, we’ll be delving “too greedily and too deep,” prying gems out of the glorious rough that is the extended legendarium of Tolkien’s world. This includes drawing on The Lord of the Rings itself, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, and the History of Middle-earth (or HoME) books.
As Tolkien-reading humans, we already know that even in Middle-earth, all Men die at some point. Obviously. But it’s not unless we read Appendix A in The Lord of the Rings that we see mortal death referred to as something other than a tough break. The narrator calls it “the Gift of Men” when speaking of the long-lived Númenóreans. Arwen Undómiel calls this fate “the gift of the One to Men” at her husband’s own deathbed, where “the One” is essentially God, a.k.a. Eru, whom the Elves named Ilúvatar. And this all might seem strange at first, for nowhere else in Tolkien’s seminal book does he explain why death might be seen as a gift.
[‘What about my memories? Will I get to bring them into any halls with me?’]
Mars Xi can kill you with her mind, but she’ll need more than psychic powers to save her.
Each month, the Tor.com eBook Club gives away a free sci-fi/fantasy eBook to club subscribers. For February 2020 Bonus (Leap Year) eBook the eBook Club pick is Killing Gravity, the thrilling science fiction space adventure debut by Corey J. White.
Worlds of Deep Space Nine Volume One
Cardassia: The Lotus Flower
Una McCormack
Publication Date: June 2004
Timeline: December 2376
Unity represents a natural breaking point in the DS9 relaunch novels. Forthcoming stories in this series spin off in different directions, featuring increasingly new and diverse characters on various worlds. As a result, we’re doing away with the review sections used in the prior entries of this reread and transitioning to a looser model going forward. I’ll provide a brief plot synopsis, jump right in to my overall thoughts, single out a few memorable character beats or lines at the end, and conclude with an “orb factor” rating.
Steven Spielberg is apparently stepping back as director for the next Indiana Jones film, according to Variety. He’s set to be replaced by Ford vs. Ferrari and Logan director James Mangold, although the deal has yet to close. If accurate, it’ll mark the first entry in the franchise without Spielberg at the helm.
Last year, Alix E. Harrow published her debut novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, a fantasy novel about a young woman named January Scaller, as she works to uncover her family’s history and the power dynamics of the world. The novel earned Harrow a Best Novel nomination for this year’s Nebula Awards, but she already is poised to release her sophtomore novel: The Once and Future Witches, which is set to hit stores on October 13th.
Octavia Butler’s Hugo Award-winning Dawn is finally coming to TV! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ava DuVernay and Victoria Mahoney are teaming up to develop the first book of Butler’s acclaimed Xenogenesis/Lilith’s Brood trilogy for a script-to-series order from Amazon Studios.
Carmen Santos is on the run. She is no longer the Segunda to one of the most powerful men in Medio, and she hasn’t been an active guerilla fighter for La Voz since she was embedded in the Medio School for Girls as a child. As she makes her way back to La Buitre and his freedom fighters, she hopes to reintegrate back into her crew. The rest of La Voz has other ideas. Distrusted and isolated, Carmen struggles to prove her worth to the only family she has left. Making matters worse is Ari, a hot tempered interloper who has weaseled his way into a second in command role. He’s up to something, but finding out what drives a wedge between her and her friends, her and El Buitre, her and La Voz.
Desperate to protect Daniela from Mateo Garcia’s soldiers and Ari’s wrath, Carmen embarks on a treacherous journey back to the capital. Everyone wants her dead and will do everything they can to stop her before she reached Dani. Torn between the woman she loves, the life she left behind, the family who saved her, and the cause she’s risked everything for, Carmen’s actions will either redefine the revolution or shatter it. And she may not be able to choose which.
Catching Fire came out November 2013.
Mockingjay: Part I came out November 2014.
In between, Mike Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Ferguson Uprising took place.
This essay is about what it was like to live in an America that can rapturously and enthusiastically consume and cosplay revolution, and can look on real world resistance with disdain.
There are so many secrets, so many things waiting on the tip of your tongue. You can only trust the few who hold secrets too. Together, you are safe. Together, you are strong. This month’s YA titles are about making magical connections: create magic with your friends in When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey; ride into a fairy tale filled with secrets and power in Rin Chupeco’s Wicked As You Wish; and curl up with sixteen stories centered on the magic of Black girlhood with A Phoenix First Must Burn, edited by Patrice Caldwell.
Head below for the full list of YA SFF titles heading your way in March!
Mail delivery has never looked so perilous. On Wednesday, Netflix released the first official trailer for its upcoming series, The Letter for the King, which follows the dangerous journey of a young squire as he rides across the kingdom to deliver, well, a letter to the king.
Not too long ago, my eldest daughter decided it was time for my youngest daughter to join her in one of her favorite fandoms: Jurassic Park. Toward the end of the movie, my youngest got deeply agitated and asked, “Does it hurt the actors when those dinosaurs bite them?” No, we explained, those are just special effects. Robots and computer generated drawings. “Well,” she asked, “Does it hurt when the robots bite them?” All of us older folks had a good laugh about that. She was so young and full of wonder, and the world was full of living dinosaurs and strange things.
At the end of Prince Caspian, Peter announces that he will not be returning to Narnia, and neither will Susan, because Aslan has told them they are too old. As a kid this upset me, because I worried that I wouldn’t find a portal to Narnia before I aged out. As an adult, this had gotten all wrapped up in a variety of questions about what exactly Lewis means by this declaration, and especially how it connects to that big question that is lurking out in front of us in this series: What exactly happened to Susan Pevensie that she wasn’t invited into Narnia for the Last Battle?
On Monday, Lucasfilm unveiled its next big Star Wars publishing project: The High Republic, a sprawling, cross-medium series that will follow a number of characters as they deal with a galactic cataclysm centuries before the films take place.
While the project is set in an entirely new era, the structure of the series resembles that of another influential project that hit bookstores two decades ago: The New Jedi Order.
Graff has been keeping a big secret from his closest friends, the captain and crew of a pirate-hunting starship. He expected to die before they ever discovered what he really is. But he’s not dead, and now he has to explain.
Earlier today, Jurassic World 3 director Colin Trevorrow announced (via Variety) that cameras have started rolling on the project, and that it now has an official title: Jurassic World: Dominion.
Hello, friends! I have two satisfying stories to tell you about this week—so buckle up and let’s get to it.
Wicked As You Wish is an unforgettable alternative history fairytale series from the author of The Bone Witch trilogy about found family, modern day magic, and finding the place you belong — and we want to send you a copy, along with some bookish goodies!
Many years ago, the magical Kingdom of Avalon was left desolate and encased in ice when the evil Snow Queen waged war on the powerful country. Its former citizens are now refugees in a world mostly devoid of magic. Which is why the crown prince and his protectors are stuck in…Arizona.
Background photo by Dana DeVolk [via Unsplash]
Math-genius mercenary Cas Russell has stopped a shadow organization from brainwashing the world and discovered her past was deliberately erased and her superhuman abilities deliberately created.
And that’s just the start: when a demolitions expert targets Cas and her friends, and the hidden conspiracy behind Cas’s past starts to reappear, the past, present, and future collide in a race to save one of her dearest friends.
S.L. Huang’s Critical Point, the third novel in the Cas Russell series, publishes April 28th with Tor Books. Read the first two chapters below!
