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.
A dark, fast-moving novelette about a high-tech heist in future Spain, planned by a professional thief interested in revenge more than money. The object in question is in the hands of a dangerous crime lord.
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.
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!
Dating a coworker then breaking up with a coworker presents one very specific, very unfortunate hitch: being forced to see each other too soon after the dissolution of your relationship, at the low-wage exhausting job both of you can’t stand but can’t survive without… and that’s how Nino Cipri’s sf novella Finna opens. Ava and Jules are both employees at the (Ikea-clone) LitenVärld store and have only been separated for three days, so the wounds are still fresh.
However, on their first shared post-breakup shift, an older woman goes missing in their store—because she stumbled through a wormhole. Which, as it turns out, happens not infrequently.
Happy Fat Tuesday, Tor.com! As necessity must dictate, today marks the end of two good things: the Mardi Gras season, and this Reread! How time does fly. Join me for the final installment, won’t you?
This blog series covered The Ruin of Kings, the first novel of a five-book series by Jenn Lyons. Previous entries can be found here in the series index.
Today’s post will be covering Chapter 89, “Parting”, and Chapter 90, “Final Notes”.
Got that? Great! Click on for the rest!
In 2016, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination published my survey article “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction” (now hosted here and here). Since then, Tor.com has published thirty-one in-depth essays I wrote about some of the 42 works mentioned, and a thirty-second essay by LaShawn Wanak on my collection Filter House. In this column I’m looking at Changa’s Safari, a fascinating African-rooted fantasy that’s in a sense a companion to Imaro, the pulp novel covered in this series’ most recent essay.
Looks like Chris Evans is fully committed to this whole playing-against-type thing. After stealing the show as the sh*t-eating, sweater-clad prodigal son in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, the artist formerly known as Captain America is in talks to play another smarmy villain: Orin Scrivello, the sadistic dentist in Greg Berlanti’s Little Shop of Horrors reboot.
Before you, a screen glows an electric white light. You know that if you ask the right questions, it will tell you all you need to know. But are you sure you’re ready to move forward? This month’s science-fiction titles are full of challenges both physical and mental: become the lone survivor of a new world in in The Last Human by Zack Jordan; conquer the Infinite Game of Otaku by Chris Kluwe; and interrogate the structures that hold us down in K.M. Szpara’s Docile.
Head below for the full list of fantasy titles heading your way in March!
Welcome back, my little phalanges! It’s time for another close read of Gideon the Ninth by Tamysn Muir! I’m your host, Freddie Purrcury, and today I’ll be recapping chapters eleven and twelve. These are exciting chapters, with lots of swordplay and exploring!
Before we start, just a quick reminder that I am going to spoil these two chapters LIKE WHOA, so if you haven’t read these chapters yet, you should bone up on them first.
Once there was a goal-oriented criminal named Parker, a determined, friendless crook who let nothing and no one stop him. Parker was the sort of protagonist whom a hardworking author like Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake writing under a pen name) could feature in book after book.
The Hot Rock would have been the thirteenth book in the Parker series…but the plot didn’t work as a Parker novel. The plot wanted to be funny. The deadly serious Parker was a poor fit for a comedic novel. A different protagonist was needed.
[Thus was born one of the great characters of heist fiction…]
Walkers are going to be all over our TVs this spring. Two days after The Walking Dead season 10’s mid-season premiere, AMC has released two new teasers for its spin-off show, The Walking Dead: World Beyond.
This week in Reading the Wheel of Time, we are going to cover Chapters 27 and 28. I really enjoyed Chapter 28 especially. I always enjoy Perrin’s forays into Tel’aran’rhiod and how it compares to the more traditional ideas of Dreaming, and of course I adore Hopper. We also have a really fun cameo from Birgitte Silverbow, and a brand new enemy in Slayer.
I’m less enthused about Chapter 27, as Jordan is really straining my desire to like Faile. Like, really really straining it.
[Beside all of that, Perrin, what does the color of a man’s eyes matter?]
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.
Star Wars fans are about to meet a brand new era.
Earlier this evening, Lucasfilm finally pulled the curtains back on its long-awaited Project Luminous: it will be a major cross-medium publishing project called The High Republic, set two centuries before The Phantom Menace.
