Donald Maass Literary Agency

Publishers Weekly: Grim but brilliant sequel…. The many cultures are richly detailed, adding depth. This installment will more than satisfy fantasy readers who like deadly battles balanced with intricate worldbuilding and skilled characterization.

Debut author and Yale Writers’ Workshop alum Tori Whitaker’s MILLICENT GLENN’S LAST WISH, a dual timeline story set in post-WWII and present-day Cincinnati suburbs, in which a woman must face her decades-long secret of tragedy in a crowded baby-boom maternity ward, and its effects on her family, to Chris Werner at Lake Union Publishing, for publication in fall 2020, by Katie Shea Boutillier.

Bulgarian rights to Robert McCammon’s BOY’S LIFE, to Iztok-Zapad, in a renewal, by Milena Kaplarevic at Prava I Prevodi, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Cameron McClure. Danish rights to Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka’s IF I’M BEING HONEST, to Palatium , by Philip Sane and Elin Rydner at Lennart Sane Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier. French rights to Nnedi Okorafor’s KABU KABU, to ActuSF, by Robin Batet at Anna Jarota Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier […]

Kirkus: An Afrofuturist love story, set inside a giant space-creature, about two women of different castes. In a far distant future, humans left Earth behind generations ago in a mass exodus. The survivors now travel inside enormous beasts that trek across the vacuum of space; human societies carve out spaces inside the living leviathans that carry them. Seske, the daughter of the clan matriarch, is being groomed for her eventual position of power, but she’d much rather spend her time […]

Publishers Weekly: This grim but brilliant sequel to The Grey Bastards follows the Bastards’ new leader, half-orc/half-elf Fetching, as she takes charge of her cohort (or “hoof”) of half-orcs and the humans who rely on them. Fetch and her fellow “mongrels” face off against famine and starvation, cavaleros from neighboring Hispartha, another band of half-orcs who feel that Fetch is unworthy to lead, and a mysterious, enormous orc (large enough to pick up a horse and throw it like a […]

Booklist Readers: While for Good Omens protagonists, Aziraphale and Crowley, the apocalypse is set to start after teatime, for Elena Mendoza, it begins at Starbucks. She just wanted to talk to her crush, Freddie. But then the siren from the Starbucks logo starts speaking to Elena, and Elena saves Freddie from a gunshot wound, and before you know it, Elena is a certified miracle worker. In fact, the voices she hears want her to work more miracles, and they want […]

SFX Magazine: Shadows Of The Short Days offers something old and something new. Set in an alternative Iceland, it follows Smundur and Garün, former lovers turned dissidents against a repressive regime. Smundur’s experiments with magic have outraged the respectable magic institutions, but he’s determined to push ever further. Garün, meanwhile, is taking the law into her own hands. Part human, part-huldufólk (a race of extradimensional beings), she’s using magic to sow sedition in the city. The urban setting, focus on […]

Priyanka Krishnan at Orbit has acquired Alyc Helms and Marie Brennan’s Rook and Rose trilogy, which will be published under the pseudonym M. A. Carrick. The trilogy is a politically charged epic fantasy in which a clever but desperate con artist attempts to pull off the scheme of her lifetime—infiltrating a noble house by posing as a long-estranged family member—and finds herself drawn into an ever-deepening web of magical and political intrigue with dangerous consequences. The deal was brokered by […]

Kirkus: This debut novel, the first of a projected trilogy, blends science fiction, fantasy, gothic chiller, and classic house-party mystery. Gideon Nav, a foundling of mysterious antecedents, was not so much adopted as indentured by the Ninth House, a nearly extinct noble necromantic house. Trained to fight, she wants nothing more than to leave the place where everyone despises her and join the Cohort, the imperial military. But after her most recent escape attempt fails, she finally gets the opportunity to […]

Publishers Weekly: [An] excellent debut… Hackwith builds her world and characters with loving detail, creating a delightful addition to the corpus of library-based and heaven vs. hell fantasies.