Locus: Lee’s world building remains fascinating and complex, with a great deal implied in what is not said. The narrative of Raven Stratagem is a twisty one… It feels intricate, like a piece of clockwork in which every cog and gear has a job: it feels deeply thought, and powerful. Lee deepens here his interrogation of the themes that came so strongly to the surface of Ninefox Gambit: loyalty and trust, free will and self-determination, the personal costs involved in doing a right thing, and the problems of empire. Raven Stratagem offers an argument rather than an answer, and is more effective for it. If you liked Ninefox Gambit, this is a really great sequel, and an excellent novel in its own right.
Jun 122017
Locus: “Murderbot,” as the sardonic first-person narrator in Martha Wells’s All Systems Red refers to itself, would simply prefer to be left in peace to watch serialized entertainments in its own high-tech suit. Sadly, given that the planetary expedition Murderbot is part of goes horribly wrong when one of the scientists is almost eaten by the local fauna, it isn’t going to get its wish.
Washington Post: Nicky Drayden’s debut novel “The Prey of Gods” (Harper Voyager) is delightfully unlike most science fiction out there. Drayden mixes folklore, urban fantasy and science fiction in her futuristic South Africa to dazzling effect.
Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee Yoon Ha Lee’s next science fiction novel in which two scrappy investigators are hired to find a stolen starship which may be used to reignite an old interstellar war to Jonathan Oliver at Solaris by Jennifer Jackson.
Author of THE GRAVE TENDER and forthcoming THE UNREMEMBERED GIRL, Eliza Maxwell’s THE WIDOW’S WATCHER, about a woman who loses her entire family and is ready to end it all when an unlikely savior gives her reason to live again as she untangles the mystery of his children’s disappearance, to Chris Werner and Danielle Marshall at Lake Union Publishing, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Spanish rights to Nalo Hopkinson’s Locus Award-winning BROWN GIRL IN THE RING, to Apache Libros, by Maru de Montserrat at International Editors in association with Katie Shea Boutillier and Michael Curry.
Audio rights to Nebula-nominated Martha Wells’ ALL SYSTEMS RED and ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, the first two installments in The Murderbot Diaries, to Brian Sweany at Recorded Books, by Jennifer Jackson and Michael Curry.
UK rights to Emily Winslow’s LOOK FOR HER (previously titled STILL LIFE), her fourth Keene and Frohmann mystery novel set in Cambridge, a tightly wound story of psychological suspense about three woman whose lives collide when new evidence on a 40-year-old cold case comes to light, to Susie Dunlop at Allison and Busby for publication in fall 2017, by Cameron McClure.
Locus: What Bennett [has] delivered here is something along the lines of Neal Stephenson’s REAMDE: a brainy political thriller with non-mimetic trappings, an unnatural engine at its heart.