Donald Maass Literary Agency

B&N SFF Review: Yoon Ha Lee blew up like a supernova last year with the release of his debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, earning a double fistful of award nominations (among them the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke awards) for a brainy, intricate space opera as much about identity, the politics of empire, and grief, as it is about flashy space battles and a revolution within a mathematically constructed super-empire known as the Hexarchate. Lee’s ability to balance high science fiction concepts­, worlds, cultures, and weapons­-with a deep examination of […]

RT Book Review: Malfi’s latest is a brilliantly weird, haunting blend of folklore, murder-mystery, and gothic terror that draws readers into an unsettling world filled with the kind of detail and insight that evoke early Stephen King. There is plenty of material here to prey on the most basic of human terrors, beneath the fear and the eeriness is an understated but no less effective story about the hollowing effect of loss on those left behind. The result is an elegant, […]

Dan Koboldt, geneticist and author of THE ISLAND DECEPTION, to edit PUTTING THE SCIENCE IN FICTION, a collection of essays from Dan’s popular blog series (dankoboldt.com/science-in-scifi/). Scientists, engineers, medical professionals, and other experts share their insights to help authors get the science right and create more compelling fiction. To Cris Freese at Writer’s Digest Books by Paul Stevens.

Tor.com: The action-mystery-adventure element to All Systems Red is a lot of fun. Wells has a really tight grasp of tension and pacing, and a truly polished skill with turning a phrase. The language in All Systems Red draws no attention to itself, but Wells has a knack for making even unobtrusive prose slide into a vivid line that brings a whole paragraph to life. But the real appeal of All Systems Red is the voice…All Systems Red is a really fun piece of science fiction adventure […]

RT Book Reviews: You’ll need to clear your schedule as soon as you get your hands on a copy of Drayden’s debut novel! Taking place in a near-future South Africa, Drayden introduces us to a diverse and endearing cast of characters and mind-blowingly cool concepts. She expertly blends together science fiction and fantasy for a wild ride that gives readers both a robot uprising and a vengeful demigoddess craving power. LGBT characters are also introduced organically, and their personal stories will […]

Hugo and John W. Campbell Award Finalist and Compton Crook Award Winner Ada Palmer’s TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING, plus three sequels in her Terra Ignota quartet, about the collapse of a utopian society set 500 years in the future and narrated by the world’s most notorious criminal, to Nicolas Cheetham at Head of Zeus, by Harry Illingworth at DHH Literary on behalf of Cameron McClure.

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 […]

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. All Systems Red is a light but interesting story about a creation that is half human […]

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. In this entertaining tale, a new drug called Godspeed hits the street. It causes users to hallucinate, to see themselves as animal creatures; sometimes it draws out peculiar powers. Teenage Muzi, grappling with his sexuality and his heritage, finds that the drug lets him manipulate […]

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.