CRITICAL ROLE: BELLS HELLS – WHAT DOESN’T BREAK by Cassandra Khaw

Oct 082024
 

Uncover the lost years of Critical Role’s unrelentingly upbeat undead spellcaster in this original prequel novel to Laudna’s adventures with Bells Hells.

For as long as she can remember, Laudna has had a friend. A mentor. A little voice whispering in her cropped ear, promising that, no matter how monstrous she becomes or how far she wanders, there will always be someone to guide her.

And so, Laudna is content.

But the thought of more—of life, of love, of the magic stirring in her still veins—is unrelenting in its familiarity. More is the dream of the young girl trapped behind the bloodstained walls of Whitestone, and the nightmare of the woman who now stalks the woods outside them. More, Laudna’s little voice reminds her, is dangerous. From Tal’Dorei to Marquet, the world is infested with heroes destined to rid their kingdoms of creatures like Laudna.

The little voice is right, she knows.

But still, she thinks of more. And when she reaches for that dream, what reaches back will change everything.

Written by USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw, Critical Role: Bells Hells—What Doesn’t Break delves into the unexplored years before Laudna joined up with the crew of Bells Hells, chronicling her departure from Whitestone and her solo adventures on the road to Jrusar.

Starred Review: THE IMPROVISERS by Nicole Glover

Oct 032024
 

Booklist: Glover’s latest is a standalone set in the world of her Murder and Magic series (starting with The Conductors, 2021), this time set in the 1930s. Velma Frye is an African American aviator in the early days of flight. She’s also a magical investigator, and when a fight breaks out at one of her air shows, Velma leaps into action. Mysterious items seem to be provoking discord all over America. Luckily Velma’s got an airplane, a family that includes the protagonists of Glover’s previous novels, and a nosy reporter who is more helpful than he appears. The Improvisers is packed with action, family drama, and even some romance. The plot is fast-paced and varied and Velma is a protagonist who feels realistic and accessible. There are lots of great characters, including a librarian named Lois, but Dillon Harris, Velma’s rival and companion, stands out as a foil to the famed aviator, often saving and annoying her in the same paragraph. Velma and Dillon’s back-and-forth banter is reminiscent of classic screwball comedies and contrasts delightfully with the complex mystery at the center of the story. Recommended for fans of books that mix magic and historical fiction, like Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation (2018) or Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light (2021).”

Review: INTERSTELLAR MEGACHEF by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Oct 022024
 

Publishers Weekly: Lakshminarayan (The Ten Percent Thief) sets this delicious, futuristic flight of fancy nearly 2,000 years after humans first settled on the planet Primus, which has since far outstripped Earth in cultural and technological development. Earthling Saraswati “Saras” Kaveri knows that auditioning for Primus’s hit cooking competition show, Interstellar MegaChef, is a long shot, so when she gets accepted, she jumps at the chance to leave Earth and her manipulative family in search of fame and fortune. Saras is not prepared for the xenophobia and prejudice she encounters upon her arrival and during her first—and last—day of competition. Meanwhile, Primian tech developer Serenity Ko has released her most successful simulation yet, but instead of the promotion she’s expecting, she’s sent on a mandatory vacation to force her into a better work/life balance. Ko seizes the time off to begin working on an ambitious new project: adding food into virtual reality. The project brings her into Saras’s orbit as the women work together to explore the ways food, experience, memory, and history intertwine. Lakshminarayan’s vision of the future feels fresh, the descriptions of food are mouthwatering, and the thematic exploration of culinary culture is rich and nuanced. Readers will be delighted. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary. (Nov)

September Subsidiary Rights Deals

Sep 302024
 

a pair of black ear budsAudio rights to Miranda Lyn’s Fae Rising series, to Kerri Buckley at Dreamscape Media, in a four-book deal, by Katie Shea Boutillier (NA).

Audio rights to Nicky Drayden and Matthew Bey’s DEEP AUSTIN: CASE OF THE WEIRD CARNIVOROUS SKY, a tale of gonzo horror chock full of ghosts and other weirdness, plus a sequel, to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media, by Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Audio rights to Caitlin Starling’s THE OBLIVION BRIDE, to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media, by Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Caitlin McDonald (World English).

Audio rights to Camilla Raines’s THE HOLLOW AND THE HAUNTED, to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media, in an exclusive submission, by Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Kat Kerr (NA).

September Translation Deals

Sep 302024
 

Korean renewal rights to New York Times bestselling author Martha Wells’ ALL SYSTEMS RED, ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, ROGUE PROTOCOL, and EXIT STRATEGY, the first four books in The Murderbot Diaries series, to Alma Publishing Co., by Yujung Kim at the Eric Yang Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Camilla Raines’s THE HOLLOW AND THE HAUNTED, to Eilean Books (France), at auction, in a two-book deal, by Sarah Dray at Anna Jarota Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Kat Kerr.

Review: ASUNDER by Kerstin Hall

Sep 272024
 

Locus: Kerstin Hall writes sharp, fierce stories with precise and visceral prose, and with worldbuilding that possesses a keen sense for the weird, the haunting, the marvellous, and the twistedly strange. Asunder is only her fourth long-form work, her second novel (after 2021’s Star Eater and the novella duo The Border Keeper and Second Spear) and it is every bit as vividly compelling as I’ve come to expect from Hall – indeed, even more so.

Karys Eska is an independent deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying and unforgiving otherworldly being. She won’t survive her compact being called in – not, at least, in any form recognisable as Karys Eska – and while she doesn’t know exactly when that will be, her time is running short.

Karys makes her money, though not very much of it, by using her abilities to answer questions about the dead in the city she calls home. When a job finding out what happened to some smugglers goes suddenly, terribly, dangerously wrong, she stumbles over a dying stranger. Ferain Taliade is the last survivor of a slaughtered embassy, and he’s willing to pay what to Karys is a practically unimaginable amount of money for her help. In trying to preserve his life, she accidentally binds him in a way that she has no idea how to undo. This binding may be the death of them both, rather than Ferain’s salvation: He now exists in the material world only as Karys’s shadow, and as a voice in her head, and every bit of received wisdom suggests that this binding will eventually destabilise in a fatal fashion.

Asunder strikes me as a novel interested in the consequences of desperate choices. All of the major characters have made choices that they were driven to by their circumstances: All of them have been, or are, trapped in some way by the consequences (foreseen or otherwise) of those choices. Many of those choices had no real good outcome. Karys – prickly, foul-mouthed, fighting with her last breath to be a survivor, determined to find some way around the compact with Sabaster that, she’s just learned, will lead to personal consequences even more horrifying than she’d previously imagined – is a deeply compelling protagonist. Her relationships with Ferain, with Winola, and with figures from her past – and the relationships of the other characters in the novel with each other – are all fraught and complicated things, filled with the silences, the secrets, and the partial understandings that undergird real relationships between real, complicated people.

Asunder is a thoughtful novel, complex and deep. It’s also a fast-paced, tense ride through a world that doesn’t hold back from glittering weirdness. Luxury travel in the bellies of dimension-hopping spiders, weapons that turn a person inside out, trains that run on rails made of light, drugs made from the corpses of dead gods, godlike beings with hundreds of wings and faces in their groins: Hall holds back neither wonder nor horror. But throughout, Hall’s skill and control of the narrative never falters. All the moving pieces slot into place, building into a nail-biting climax.

The ending leaves open as many questions as it answers, but although I would desperately love to see a sequel, Asunder is a complete narrative just as it is. A phenomenal one: I can’t recommend it highly enough

THE TAPESTRY OF TIME by Kate Heartfield

Sep 262024
 

There’s a tradition in the Sharp family that some possess the Second Sight. But is it superstition, or true psychic power?

Kit Sharp is in Paris, where she is involved in a love affair with the stunning Evelyn Larsen, and working as an archivist, having inherited her historian father’s fascination with the Bayeux Tapestry. He believes that parts of the tapestry were made before 1066, and that it was a tool for prediction, not a simple record of events.

The Nazis are also obsessed with the tapestry: convinced that not only did it predict the Norman Conquest of England, but that it will aid them in their invasion of Britain.

Ivy Sharp has joined the Special Operations Executive – the SOE – a secret unit set up to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. Having demonstrated that she has extraordinary powers of perception, she is dropped into Northern France on a special mission.

With the war on a knife edge, the Sharp Sisters face certain death. Can their courage and extrasensory gifts prevent the enemy from using the tapestry to bring about a devastating victory against the Allied Forces?

THE LOVERS by Rebekah Faubion

Sep 242024
 

A second chance at love is in the cards for two women working a stylish California wedding in this charming debut romance.

If Kit Larson believes one thing, it’s that the cards never lie. She’s seen it proven time and time again as a tarot reader and mystic influencer. But unfortunately the cards didn’t warn her about her most recent breakup or her parents’ divorce, so when Kit is offered a gig at another influencer’s boho-chic Joshua Tree wedding she accepts for the distraction. And distract it does when she finds out her high school crush, Julia, is the wedding planner.

Julia Kelley is her agency’s most sought-after wedding planner, and for a good reason—she’s a perfectionist. Control means never showing others the vulnerable, blobby mess she really is deep down inside. Having an ex-girlfriend in the bridal party is a problem, sure, but reconnecting with the beautiful tarot reader who broke her heart as a teenager is so much worse.

Kit’s cards once told her that she and Julia were Twin Flames, two halves of the same soul. With wedding events pushing them together, their spark reignites . . . and so does a chance at being lovers.

Review: RAKESFALL by Vajra Chandrasekera

Sep 132024
 

New York Times: Rakesfall is Vajra Chandrasekera’s second book after last year’s magnificent “The Saint of Bright Doors,” and is fully as exciting though nowhere near as straightforward. A book in 10 parts, “Rakesfall” shifts wildly in structure and narration. Sometimes an audience watches a television show that is perhaps reality or perhaps a window to something beyond it. Other times different omniscient narrators cede to a play featuring beings who reincarnate over thousands of years. Or a cybernetically enhanced near-immortal wakes from an ancient sleep to solve a murder mystery.

Uniting these threads is a kind of oscillating theme: Souls return over time, sometimes as two people, sometimes four or more, engaged with each other over the thorny question of how to endure fascism and kill kings. The novel’s composition, too, has an element of reincarnation to it: Six of its chapters began life as short stories in various genre periodicals from 2016 to 2021. In an interview, Chandrasekera called the project’s initial phase a “patchwork,” and the finished work is very tongue-in-cheek about the need to “maintain narrative continuity and protect genre boundaries” while careening from life to life and world to world.

Review: THE NIGHTWARD by R.S.A. Garcia

Sep 122024
 

Library Journal: Luka is a bodyguard in the matriarchal, magical Gailand, named after goddess-founder Gaiea. His charge is nine-year-old Viella, princess and heir to Gaiea’s abilities and memories. When the queen is killed and the capital is raided by shadow mages, Luka flees with Viella across the allied queendoms to keep her safe. But why can’t Viella use her Gaiea powers yet, and who within the capital let the magicians in? This novel from Garcia (Lex Talionis), the first in a duology, is styled like a retro high fantasy. Character names include both Mordoch and Gretchen, there’s a nebulous source of all evil, and the background is vaguely Middle Ages—this time with more Caribbean and West African stylings, featuring a woman warrior caste named after the Dahomey Amazons. Fresh and inventive takes come through glimpses of the origins of Gailand: the evil might be an eldritch space god, magic is fueled by nanobots, and magic portals have brand names. The balance leans heavily high fantasy, but the possibility of breaking out of genre standards might keep readers hooked for the sequel. VERDICT An intriguing magi-tech high-fantasy series opener that paves the way for chaos in the follow-up.

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