Congratulations to the DMLA clients nominated for a 2016 Goodreads Choice Award!
Best Fantasy: Marked in Flesh by Anne Bishop
Best Science Fiction: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
Best Young Adult SF&F: We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson
Kirkus: If your boyfriend is erased from history, is it because the universe is shrinking, or have you totally lost your mind?
During senior year in high school, college applications and prom dates are the stresses du jour. But Oswald “Ozzie” Pinkerton’s also include trying to convince anyone (family, friends, an alphabetical string of therapists) that his boyfriend, Tommy, ever existed. They theorize that Ozzie is obsessive and slightly touched; he theorizes that the universe is shrinking and that Tommy was a casualty of restricting astral girth. As Ozzie tracks the solar system’s diminishing waist size, his still-existing world unravels and conversely weaves new chapters. One of these chapters is Calvin, a once-golden, now-reclusive student. When the two are paired for a physics project, Ozzie weighs his loyalty to absent Tommy against his growing attraction to present Calvin. A varied cast of characters populates the pages: there’s a genderqueer girl who prefers masculine pronouns, a black boyfriend, an Asian/Jewish (by way of adoption) best friend, and a bevy of melting-pot surnames. Ozzie is a white male, and he is respectfully called out on underestimating the privilege he enjoys for being just that. Though Ozzie primarily narrates in the past tense (with sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll drifting through the background), intermittent flashbacks in the present tense unveil the tender, intimate history of Ozzie’s relationship with Tommy. An earthy, existential coming-of-age gem.
Pen’s life is all about secrets: the secret of the city’s spirits, deities and monsters her best friend Beth discovered, living just beyond the notice of modern Londoners; the secret of how she got the intricate scars that disfigure her so cruelly – and the most closely guarded secret of all: Parva, her mirror-sister, forged from her reflections in a school bathroom mirror. Pen’s reflected twin is the only girl who really understands her.
Then Parva is abducted and Pen makes a terrible bargain for the means to track her down. In London-Under-Glass looks are currency, and Pen’s scars make her a rare and valuable commodity. But some in the reflected city will do anything to keep Pen from the secret of what happened to the sister who shared her face.
Simon Pulse has acquired, with Liesa Abrams to edit, We Are the Ants author Shaun David Hutchinson’s new YA book, The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza, about a teen who was the first scientifically confirmed “virgin birth.” At 16 she discovers she can heal with a touch; simultaneously, people all over the world start disappearing in beams of light, making her wonder if she is bringing about the Apocalypse. Publication is scheduled for spring 2018; Amy Boggs at Donald Maass Literary Agency brokered the two-book deal for World English rights.
Simon Pulse has pre-empted, with Liesa Abrams to edit, world English rights to Feral Youth, a novel with 10 authors edited by Shaun David Hutchinson, in the same vein as his previous Violent Ends. The book is a modern YA retelling of The Canterbury Tales, set during the last three days at a survival camp for “troubled youth” with 10 teens trying to win $100 by telling the best story, with stories from Brandy Colbert, Tim Floreen, Ellen Hopkins, Justina Ireland, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Stephanie Kuehn, E.C. Myers, Marieke Nijkamp, and Robin Talley. Fall 2017 is the projected pub date.
Japanese rights to Mike Shepherd’s KRIS LONGKNIFE: UNDAUNTED, the 7th book in the series, to Hayakawa Publishing, Inc., by Kohei Hattori at the English Agency in association with Jennifer Jackson and Michael Curry.
Hebrew rights to Jim Butcher’s THE AERONAUT’S WINDLASS, book 1 of the Cinder Spires series, along with GRAVE PERIL and SUMMER KNIGHT, the 3rd and 4th books in the Dresden Files, to Yaniv Publishing House by Dalia Ever-Hadani at The Book Publishers Association of Israel in association with Jennifer Jackson.
Russian rights to Seth Dickinson’s THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT, to Eksmo, by Igor Korzhenevski at the Alexander Korzhenevski Agency in association with Jennifer Jackson and Michael Curry.
Turkish rights to Shaun David Hutchinson’s WE ARE THE ANTS, and anthology VIOLENT ENDS, to Ithaki, by Merve Ongen at ONK Agency, in association with Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Amy Boggs.
Chinese rights to Nnedi Okorafor’s novella BINTI, to Joanne Li at Science Fiction World Magazine in China, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Turkish rights to NYT bestselling author Marieke Nijkamp’s THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS, to Marti, by Merve Ongen at ONK Agency, in association with Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Jennifer Udden.
Chicago Tribune: Palmer’s most innovative strategy isn’t futuristic technology but rather the archaic and digressive 18th-century voice in which she (or Canner) has chosen to tell the tale. The result is a richly detailed, very odd future couched in language that recalls Henry Fielding more than Robert Heinlein (though there are occasional nods to science fiction along the way).
Read the Chicago Tribune‘s full review of Too Like the Lightning here.
Jordan Brown at Balzer + Bray has preempted Justina Ireland’s DREAD NATION and an untitled sequel, a YA duology set in a post-Reconstruction America beset by an undead plague that rose from the battlefields of the Civil War. The book follows Jane, the daughter of a plantation-owner mother and enslaved father, who is training as an attendant in Baltimore to protect well-to-do white folk from the undead. Publication is scheduled for 2018. Amy Boggs did the deal for North American rights.
Tor.com: Sometimes I read a book and I know it’s going to be a huge important book and everyone’s going to be talking about it and it’s going to change the field and be a milestone for ever after. It’s always a great feeling, but it’s never happened to me before with a first novel written by a friend, which is an even greater feeling.
I’ve been waiting for the book to come out so I can talk to people about it the way I used to wait for Christmas when I was a kid. Read it now. Preorder Seven Surrenders.
Read Jo Walton’s full review of Too Like the Lightning at Tor.com.
Boing Boing: Too Like the Lightning, a book more intricate, more plausible, more significant than any debut I can recall. […] Palmer writes science fiction like a historian, maneuvering vast historical forces deftly, plunging effortlessly into their minutae and detail, zooming out to dizzying heights to show how they all fit together. Her acknowledgements cite Alfred Bester as an influence, and that’s no surprise — few writers can trump Bester for the sense of a world that contains within it all the other worlds of all its inhabitants. Palmer, though, may have exceeded the master.
Too Like the Lightning manages to be several books at once: a serious philosophical treatise; a murder-mystery whose surprises buffet the reader like cold slaps out of nowhere that feel inevitable in hindsight; a piece of historical theory in narrative form; a thought-experiment about gender, nationality, identity and bigotry; and a gripping personal story whose players are likable, flawed, sexy, and sometimes terrifying.
If you read a debut novel this year, make it Too Like the Lightning.
Read Cory Doctorow’s full review of Too Like the Lightning at Boing Boing.