NPR: [Bennett’s] universe is one of brilliant juxtaposition . . . a place where a god, a gun, a telephone and a plow horse can all exist comfortably on the same page, in the same sentence. It is this world that has driven the action in this trilogy, the push and pull of spies and generals and gods and bureaucrats all dancing because the intrinsic entropy of Bennett’s universe demands it.
Congratulations to Ada Palmer on winning the 2017 Compton Crook Award for Too Like The Lightning!
Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer–a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.
And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destabilize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life…
Revenge. It’s something Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is very, very good at. Maybe the only thing.
So when he learns that his oldest friend and ally, former Prime Minister Shara Komayd, has been assassinated, he knows exactly what to do—and that no mortal force can stop him from meting out the suffering Shara’s killers deserve.
Yet as Sigrud pursues his quarry with his customary terrifying efficiency, he begins to fear that this battle is an unwinnable one. Because discovering the truth behind Shara’s death will require him to take up arms in a secret, decades-long war, face down an angry young god, and unravel the last mysteries of Bulikov, the city of miracles itself. And—perhaps most daunting of all—finally face the truth about his own cursed existence.
Julian Pavia at Crown has pre-empted world rights to Jonathan French’s THE GREY BASTARDS, winner of Mark Lawrence’s 2016 Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off contest, plus a sequel. A raunchy and swashbuckling fantasy novel in the vein of Scott Lynch and Mark Lawrence, THE GREY BASTARDS is about Jackal, a half-orc ekeing out a hard existence in the wastelands, his roving band of brothers the only thing keeping the soft cities safe from an invasion of full blooded orcs. Or so Jackal believes. When he discovers the true threat, he must decide where his loyalties lie. Cameron McClure at the Donald Maass Agency brokered the deal for Jonathan French, publication for THE GREY BASTARDS is planned for summer 2018.
Library Journal: This exciting conclusion to Bennett’s trilogy is just as fantastic as the earlier volumes…. Bennett explores the fascinatingly complex gods of the Continent and the magic they left in the world, bringing the series to a satisfying close.
Booklist: Fans of the series will continue to delight in the story and characters….Bennett’s spot-on world building aids the new and old reader alike as they plunge into a world where dieties exert force on characters and events and a revenge plot involving a super-assassin is normal.
Kirkus: Readers of City of Stairs (2014) and City of Blades (2016) know the story: in a world that’s part Frank Herbert and part Tamerlaine by way of Conan the Barbarian, the old gods have fallen to iconoclasts and assassins and new deities, as the states of Bulikov and Saypur struggle back and forth for supremacy. Now Ashara, having long ago proven her worth as secret agent and intercontinental mischief-maker, has risen in the world, putting her, in turn, squarely in the cross hairs.
Dark and violent, but a tale well spun and with a most satisfying conclusion.
Congratulations to the DMLA clients nominated for the 2017 Hugo Awards!
Best Novel:
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris Books)
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Tor Books)
Best Short Story:
“Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander (Uncanny Magazine,
November 2016)
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer:
Ada Palmer
Locus: A remarkable transformation of horror into something like fantasy with close links to nature, set in a universe as wonderful as it is strange.
Winter Tide is part mystery and party story about the importance of kindness and love and human-scale morality in the face of the vast sweep of an uncaring universe…. It is a generous novel, a kind one, and an exceptionally accomplished debut.
Congratulations to Robert Jackson Bennett and Martha Wells on City of Miracles and All Systems Red being May picks for Amazon’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of the Month list!