Camille Griep’s debut Letters to Zell was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Summer Science Fiction/Fantasy books.
Griep’s captivating debut weaves together traditional fairy tales with scenes of 21st-century Los Angeles to create an exploration of the conflicts between destiny and desire. Readers will dive into the rich and realistic depictions of modern-day versions of Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel, and their touching efforts to navigate old and new relationships in a changing world.
Locus: Vermilion: mingling the Western past of mining towns and migrant Chinese railroad workers with fully sentient bears and sea lions who deal with us as they ply their trades – and no one blinks an eye. Many genres meet in this first ‘‘Adventure of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp’’. Lou is described as ‘‘a gunslinging, chain smoking, cross-dressing Taoist… who keeps San Francisco safe from ghosts, shades, and geung si’’ (entities feared in Chinatown), and her profession has aspects of exorcist, alchemist, and private detective. As Tanzer puts it, psychompompery demands ‘‘intense concentration, physical stamina, and quick reflexes.’’
Camille Griep’s second novel, a retelling of the Trojan War set in a modern post plague country, focusing on the historical characters of Cassandra and Cressida, tragic figures in Greek mythology and again in Shakespeare, where the two women are pitted against each other by the men in power, and each woman chafes against the expectations and limitations of her community, again to Jason Kirk at 47 North, for publication in Spring 2016, by Cameron McClure.
Publishers Weekly: In this disturbing and original fantasy, set in a dark world run by the Theocrats, perception is reality, and altered perceptions can alter reality. The most insane, labeled with Germanic diagnoses, are also the most powerful. Three adventurers–a scary, lethal Kleptic thief; a preening Gefahrgeist (sociopathic) duelist; and a scarred warrior forced to violate his few remaining scruples–stumble onto a Gefahrgeist Theocrat’s plot to raise the first designed god, and they decide to kidnap Morgen, the boy who’s intended as the initial sacrifice. Before the Theocrat’s delusions can do him in, he unleashes his Hassebrand (a pyromaniac) and his assassin squads (including shape-shifters and walking dead) to kill the conspirators and ensure Morgen’s ascension. Fletcher populates the landscape with an array of mental disorders, turning a well-thumbed psychiatric manual into a dramatis personae. His protagonists worry about their fate in the Afterdeath as they commit their crimes, but they always keep their slim hopes for redemption. The dystopia and its victims never quite collapses under the weight of the horror, and their perseverance encourages the reader to endure the grimness until the thought-provoking conclusion.
Publishers Weekly: Genre-busting author McCammon (The River of Souls) pulls out all the stops for this exhilarating alien-invasion epic, which harkens back to his 1987 blockbuster, Swan Song….This story blends the gripping horror and action of McCammon’s earliest novels with the empathy of his more recent work, making it one of his finest.