Review: The Best of Elizabeth Bear by Elizabeth Bear

Nov 082019
 

Publishers Weekly: The 27 intimate, thought-provoking stories of this doorstopper collection span over a decade of Hugo Award–winner Bear’s illustrious career. Though many of these offer glimpses into vast, intricate worlds, all are grounded in deep human feeling and small, interpersonal dramas, as with “Two Dreams on Trains,” which is set in a complex, futuristic vision of New Orleans and focuses on the clash between a mother’s hopes for her son and the boy’s goals for himself. In the emotional standout “Tideline,” a sentient war machine named Chalcedony, who was not programmed to feel emotion, uses her last reserves of energy to scour a beach for sea glass to turn into mourning jewelry in honor of her fallen human platoon. Bear’s protagonists range from machines (the living spaceships of “Boojum”) to the human (the tired homicide cop in “Dolly”) to the monstrous (the discontented vampire of “Needles”), but she crafts them all with huge helpings of empathy and heart. This excellent collection offers readers the chance to immerse themselves in Bear’s singular imagination.

October Subsidiary Rights Deals

Oct 312019
 

a pair of black ear budsAudio rights to Kathryn Craft’s THE ART OF FALLING, to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media, by Katie Shea Boutillier.

Audio rights to a new novella in Martha Wells’ Hugo and Nebula Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, to Brian Sweany at Recorded Books, by Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Audio rights to Premee Mohamed’s novella THE APPLE-TREE THRONE, to Stefan Rudnicki at Skyboat Media, by Michael Curry.

October Translation Deals

Oct 312019
 

Czech rights to USA Today bestselling author Tamsyn Muir’s GIDEON THE NINTH, the first book in the Locked Tomb trilogy, to Host, by Milena Kaplarević at Prava i prevodi in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Turkish rights to the third and fourth books in Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, ROGUE PROTOCOL and EXIT STRATEGY, to Ithaki, by Merve Öngen at ONK Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Oct 282019
 

The New York Times: Tamsyn Muir’s GIDEON THE NINTH is a devastating debut that deserves every ounce of hype it’s received, despite the bafflingly misleading marketing around it

Everything I read about Gideon the Ninth before publication seemed to suggest it would be a lighthearted wacky adventure, with much made of the tagline “lesbian necromancers in space”—but I experienced the book as meticulous and moody, full of anguish, haunted by difficult and complex feelings in a wasted universe. Muir marshals a gorgeous cast of characters to delirious effect in a perfectly paced haunted house murder mystery, but it’s less gonzo than it is Agatha Christie writing Gormenghast. Muir is fantastic at both humor and horror, not to mention moving me to tears. I should also note that Gideon the Ninth is not a romance, though queer longing abounds; it’s deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original. It’s honestly perfect as both a satisfying stand-alone and the launch of a trilogy, and I can’t wait until the sequel lands next year.

Review: Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

Oct 242019
 
B&N SFF: Nicky Drayden’s novels are weird—and I mean that as the highest of compliments.

Her genre-blending debut The Prey of Gods landed on the scene in 2017 with the self-same subtlety of a Roman candle stuck up your nose. Artificial intelligence and African folklore, mind control and murder, demigods and dik-diks, The Prey of Gods had has everything. Her sophomore effort, Temper, an Afrofuturist romp through a world in which your social identity is defined by your balance of vice and virtue, continued in the same audacious vein, plus twice the world-building.

Now comes Escaping Exodus, Drayden’s third novel, as pleasantly and characteristically bonkers as ever. Eschewing her established skill at tossing science fiction and fantasy together in a blender, she leans full into her Octavia Butler fineries and drops us aboard a city-size starship carved in the innards of a drifting space beast.

Seske and Adalla’s relationship is compelling and serves as the framework for all the plot to come (including a few wild tangents that complicate matters significantly), but it is this theme of environmental justice that is the novel’s central concern. As Seske learns to lead, she grapples with the devastating consequences of her people’s way of life to the beast that carries them. Adalla, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with the class inequality that fuels the system. These twin threads feel true enough to our own time, and thoroughly modern, while aligning with science fiction’s long history of climate-focused, socially conscious works.

Both threads are also entwined with one of Drayden’s recurring concerns: the construct of gender and the subversion of its norms. Gender fluidity and explorative sexuality are key components of The Prey of Gods. Here, Drayden likewise flips gender roles on their head by crafting a matriarchal society focused on containing the population: families are composed of multiple mothers and fathers but are limited to one child apiece, in a setup that feels reminiscent of Butler’s Xenogenesis series.

In opposition to contemporary daydreams of smashing the patriarchy, Drayden’s society is far from a utopia. It is cruel and rigid: gender norms haven’t vanished, they’ve reversed, with men treated as second-class citizens, considered disposable and deemed unfit for much more than housework and child-rearing. While the situation may sound cathartic to some readers, its reality is troublesome and counter-productive, an inequity sowing seeds of rebellion every bit as much as Adalla’s realizations galvanize the working class.

Life aboard this spacebeast is chaotic, the mess tolerated so long as it’s hidden beneath a certain set of creature comforts. The question before both Seske and Adalla is what to do when the mess finds it way to the light.

While that’s a pickle for the characters, it’s a playground for Drayden, whose specialty is narrative chaos. In a rather stuffed novel, her outsized sci-fi sensibilities enliven the worldbuilding while allowing her characters emotional room to grieve, to fight, and to love, believably and heart-achingly.

However you slice it, Escaping Exodus doesn’t follow the path you think it will, and neither does its author. And that’s the fun of it all.

Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

Oct 152019
 

“Don’t be alarmed – that dizzy pleasurable sensation you’re experiencing is just your brain slowly exploding from all the wild magnificent worldbuilding in Nicky Drayden’s Escaping Exodus. I loved these characters and this story, and so will you.”

 – Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving and Blackfish City

The Compton Crook award–winning author of The Prey of Gods and Temper returns with a dazzling stand-alone novel, set in deep space, in which the fate of humanity rests on the slender shoulders of an idealistic and untested young woman—a blend of science fiction, dark humor, and magical realism that will appeal to fans of Charlie Jane Anders, Jeff VanderMeer, and Nnedi Okorafor.

Earth is a distant memory. Habitable extrasolar planets are still out of reach. For generations, humanity has been clinging to survival by establishing colonies within enormous vacuum-breathing space beasts and mining their resources to the point of depletion.

Rash, dreamy, and unconventional, Seske Kaleigh should be preparing for her future role as clan leader, but her people have just culled their latest beast, and she’s eager to find the cause of the violent tremors plaguing their new home. Defying social barriers, Seske teams up with her best friend, a beast worker, and ventures into restricted areas for answers to end the mounting fear and rumors. Instead, they discover grim truths about the price of life in the void.

Then, Seske is unexpectedly thrust into the role of clan matriarch, responsible for thousands of lives in a harsh universe where a single mistake can be fatal. Her claim to the throne is challenged by a rival determined to overthrow her and take control—her intelligent, cunning, and confident sister.

Seske may not be a born leader like her sister, yet her unorthodox outlook and incorruptible idealism may be what the clan needs to save themselves and their world.

September Translation Deals

Sep 302019
 

Chinese (complex) rights to Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series (ALL SYSTEMS RED, ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, ROGUE PROTOCOL, and EXIT STRATEGY), to Global Group, by Gray Tan at Grayhawk Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

French rights to Brent Weeks’s THE BURNING WHITE, final book in the Lightbringer series, to Bragelonne, by Robin Batet of Anna Jarota Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.

Italian rights to World Fantasy Award nominee Tamsyn Muir’s The Ninth House trilogy (GIDEON THE NINTH, HARROW THE NINTH, ALECTO THE NINTH), to Mondadori, by Stefania Fietta at Donzelli Fietta Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Korean rights to the second, third, and fourth books in Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, ROGUE PROTOCOL, and EXIT STRATEGY, to Alma Publishing Co., by Jackie Yang at the Eric Yang Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Korean rights to Nnedi Okorafor’s BINTI: Home and BINTI: The Night Masquerade, to Alma, by Jackie Yang at Eric Yang Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.

Russian rights to James Scott Bell’s HOW TO WRITE DAZZLING DIALOGUE: THE FATEST WAY TO IMPROVE ANY MANUSCRIPT, to Alpina, by Igor Korzhenevski at Alexander Korzhenevski Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.

Russian rights to the third and fourth books in Martha Wells’ Nebula and Hugo Award-winning The Murderbot Diaries series, ROGUE PROTOCOL and EXIT STRATEGY, to Eksmo, by Alexander Korzhenevski at Alexander Korzhenevski Agency  in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Sep 192019
 

B&N SFF Blog: Gideon is terrifically funny and easy to root for, and her plain-speaking snark and crude asides peel the varnish off the coiffured world she inhabits…

…almost every member of the cast becomes well-defined, interesting, and treated with a sincerity that comes almost as a surprise in a book as proudly sarcastic as this one can be—something especially potently felt in the mutating, if always adversarial, relationship between Gideon and Harrow. And if almost every member of the supporting cast plays to type—the scholar, the fanatic, the soldier, the arrogant princess, the affable knight—it only adds to the fun of being trapped with them in a weirdo gothic space thriller, and such a terrible shame that the twists and turns of Muir’s plot prove so very, very dangerous for her characters. As perhaps expected from a book with a confetti of bones on the cover and the prefix “necro” attached liberally throughout, much of the action is fittingly gruesome and probably not for delicate constitutions.

Muir’s debut is smart, fun, and fresh, bursting with thrilling action and derring do, genuinely puzzling puzzles, lots of swears, heaps of yucky dead things, and a storm of skeletons. The wild tonal contrasts and kitchen-sink approach to both the genre and the prose (spot the buried Simpsons reference amid a scene of otherwise tense exposition) somehow works in symphonic harmony, thanks to an extraordinarily likable heroine supported by Muir’s whip-sharp voice and clockwork plotting. The end of the novel gestures toward larger interplanetary goings-on that will presumably materialize in planned sequels, good news for readers who will be eager to dive back into Muir’s madcap techno-necromantic world. Consider my bags packed for wherever Muir would like to take me next (though my stomach would perhaps appreciate slightly less detailed descriptions of cartilage on the next trip).

Review: Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden

Sep 132019
 

Kirkus: An Afrofuturist love story, set inside a giant space-creature, about two women of different castes.

In a far distant future, humans left Earth behind generations ago in a mass exodus. The survivors now travel inside enormous beasts that trek across the vacuum of space; human societies carve out spaces inside the living leviathans that carry them. Seske, the daughter of the clan matriarch, is being groomed for her eventual position of power, but she’d much rather spend her time with Adalla, her best friend since childhood; however, Adalla’s a beastworker who toils in the space beast’s organs and arteries. The chapters alternate between the first-person perspectives of the two young women, and it quickly becomes clear that Seske and Adalla are very much in love—but a beastworker isn’t considered a suitable mate for the heir apparent. When Seske suddenly becomes the clan matriarch, her title is threatened by another claimant—her own sister. Meanwhile, Adalla, heartbroken over losing Seske, is demoted until she’s a lowly boneworker. Soon the two women each uncover shocking truths about their society and how it operates—and, more importantly, about the beast that keeps them all alive. The plot twists that follow are surprising but mostly plausible, and it culminates in a gratifying finish. Drayden’s prose is neither clunky nor lyrical—it just gets the job done. But it’s substance, rather than style, that sets this book apart. Everything about the Afrofuturistic worldbuilding is exquisitely imaginative, and the characters are three-dimensional, occasionally offering flashes of dark humor. The spacefaring beast is a marvel, containing a whole ecosystem with microclimates and other organisms living within it alongside humans. Although the relationship between the two young women is perpetually hampered by circumstance, as most good love stories are, it’s palpable and vibrant. One hopes to read more about Seske and Adalla’s further adventures.

A straightforwardly written sci-fi tale with top-notch worldbuilding and sharp characterization.

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