2023 Nebula Award Nominees

Mar 202024
 

Congratulations to our DMLA authors who have been nominated for a 2023 Nebula Award!

Nebula Award for Novel

  • The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
  • Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Nebula Award for Short Story

  • “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200“, R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)

“Author Martha Wells has graciously declined her nomination as a novel finalist this year for System Collapse published by Tordotcom. In 2022, Wells also declined a nomination for novella and felt that the Murderbot Diaries series has already received incredible praise from her industry peers and wanted to open the floor to highlight other works within the community.”

Review: EXORDIA by Seth Dickinson in the New York Times

Mar 152024
 

New York Times: EXORDIA (Tordotcom, 532 pp., $29.99) is Seth Dickinson’s fourth novel and first work of science fiction, following three installments of the excellent Baru Cormorant fantasy series, and it revisits many of those novels’ themes and structures: empire, war and sacrifice.

Set in 2013, “Exordia” is a first-contact story: Anna, a Kurdish survivor of genocide who is fostered in the United States, meets a many-headed snake alien named Ssrin in Central Park. Anna and Ssrin become friends and roommates; Ssrin explains that she comes from a galaxy-conquering empire called the Exordia, and needs Anna’s help to rebel against it.

Anna, Dickinson writes, “is all in, the way only a woman chased out of her home by sarin gas can be all in. Her adult life began at age 7, with an act of alien intrusion, with the roar of Saddam’s helicopters. This is nothing new to her. She’s ready to risk it all, because no part of her life since that first alien invasion has felt real.”

There is a version of this book that might be more palatable to a broad readership: a version in which a traumatized war orphan’s friendship with a warmongering alien heals and redeems them both. This is very decisively not that book. It deliberately withholds what its first three chapters (and dust jacket) seem to promise: a “narratively complete” story centering Anna and Ssrin. Instead, “Exordia” compounds, enlarges and repeats their wounds — the ones inflicted on them, and the ones they inflict on the world and each other — as Dickinson uses a host of other characters to scrutinize ethics, fractal mathematics, theoretical physics and the military-industrial complexes of several nations. The result is agonizing and mesmerizing, a devastating and extraordinary achievement, as well as dizzyingly unsatisfying, given where it ends.

The publisher of “Exordia” claims it is a stand-alone novel. This is baffling. If you stop a play after its first act, it does not become a one-act play. “Exordia” is structured and paced like Book 1 of a series; Dickinson has stated in interviews that a sequel is “absolutely” intended. The word “Exordia” itself — the plural of “exordium” — suggests beginnings and introductions, a throat-clearing before the main work, and I sincerely hope Dickinson gets the opportunity to continue it.

Review: THREE KINDS OF LUCKY by Kim Harrison

Mar 082024
 

Bookpage: Kim Harrison’s THREE KINDS OF LUCKY is an immediately compelling urban fantasy with an intricate magic system and complex world. In THREE KINDS OF LUCKY by Kim Harrison, author of the bestselling Hollows series, magic has its own specialized sanitation service: Sweepers, who pick up a byproduct of magic called dross. If left unattended, dross can attract shadow, a dangerous, somewhat intelligent life-form that can easily kill mages, sweepers and normal humans alike. THREE KINDS OF LUCKY will immediately pull readers in with its fast pace and efficient storytelling; the entirety of its nearly city-shattering events all happen within a few days…  the mechanically intricate magic system and complex world Harrison has created makes this series opener well worth the read.

THREE KINDS OF LUCKY by Kim Harrison

Mar 052024
 

Luck is its own kind of magic, in this first book in an electrifying new contemporary fantasy series from the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Hollows novels.

Petra Grady has known since adolescence that she has no talent for magic—and that’s never going to change. But as a sweeper first-class, she’s parlayed her rare ability to handle dross—the damaging, magical waste generated by her more talented kin’s spellwork—into a decent life working at the mages’ university.

Except Grady’s relatively predictable life is about to be upended. When the oblivious, sexy, and oh-so-out-of-reach Benedict Strom needs someone with her abilities for a research project studying dross and how to render it harmless, she’s stuck working on his team—whether she wants to or not.

Only Benedict doesn’t understand the characteristics of dross like Grady does. After an unthinkable accident, she and Benedict are forced to go on the run to seek out the one person who might be able to help: an outcast exiled ten years ago for the crime of using dross to cast spells. Now Grady must decide whether to stick with the magical status quo or embrace her own hidden talents . . . and risk shattering their entire world.

Review: EXORDIA by Seth Dickinson

Mar 042024
 

Reactor: Where Dickinson succeeds—where he turns Exordia into a truly exhilarating, dizzying work—is that he can take these human stories, human choices on the personal and on the international scale, and set them against a deeply alien intelligence.   

Exordia is a book that grabs your attention and doesn’t let it go: Dickinson creates a world that feels twice as vivid as normal and does it without ever slowing down the frenetic pace of the plot. It can be a lot to handle—Exordia certainly isn’t light bedside reading—but it’s an incredible work and an enthralling way to kick off your 2024 reading.

February Translation Deals

Feb 292024
 

French rights to Nebula Award winner Premee Mohamed’s THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST, THE ANNUAL MIGRATION OF CLOUDS, and AND WHAT CAN WE OFFER YOU TONIGHT, to L’Atalante, by Sarah Dray at Anna Jarota Agency in association with Michael Curry.

French renewal rights to New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher’s ACADEM’S FURY, PRINCEP’S FURY, and FIRST LORD’S FURY, books 2, 5, 6 in the Codex Alera series, to Bragelonne, by Sarah Dray at Anna Jarota Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Hebrew rights to Monica Murphy’s Wedded Bliss series, to Venus, by Beverley Levit at The Israeli Association of Book Publishers, in a three-book deal, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier.

Hungarian rights to New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher’s GHOST STORY, Book 13 of The Dresden Files, to Delta Vision, by Milena Kaplarević at Prava i Prevodi in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

Korean rights to James Scott Bell’s POWER UP YOUR FICTION, to 21st Century Culture Center, by Sue Yang at Eric Yang Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.

Slovakian rights to LJ Andrews’s THE EVER KING, to Zeleny Kocur, by Nada Popovic at Prava I Prevodi in association with Katie Shea Boutillier.

Turkish rights to New York Times bestselling author Anne Bishop’s WRITTEN IN RED, MURDER OF CROWS, VISION IN SILVER, and MARKED IN FLESH, the first four books in the Others series, to Marti Yayinlari, by Merve Öngen at AnatoliaLit Agency in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.

THE LADY IN GLASS AND OTHER STORIES by Anne Bishop

Feb 272024
 

Here, together for the first time, the shorter works of New York Times bestselling fantasy author Anne Bishop are included in one dazzling volume.

A master of bringing fantasy worlds to life, this collection showcases Bishop’s impressive range, from rarities of her earliest writing to the Realms of the Blood, from darker fairytale retellings to the Landscapes of Ephemera, and from standalone stories of space exploration and fantastical creatures to the contemporary fantasy terrain of the World of the Others.

Includes previously published and unpublished tales, as well as two brand-new stories, written especially for this collection: “Friends and Corpses,” a murder mystery in which the corpse has some decidedly unusual qualities, and “Home for the Howlidays,” a heartwarming return to the Blood Prophet Meg Corbyn and the shapeshifting Simon Wolfgard from The Others.

THE BOOK OF ILE-RIEN by Martha Wells

Feb 272024
 

The Element of Fire

The kingdom of Ile-Rien lies in peril, menaced by sorcerous threats and devious intrigue, when Kade, bastard sister of King Roland, appears unexpectedly at court. The illegitimate daughter of the old king and the Queen of Air and Darkness herself, Kade’s true desires are cloaked in mystery.

It falls to Thomas Boniface, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, to keep the kingdom from harm. But is one man’s steel enough to counter all the magic of fayre?

The Death of the Necromancer

Nicholas Valiarde is a passionate, embittered nobleman and the greatest thief in all of Ile-Rien. On the gaslit streets of the city, Nicholas assumes the guise of a master criminal, stealing jewels from wealthy nobles to finance his quest for a long-pursued vengeance.

But Nicholas’s murderous mission is being interrupted by a series of eerie, unexplainable, and fatal events. A dark magic opposes him, and traces of a necromantic power that hasn’t been used for centuries abound. Nicholas and his compatriots find themselves battling an ancient evil.

And if they lose? Death would be preferable to the fate that awaits them….

Review: THREE KINDS OF LUCKY by Kim Harrison

Feb 232024
 

Booklist: In Harrison’s (Demons of Good and Evil, 2023) new urban-fantasy series, Petra Grady is just a sweeper, specializing in collecting the magical waste, or dross, left behind when mages cast light spells. Like many sweepers, she has no talent for magic and is looked down upon by most of the mages as a result. As one of the best sweepers on the mages’ university campus, she’s assigned to help former classmate Benedict Strom’s research project. When the research goes terribly wrong, Benedict and Petra have to find Herm Ivaros, an exile accused of using dross to cast spells during a campus incident that resulted in the death of Petra’s father. Herm reveals that the mages’ legends are filled with lies, deliberately crafted to discourage sweepers from becoming weavers and casting spells with shadows, and that Petra, like her father, is a weaver, and a group of magical-conspiracy theorists intends to stop her. Like Harrison’s Hollows series, this first book in the Shadow Age series is action packed and will leave readers eagerly awaiting the next.

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