On behalf of the estate of Hugo- Nebula- and World Fantasy Award nominee Jay Lake, and available for the first time also in a digital edition, World English rights to TRIAL OF FLOWERS and MADNESS OF FLOWERS, the City Imperishable novels, to Marcus Gipps at Orion/Gollancz by Jennifer Jackson.
A cowboy for Christmas…
or another year in the Amish Spinster Club?
Nanny Sarah Kuhns has her hands full with kinder, her overbearing brothers and her big dreams. And it only gets worse when she takes on the care of an injured cowboy. For Amish traveling horseman Toby Christner, tight-knit Harmony Creek represents everything he’s run from. Until he heals, he can’t leave…but will falling for Sarah make him want to stay?
Kirkus: This latest in the Rick Riordan Presents imprint launches Korean mythological creatures into outer space.
Thirteen-year-old Min cannot believe her older brother, Jun, has deserted his Space Force post, as he’s been accused of doing. Naturally, Min runs away from home to clear her brother’s name. It’s a Rick Riordan trademark to thrust mythological figures into new settings. Fans will breathlessly watch while fox-spirit Min charms her way onto a hijacked starship, ending up on her brother’s military star cruiser on the way to the lawless Ghost Sector.
Lee has created an adrenaline-filled space opera with mythological creatures living alongside humans. Min and her family are gumiho, or shape-shifting foxes, but they present as human to hide their magical natures. She takes on the identity of Jang, a male cadet killed in battle, and enlists the aid of two other supernatural Space Force cadets: Haneul, a female dragon, and Sujin, a nonbinary goblin. Min is first and foremost a teenager on a mission and a magical being second. The ambivalence of her identity (fox or human, male or female, hero or traitor,) echoes ethical questions that many kid readers face. It is refreshing to see both Korean elements and a nonbinary character seamlessly integrated into the storyline. Narrator Min explains Korean mythology smoothly as the action progresses for readers with no previous knowledge.
A high-octane, science-fiction thriller painted with a Korean brush and a brilliant example of how different cultures can have unique but accessible cosmology and universal appeal.
Booklist: Following up on their successful collaboration in I AM PRINCESS X (2016), Priest and O’Connor neatly weave together the history of comic books and contemporary concerns about gentrification in this eerie ghost story set in a ramshackle house that’s as much a character as the people living in it.
Denise, her mom, and stepdad have just moved into an nearly destroyed, once-beautiful house in New Orleans, and almost right away, Denise starts noticing odd things. First, they’re harmless, if creepy, but later, unexplained, dangerous accidents happen as they renovate the house. But the comic book manuscript Denise finds carefully hidden in the attic (pages of which appear throughout the novel) is the key to source of the poltergeists. Meanwhile, Denise’s neighbors are uneasy about outsiders capitalizing on cheap property in New Orleans, and Priest does a great job of skillfully including the important conversations Denise and her family have with their new community.
At its heart, though, this is a ghost story, and Priest excels at building palpable atmosphere: Denise’s parents’ anxiety about their shoestring budget, the sweltering New Orleans summer heat, the disrepair of the house (“soggy plaster fell from the studs like wet cake”), and the increasingly terrifying haunting. Dynamic characters and a surprising mystery round out this sharp, satisfying, and engrossingly spooky story.
Congratulations to Martha Wells and Nnedi Okorafor for winning these 2018 Hugo Awards!
Best Novella:
All Systems Red, Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)
WSFS Award for Best Young Adult:
Book: Akata Warrior, Nnedi Okorafor (Viking)
Spanish rights to New York Times best-selling author Jim Butcher’s GHOST STORY, the thirteenth book in the Dresden Files series and Spanish reprint rights to GRAVE PERIL, the third book in the Dresden Files series, to NOSOLOROL, by Maru de Montserrat at International Editors’ Co. in association with Jennifer Jackson.
Czech rights to Robert Jackson Bennett’s FOUNDRYSIDE, to Host, by Milena Kaplarevic at Prava I Prevodi, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier, for Cameron McClure.
Booklist: After finding evidence proving that the GrayCris Corporation engaged in illegal activities, Murderbot heads out to hand the case over to Dr. Mensah, its former owner. But Dr. Mensah has disappeared, and Murderbot must track her down—straight into the heart of enemy territory.
Saving its mentor and taking down GrayCris are just the beginning of its challenges—Murderbot also has to figure out who it is, where it fits in society, and just how it is supposed to relate to all these people. The fourth installment of Wells’ Murderbot Diaries (after Rogue Protocol, 2018) will satisfy readers’ hopes for this series finale. It follows the same basic structural formula as its predecessors, so it has all the action fans expect. Exit Strategy tones down the humor a bit but adds depth to Murderbot’s introspection as it wrestles with questions of identity that it has been avoiding, and the story leaves it to decide its own future.
Everything comes full circle while remaining appropriately open ended. Wells gives us a worthy conclusion to one of the best series in recent memory.
Mary Robinette Kowal continues the grand sweep of alternate history begun in The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky looks forward to 1961, when mankind is well-established on the moon and looking forward to its next step: journeying to, and eventually colonizing, Mars.
Of course the noted Lady Astronaut Elma York would like to go, but there’s a lot riding on whoever the International Aerospace Coalition decides to send on this historic—but potentially very dangerous—mission? Could Elma really leave behind her husband and the chance to start a family to spend several years traveling to Mars? And with the Civil Rights movement taking hold all over Earth, will the astronaut pool ever be allowed to catch up, and will these brave men and women of all races be treated equitably when they get there? This gripping look at the real conflicts behind a fantastical space race will put a new spin on our visions of what might have been.
Publishers Weekly: Kowal continues her exquisite exploration of race and gender relations in an alternate 1961 that is still shockingly close to our own.
The stunning second part of Kowal’s duology picks up 10 years after a meteor strikes Earth (depicted in The Calculating Stars) with series heroine Elma now serving as a pilot to the lunar colony. After she survives being taken hostage by a terrorist organization opposed to space travel, Elma is asked to join the first Mars mission, replacing a close friend and incurring the resentment of the existing crew. For Elma and her colleagues on both ships, contained in close quarters for three years far from family and friends, the journey is filled with tension, joy, terror, and sorrow, including the deaths of crew members and an anxious period when contact with Earth is cut off.
The clever details of life in space—from baking challah in zero gravity to finding tricks for communicating privately, as well as the more horrifying practicalities of how to deal with illness and corpses—create an immersive world that will stay with the reader well past the final page.
Tor.com: Wells’ characterisation is pitch-perfect. Murderbot’s voice is darkly—and frequently not-so-darkly—funny, and Murderbot itself is a deeply appealing character. Other characters, as is appropriate for a writer of Wells’ talents, feel like fully formed individuals with lives and goals of their own, despite how little time the reader spends in their company. The pacing is excellent, tension mounting to an explosive conclusion, and like all of Wells’ work, it has atmosphere in spades.
And thematically, it’s about what it means to be human, and the nature of responsibility.
I really enjoyed this installment of the adventures of Murderbot. I’m looking forward to Exit Strategy, the next novella, and to the recently-announced forthcoming Murderbot novel. The world needs more Murderbot, because Murderbot is delightful.