Donald Maass Literary Agency

B&N SFF Blog: Anne Bishop blazed onto the genre scene in the late 1990s with the Black Jewels Trilogy, a fantasy epic filled with violence, blood, and revenge that somehow mostly leaves readers with lingering impressions of its beautiful empathy, kindness, and impish sense of humor. This deeply affecting mixture won the hearts of many fans then (including mine), and remains her signature today. In this sense, her new urban fantasy LAKE SILENCE fits perfectly into her bibliography.

Bishop has always been skilled at building playful, enticing worlds, and she’s filled this one with some of her best characters yet… Fantasy trappings aside, there is a deep emotional core to Bishop’s books…

The power of community is important too—if there’s anything LAKE SILENCE tells us, it’s that getting through a tough situation literally takes a village—a village full of people who probably don’t look like you, act like you, or have your same values. You might not like some of them—you might even have to forget that you were taught to look at them as less than human. But you won’t survive without the village, so you may as well get on with figuring out how to deal with it. Because the Lady of the Lake is watching. And she’s pissed.

Publishers Weekly: Bear’s Karen Memory (2015) introduced her stubborn and spunky heroine, Karen Memery, a teenage sex worker who saved her late 1870s Pacific Northwest town from threats foreign and domestic. Now Karen and her beloved, Priya, are preparing to enjoy their first night in their new home when traveling spiritualists dredge up an old, seemingly supernatural mystery poised to cause mayhem. Naturally, Karen wants to investigate. Though this novel lacks the scope and some of the sheer raucousness of the first, all of the characteristics that make Karen memorable are glowingly apparent on every page.

Elements that would feel clunky from a less talented author—such as Karen’s habit of constantly flinging herself headlong into danger because of deep regrets about her past—all seem natural and inevitable by the finish. Subtle touches guarantee that every character is colorful, no matter how fleetingly introduced.

Bear’s fans will definitely want to catch Karen’s latest adventure.

Locus: It’s always a treat to read a Martha Wells story, and it turns out that her Murderbot Diaries are an especial delight… Artificial Condition is a story that balances its disparate elements with exceptional skill. It’s perfectly paced, and Wells brings both a strong sense of humour and deep pathos to Murderbot’s character and to their voice. Murderbot, for all their insistence that they’re not really a person, is a very human sort of bot.

There’s plenty of cool shit in this space operatic future, and Wells makes excellent use of the varied potential of her setting for different sorts of stories. Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol are tight, tense, entertaining adventure stories that nonetheless have quite a lot to say about ethics, power, and personhood. I recommend them whole-heartedly, and I really hope that Wells chooses to write many more.