Booklist: In Priest’s gothic haunted-house story, workers at failing architectural salvage company are given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse their fortunes, if they can survive the ghosts plaguing the property. Dahlia Dutton, the daughter of Music City Salvage’s owner, loves old houses. She’s still sore over losing her own beautifully restored home in her divorce. Once Dahlia arrives at the grand, well-preserved Withrow estate in the Tennessee mountains, she wishes she could save it; instead, she and her crew — her estranged cousin Bobby; his lovable son, Gabe; and salvage rookie Brad — have mere days to rescue the valuables before demolition. To save money, they sleep on-site, when the mansion’s romantic charm turns menacing. Strange occurrences and spectral sightings increase as the crew dismantles the house, exposing the With row family’s secrets. Priest spices up a standard haunting with an irresistible premise focused on the “hidden treasure” aspect of salvage work. Careful character building accentuates the novel’s slow build, so by the time the salvagers are in real danger, they feel like real people, too. Despite lulls in pacing, the final scenes are terrifying. Highly recommended for fans of contemporary ghost stories.
Sep 122016
Kirkus: A novel of unsung voices and alternate World War I history, Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal is a wonderful, fraught, and heart-wrenching read. Set against the backdrop of World War I, it reinvents history to allow unheard stories to be told, whilst at the same creating a marvellous piece of romantic speculative fiction.
Hugo Award-winning editor and writer for Pitchfork, NPR, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker Jason Heller’s STRANGE STARS, about the massive influence that science fiction has had on popular music, particularly during the 1970s boom of both, to Ryan Harrington at Melville House, by Jennifer Jackson.
New York Times: It’s easy to get lost in the kaleidoscopic world-building of NINEFOX GAMBIT (Solaris, paper, $9.99), the first novel by the well-regarded story writer Yoon Ha Lee. Lee submerges readers without explanation into the hexarchate – a star-spanning far-future society whose culture relies on advanced mathematics to produce “exotic effects” that are nigh magical. …. The story is dense, the pace intense, and the delicate East Asian flavoring of the math-rich setting might make it seem utterly alien to many readers yet metaphors for our own world abound. Mathematics is often lauded as a universal language, but this is blatantly untrue; for universality to work, adherents must believe in the same basic truths, or principles, to the same degree. Lee’s quasi-religious treatment of mathematics, and Cheris’s need to simultaneously exploit and rely on Jedao, both serve as metaphors for colonialism. (As does the quiet, oblique rebellion taking place in the background amid the hexarchate’s artificially intelligent servitors.) And the lesson of colonialism applies as well: Brute-force domination gets you only so far. For stability, trust is key.
B&N SFF&F Blog: Kowal retains her crown as one of the most imaginative SFF writers working today with a thoughtful new book that imagines the “Spirit Corps” of the British Military of 1916. Led by American Ginger Stuyvesant, the Corps communicates with recently dead soldiers on the killing fields of Europe in order to glean vital intelligence. When Ginger’s fiancé, Captain Ben Harford, tips her off concerning a German plot to destroy the Corps, she has to use the its powers, as well as a series of unlikely but effective allies, to protect it. Kowal brings her keen eye for historical detail and an impeccable sense of plotting to bear on a smart, exciting story that combines an accurately rendered World War I setting with occult flourishes.
Turkish rights to Robert Jackson Bennett’s THE DIVINE CITIES trilogy, to Ithaki, in a three-book deal, by Merve Ongen at ONK Agency, in association with Katie Shea Boutillier on behalf of Cameron McClure.