Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force. Each soldier heading for the front is conditioned to report to the mediums of the Spirit Corps when they die so the Corps can pass instant information about troop movements to military intelligence.
Ginger and her fellow mediums contribute a great deal to the war efforts, so long as they pass the information through appropriate channels. While Ben is away at the front, Ginger discovers the presence of a traitor. Without the presence of her fiance to validate her findings, the top brass thinks she’s just imagining things. Even worse, it is clear that the Spirit Corps is now being directly targeted by the German war effort. Left to her own devices, Ginger has to find out how the Germans are targeting the Spirit Corps and stop them. This is a difficult and dangerous task for a woman of that era, but this time both the spirit and the flesh are willing…
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.
Publishers Weekly: When Dahlia Dutton’s father sends her and a small crew to salvage a house near Lookout Mountain, Tenn., she finds that what you don’t know can hurt you in Priest’s spectacular modern haunted-house story. Dahlia is no stranger to ghosts, whether she’s being emotionally haunted by a failed marriage or by the metaphorical spirits that linger in old buildings. The concept of home salvage disturbing ghosts is brilliant, and while common elements of haunted house stories are certainly present (a mysterious owner with family secrets, locked rooms, unnatural storms, etc.), Priest (Boneshaker) handles them with tremendous skill, putting the pieces together to keep the reader guessing and more than a little scared. The characters are given a compelling reason to stay (the family business will fail if this job falls through) and their interpersonal dynamics humanize them, making them more than just cannon fodder as the hauntings increase in severity. Priest has written an excellent modern house story from start to finish.