May 112016
 

Cover for Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. A flying car in the foreground heads towards a glittering city on a massive cliffside, the orange and pink sunset glowing in the background.NPR: The world Palmer creates is extraordinarily intricate, with forces and organizations forming a delicate web of tenuous coexistence. It’s a thrilling feat of speculative worldbuilding, on par with those of masters like Gene Wolfe and Neal Stephenson. […] The next book, Seven Surrenders, is due in December. That may be just enough to fully savor and digest this first installment, a novel that’s one of the most maddening, majestic, ambitious novels — in any genre — in recent years.

Read Jason Heller’s full review of Too Like the Lightning at NPR.

May 062016
 

BCover for Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. A flying car in the foreground heads towards a glittering city on a massive cliffside, the orange and pink sunset glowing in the background.&N SF/F: The plot is dense in a way that can be almost challenging, but the sheer invention carries you through. […] Once you adjust to the unique rhythms of the story, the rewards are many. There an intriguing mystery at the heart of Too Like the Lightning, and a love of history and language that bleeds through from the very first page.

Read B&N’s full review of Too Like the Lightning here.

May 042016
 

Cover for Emily Winslow's Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and JusticeLibrary Journal: This eloquent memoir will be appreciated by anyone interested in cold case investigations and victim advocacy as well as true crime fans. In 1992, novelist Winslow (The Whole World) was a theater major at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, when she was raped in her apartment by an unknown assailant. The cold case opened again in 2013, when DNA evidence unexpectedly pointed to serial rapist Arthur Fryar, and a loophole in the statute of limitations allowed him to be prosecuted. Winslow, designated “Jane Doe January” in the court records, begins a diary of her thoughts about the assault, its aftermath, and the preparation for the trial that follows. An active participant in the prosecution taking place across the Atlantic (she lives in England), the author researches the suspect, contacts people involved in the original investigation, and maintains constant correspondence with the prosecutors. It is a long journey of starts and stops, delays, disappointments, and loss. Mostly, it is full of kind, helpful people whose refusal to give up heartens Winslow through the frustrating process. This important chronicle answers the question, does it serve justice to put a man on trial for a 20-year-old crime? For the victim, it absolutely does.

May 022016
 

priest-princessx-pbAudioFile: Priest’s compelling audiobook stars high-schooler May, computer whiz Trick, and the city of Seattle, which figures prominently in their adventures. May’s best friend died in a car accident when they were younger. Only now, May’s discovering hints that Libby may not be gone after all. Narrator Mary Robinette Kowal has an interesting voice (listeners may find themselves trying to place her regionalisms), and it sounds just different enough to add even more auditory interest. The print book features graphic novel sections, which the audio production effectively evokes with music and sound effects, while Kowal uses a booming movie trailer voice to clearly distinguish them from the rest of the narrative. Listeners will be caught up in the suspenseful (if occasionally far-fetched) action.

Apr 222016
 

Cover for The Edge of the Worlds by Martha WellsNew York Times: In the Three Worlds, sentient nonhuman species are a dime a dozen, and the detritus of countless lost civilizations is embedded in a lush, magic-infused landscape. The author Martha Wells, who trained as an anthropologist, has previously brought readers to this verdant fantasy realm via a trilogy and a series of shorter stories, but THE EDGE OF WORLDS (Night Shade, $24.99) marks the start of a new saga in the Books of the Raksura. […] The result is breathtakingly surprising and fun. So for readers who missed earlier entry points to this delightful series, now is the time to get on board.

Read N.K. Jemisin’s full review of The Edge of the Worlds here.

Apr 202016
 

Cover for Camille Griep's New Charity Blues.Publishers Weekly:  Griep dives into the dystopian genre in this outstanding novel, which challenges preconceptions of the genre. After a plague ravages a once-thriving world, a harsh rivalry emerges between two immune communities: the decaying City, and the idyllic New Charity. Cressyda, a New Charitan fleeing her former life, is caught up in a political struggle when she returns to New Charity in the wake of her father’s mysterious death. Cressyda clashes with her childhood friends, Len and Cas Willis, as she tries to understand the dangerous thrall New Charity is under. Griep’s writing is fresh and intense, imbued with suspense. She excels at the rich imagining of a world where magic, science, and politics intertwine. The spunky heroine is doubtful and questioning, and those who are vital to the oligarchical power structure might also topple it. Most vividly, Griep plumbs questions of what home means, and what it means to have a safe place in the midst of chaos.

Apr 192016
 

Cover for Jericho by Alex Gordon.Publishers Weekly: In Gordon’s superb follow-up to 2015’s Gideon, Lauren Mullin is coming to terms with her powers as a witch and as a Child of Endor. Her role is to guard the “thin places” such as Gideon, Ill., that separate the living and the dead. But Gideon’s residents are leaving, and without support from the other Children of Endor, she fears for the town’s future. When the enigmatic Gene Kaster approaches Lauren with an offer to head to Carmody Peak, the Oregon woodland retreat of the wealthy Andrew Carmody, and meet others on the council, she hopes for a relaxing few days and a chance to ask for the council’s help, but instead she gets more trouble. Andrew wants Lauren to help his unhappy, powerful teenage daughter, Nyssa. The nearby ghost town of Jericho is a nexus for strange happenings, and something diabolically evil is lurking there, hungering for Nyssa. Lauren promises to protect the girl with her life. This gripping contemporary witch tale is a heady brew with an atmospheric, fully realized setting and genuinely creepy chills.

Apr 152016
 

Cover for Camille Griep's New Charity Blues.Library Journal: A plague has decimated the planet’s population. Former ballerina Cressyda resides in the City, a community of survivors that remains a collapsed ruin compared to New Charity. This society stands strong behind its wall, with a hydroelectric dam that ensures no one from the City can access that water. When Syd learns she has inherited her father’s New Charity ranch, she returns both to the family she left behind years ago and to her then best friend, Casandra. Cas, a seer and acolyte to the Spirit, knows that Syd wants to open the dam for everyone, whatever the cost to New Charity. The two women realize that the dam draws on strange magic that, if tampered with, could be dangerous. Syd must find a way that allows both settlements to survive, despite her unearthing of the depth of New Charity’s corruption—and the facts of her own father’s murder. VERDICT In a story of family and betrayal, community and survival, Griep (Letters to Zell) reimagines a post-apocalyptic Trojan War that brings new life to a classic epic.

Apr 132016
 

Cover for Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. A flying car in the foreground heads towards a glittering city on a massive cliffside, the orange and pink sunset glowing in the background.RT Book Review: This debut is astonishingly dense, accomplished and well-realized, with a future that feels real in both its strangeness and its familiarity. Trying to follow what goes on in this world is roughly as easy as following what’s happening in ours, but also as rewarding, with an incredibly colorful (and often ambiguous) cast of characters, truly skillful layering of plot and incident in ways that can spin your head around and a milieu pitched perfectly between utopia and dystopia that feels so complete you may be momentarily tempted to try to Google some of the fictional (future) historical figures mentioned.

Mar 252016
 

Cover for Emily Winslow's Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and JusticePublishers Weekly:  With remarkable emotional insight and precision, mystery writer Winslow turns to memoir to narrate the long-delayed prosecution of the man who raped her two decades ago….Her story is profoundly troubling, but the legitimate care and consideration of Winslow’s legal support system is powerfully redemptive. Her account bravely illuminates a process many survivors of rape must endure.

Read Publishers Weekly’s full review of Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and Justice here.