Year: 2014

Cover: WHERE THE TRAINS TURN by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Tor.com)

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JaaskelainenPI-WhereTheTrainsTurnUS

Spotted this on Tor’s website, and thought the cover (above) was stunning. Here’s the synopsis:

I don’t like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.

Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she’s willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert’s fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. “The train tried to kill us,” he tells her.

Rupert’s terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?

Published in English for the first time, Where The Trains Turn won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti’s annual short story competition and also the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.

 

Upcoming: THE DEAD LANDS by Benjamin Percy (Hodder)

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I shared the US cover and synopsis for Benjamin Percy’s upcoming new novel a little while ago. This morning, Hodder unveiled the UK cover. As it is one of my most-anticipated novels of 2015, I had to share it here, too. Here’s the synopsis:

The world we know is gone, destroyed by a virus that wiped out nearly every human on the planet. Some few survivors built walled cities, fortresses to keep themselves safe from those the virus didn’t kill… but did change.

Sanctuary. A citadel in the heart of the former United States of  America. Hundreds of miles in every direction beyond its walls lies nothing but death and devastation. Everyone who lives in the safety Sanctuary provides knows that.

Until the day a stranger appears. He speaks of a green and fertile land far to the west, a land of promise and plenty, safe from the ruin the virus has wreaked. He has come to lead the survivors away from Sanctuary, to the promise of a new life without walls.

But those who follow him will discover that not everything he says is true.

Benjamin Percy‘s The Dead Lands is published in the UK on April 9th 2015, by Hodder Books. It will be published in the US by Grand Central, also in April 2015.

Review: SHE WHO WAITS by Daniel Polansky (Hodder)

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Polansky-LT3-SheWhoWaitsUKA superb finale

Low Town: the worst ghetto in the worst city in the Thirteen Lands.

Good only for depravity and death. And Warden, long ago a respected agent in the formidable Black House, is now the most depraved Low Town denizen of them all.

As a younger man, Warden carried out more than his fair share of terrible deeds, and never as many as when he worked for the Black House. But Warden’s growing older, and the vultures are circling. Low Town is changing, faster than even he can control, and Warden knows that if he doesn’t get out soon, he may never get out at all.

But Warden must finally reckon with his terrible past if he can ever hope to escape it. A hospital full of lunatics, a conspiracy against the corrupt new king and a ghetto full of thieves and murderers stand between him and his slim hope for the future. And behind them all waits the one person whose betrayal Warden never expected. The one person who left him, broken and bitter, to become the man he is today.

The one woman he ever loved.

She who waits behind all things.

This really is a superb finale to a great trilogy: surprising, heart-wrenching, twisty, and utterly engrossing. If you haven’t read this series yet, then I strongly urge you to do so. Polansky is one of the best authors writing today. The Low Town series is a dark fantasy masterpiece. Continue reading →

Upcoming: BITE by Nick Louth (Sphere)

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LouthN-BiteOriginally self-published, Nick Louth‘s BITE will be published in paperback by Sphere in the UK next year (it is available now in eBook).

Tomorrow should be the greatest day of Erica Stroud-Jones’s life. In just 24 hours this brilliant young scientist will present her secret work to a conference in Amsterdam – research that promises to revolutionise the battle against a deadly tropical disease. Millions of lives could be saved; a Nobel Prize beckons.

Arriving to watch her are sceptics and rivals, admirers and enemies. Erica’s own eyes will be on sculptor Max Carver, her American new love to whom she will dedicate her achievement.

Tomorrow never comes.

Erica vanishes during the night. Max, desperate, terrified, sets out to find her, descending into an underworld full of malice and cunning. But even he is shocked by the dark terror he finds in the heart of the woman he loves.

This sounds intriguing. The synopsis doesn’t give much away at all, but that could be a good thing.

New Books (November #1)

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A quieter month — I don’t know if that’s just because there’s less coming out, or because I’ve somehow missed a bunch of new releases that never made it on to my radar. Feel free to add suggestions and recommendations in the comments, if you think I’ve missed something I shouldn’t have.

Featuring: Ben Aaronovitch, Stephen Blackmoore, Myke Cole, Francesca Haig, Stephen King, E.C. Myers, Ben Okri, Matthew Reilly Continue reading →

Upcoming: TOUCH by Claire North (Orbit)

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NorthC-TouchIf you caught my review a couple weeks ago for The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, you’ll have noticed that I am a big fan of Claire North‘s work. It was on the strength of that novel that I picked up Kate Griffin’s six novels (Claire North and Kate Griffin are both pseudonyms for Catherine Webb). I have also been very much looking forward to North’s next novel, Touch, for which today Orbit released the cover (right). Here’s the synopsis:

Your violent death usually triggers the first switch.

Just before your life ebbs away, your skin happens to touch another human being – and in an instant, your consciousness transfers completely to the person you touched.

From that moment on, you can leap from body to body with a touch of the skin. You can remain for a minute, an hour, a lifetime, and after you leave, the host has no memory of the time you were there.

My name is Kepler. I could be you.

For me, the carefree life of jumping between bodies has become a terrifying nightmare. I am being hunted. I don’t know who. I don’t know why. If you’ve read this far, our lives have already touched. Now you are part of the conspiracy too.

Get ready to run.

Touch is due to arrive in February 2015, and is published by Orbit in the UK, US and ANZ. In the meantime, do yourself a favour and read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (if you’ve already read it, check out Griffin’s novels and, maybe, re-read Harry August?). You can follow North on Twitter for more news, etc.

Audio Review: WISHFUL DRINKING by Carrie Fisher (Simon & Schuster/Audible)

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FisherC-WishfulDrinkingA bizarre memoir, which doesn’t do what it said on the tin…

In Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit. Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play a princess in a little movie called Star Wars when only 19 years old. “But it isn’t all sweetness and light sabers.”

Alas, aside from a demanding career and her role as a single mother (not to mention the hyperspace hairdo), Carrie also spends her free time battling addiction, weathering the wild ride of manic depression and lounging around various mental institutions. It’s an incredible tale – from having Elizabeth Taylor as a stepmother, to marrying (and divorcing) Paul Simon, from having the father of her daughter leave her for a man, to ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.

This is memoir is… rather mad for the most part (certainly the beginning). Not always in a good way, sadly. Wishful Drinking was not what I’d expected, nor as I’d hoped. In some ways, this should have been expected — for the first 20% of the audiobook, Fisher tells us about the ECT she had, which basically destroyed most of her memories. (Which, when you think about it, makes it rather strange, the urge to write a memoir, then…) Fisher basically offers a three-hour, acerbic take on her family and substance abuse. It sometimes veers into glib (rather than risque), and the humour falls flat too often. I really don’t know what to think about this audiobook/memoir. Continue reading →

Trailer: CHAPPIE

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CHAPPIE, the new movie from Neill Blomkamp, director of District 9, Elysium and (as I recently learned) 3D animator for Stargate SG-1 and Smallville. Here’s the synopsis…

Every child comes into the world full of promise, and none more so than Chappie: he is gifted, special, a prodigy. Like any child, Chappie will come under the influence of his surroundings – some good, some bad – and he will rely on his heart and soul to find his way in the world and become his own man. But there’s one thing that makes Chappie different from anyone else: he is a robot. The first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself. His life, his story, will change the way the world looks at robots and humans forever.

This looks marvellous.

Chappie

Review: PRINCE LESTAT by Anne Rice (Chatto & Windus/Knopf)

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RiceA-PrinceLestatUK2The Vampires Return…

The vampire world is in crisis – their kind have been proliferating out of control and, thanks to technologies undreamed of in previous centuries, they can communicate as never before. Roused from their earth-bound slumber, ancient ones are in thrall to the Voice: which commands that they burn fledgling vampires in cities from Paris to Mumbai, Hong Kong to Kyoto and San Francisco. Immolations, huge massacres, have commenced all over the world.

Who – or what – is the Voice? What does it desire, and why?

There is only one vampire, only one blood drinker, truly known to the entire world of the Undead. Will the dazzling hero-wanderer, the dangerous rebel-outlaw Lestat heed the call to unite the Children of Darkness as they face this new twilight?

Few novels have had as much of a lasting impression on me as Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. I have read them so many times, now. I have, of course, also read the other novels in the Vampire Chronicles. It was with considerable anticipation, then, that I started this long-awaited new novel. It did not disappoint. An ambitious expansion of the existing mythology, and an engrossing update to the lives of Lestat and the undead tribe. Continue reading →