Year: 2020

New Books (December)

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A final New Books post for 2020. What a strange, frustrating year it’s been. Hopefully you were able to find some comfort in books, family, and other pastimes. Perhaps some of the below-mentioned books will catch your eye, and give you something to look forward to in the new year.

Featuring: Jeff Blue, Emma Brodie, Mike Brooks, Daryl Gregory, Devin Madson, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, A.E. Osworth, Shelley Parker-Chan, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Matthew Reilly, Edward Rutherford, Adrian Selby, Mike Shackle, Maggie Shipstead, Gavin G. Smith, Adrian Tchaikovsky, K.B. Wagers, Andrew Williams

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Quick Review: THE NOWHERE MAN by Gregg Hurwitz (St. Martin’s Press)

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hurwitzg-2-nowheremanusEvan Smoak returns, but this time he’s the one who needs help…

Who is THE NOWHERE MAN?

He is spoken about only in whispers. He comes to those in greatest need of his protection. There is no enemy he cannot fight. He lives by his own code. He takes no prisoners. His name is Evan Smoak.

Taken from a group home when he was young, Evan was raised and trained as an Orphan, an off-the-books black box program designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence asset: An assassin. Evan was Orphan X — until he used everything he’d learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man.

But now, his new life has been interrupted by a surprise attack from an unlikely source. Captured, drugged, and spirited off to a remote location, Evan finds himself heavily guarded from everything he knows. His captors think they have him trapped and helpless in a virtual cage, but they do not know that they’re dealing with one of the deadliest, most resourceful men on earth.

Introduced in Orphan X, noble avenger of the downtrodden and persecuted Evan Smoak returns in The Nowhere Man. This time, he’s forced to employ all of his skills and wits to escape from the grips of a psychopathic thief. A gripping action/thriller, I enjoyed this. Continue reading →

Quick Review: CITY OF LIGHT by Darius Hinks (Black Library)

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HinksD-Mephiston3-CityOfLightThe concluding volume in Hinks’s Mephiston trilogy

Deep in Imperium Nihilus, Blood Angels Chief Librarian Mephiston and his comrades are drawn into battle with a cabal of Thousand Sons sorcerers – with worlds at stake and hidden truths threatening to overwhelm him, this is Mephiston’s darkest hour…

Having fought during the devastation of Baal, Mephiston and a cohort of Blood Angels are drawn by cryptic visions to a war-torn world on the cusp of the Great Rift. Here, the sorcerers of the Thousand Sons seek to unite nine Silver Towers and bring about a ritual that will empower their master, the daemon-primarch Magnus. The ritual must be prevented, lest the entire sub-sector be cast into Chaos. Mephiston faces a challenge like no other, of his strength and his will, confronting a hidden truth that threatens to expose him to his darkest fears.

City of Light brings Darius Hinks’s excellent Mephiston trilogy to a close. The series has been woven around the ongoing events in the WH40k story, pairing nicely with Guy Haley’s Blood Angels novels, which feature some of the same characters. Picking up the story shortly after the events of Haley’s Darkness in the Blood, the titular hero sets out to thwart a dire threat looming over Imperium Nihilus. It’s an enjoyable, action-packed novel. Continue reading →

Excerpt: GALLOWGLASS by S.J. Morden (Gollancz)

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MordenSJ-GallowglassUKToday, we have an excerpt from S. J. Morden‘s new novel Gallowglass, which Gollancz has provided as part of the blog tour marking the novel’s release. First, though, here’s the synopsis:

The year is 2069, and the earth is in flux. Whole nations are being wiped off the map by climate change. Desperate for new resources, the space race has exploded back into life.

Corporations seek ever greater profits off-world. They offer immense rewards to anyone who can claim space’s resources in their name. The bounty on a single asteroid rivals the GDP of entire countries, so every trick, legal or not, is used to win.

Jack, the scion of a shipping magnate, is desperate to escape earth and joins a team chasing down an asteroid. But the ship he’s on is full of desperate people – each one needing the riches claiming the asteroid will bring them, and they’re willing to do anything if it means getting there first.

Because in Space, there are no prizes for coming second. It’s all or nothing: riches beyond measure, or dying alone in the dark.

And now, on with the excerpt…

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Quick Review: ONE DAY ALL THIS WILL BE YOURS by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris)

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Tchaikovsky-OneDayAllThisWillBeYoursA fantastic, amusing and original take on the time travel paradox

Welcome to the end of time. It’s a perfect day.

Nobody remembers how the Causality War started. Really, there’s no-one to remember, and nothing for them to remember if there were; that’s sort of the point. We were time warriors, and we broke time.

I was the one who ended it. Ended the fighting, tidied up the damage as much as I could.

Then I came here, to the end of it all, and gave myself a mission: to never let it happen again.

This is the third of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s novellas that Solaris will publish, and I think it’s easily the best so far. An original and often amusing take on time travel and humanity’s tendency to inevitably ruin everything, I really enjoyed this. Continue reading →

Very Quick Review: CREATIVE TYPES AND OTHER STORIES by Tom Bissell (Pantheon)

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BissellT-CreativeTypesUSAn intriguing, varied collection of short fiction

A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making.

In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises — writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.

I’d only read Bissell’s non-fiction before I gave Creative Types and Other Stories a try — specifically, The Disaster Artist and Magic Hours. With hindsight, the latter should have given me an idea of what to expect from this very good collection of stories (there’s some subject overlap). Each story is a snapshot in a character’s life, as they are forced to confront their current situations and question what they want, and even who they are. Continue reading →

Interview with KRISTYN MERBETH

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MerbethK-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Kristyn Merbeth?

Hi! I’m an author, gamer, and SFF enthusiast. When I’m not writing or reading, I’m often playing video games, board games, or Dungeons & Dragons. I also love to cook, and my latest hobby is making alcoholic ice cream.

Memoria, your second Nova Vita Protocol novel, is due to be published by Orbit in December. How would you introduce the series to a potential reader? What can fans of the first novel, Fortuna, expect from the follow-up?

My usual quick pitch is “a dysfunctional family of smugglers in space!” The five human-settled planets of Nova Vita are all close enough to see one another clearly in the skies above, but a long history of distrust has led to laws that make traveling between them nearly impossible. Fortuna is one of the last remaining ships that can cross otherwise-closed borders — which the Kaiser family uses to smuggle illegal goods between the planets. But when the family is drawn into a messy interplanetary conflict, the two eldest siblings – broody soldier and former golden child Corvus and troublemaking, fast-talking scapegoat Scorpia — are faced with a choice about which of them will inherit the ship, and where they will lead the family if the system goes to war. Continue reading →

Upcoming: SON OF THE STORM by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Orbit)

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OkungbowaSD-NR1-SonOfTheStormUSNext year, Orbit Books is due to publish Son of the Storm, the first novel in Suyi Davies Okungbowa‘s Nameless Republic trilogy. Pitched as “a sweeping tale of violent conquest and forbidden magic set in a world inspired by the pre-colonial empires of West Africa,” I’m really looking forward to reading this. (Also, that’s a great cover.) Here’s the full synopsis:

In the thriving city of Bassa, Danso is a clever but disillusioned scholar who longs for a life beyond the rigid family and political obligations expected of the city’s elite. A way out presents itself when Lilong, a skin-changing warrior, shows up wounded in his barn. She comes from the Nameless Islands — which, according to Bassa lore, don’t exist — and neither should the mythical magic of ibor she wields.

Now swept into a conspiracy far beyond his understanding, Danso and Lilong will set out on a journey that reveals histories violently suppressed and magic only found in lore.

*

Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s Son of the Storm is due to be published by Orbit Books on May 11th, 2021, in North America and in the UK. The author’s debut novel, David Mogo Godhunter is out now, and recommended.

Also on CR: Interview with Suyi Davies Okungbowa (2019)

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter
Review copy received via NetGalley

New Books (November)

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Featuring: Robert Bickers, C. L. Clark, P. Djèlí Clark, Michael Connelly, Ben Counter, Aliette de Bodard, Sebastian Fitzek, Harald Gilbers, David Guymer, Guy Haley, Michael Holley, Joe Ide, Femi Kayode, Gary Kloster, Robert Littell, Arkady Martine, Barack Obama, Aimee Ogden, A. E. Osworth, K. J. Parker, Keith Rosson, Andrew Kelly Stewart, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Danie Ware

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Quick Review: THE BIG THREE by Michael Holley (Hachette)

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HolleyM-BigThreeUSHow three of the NBA’s best players dominated the league and lead the Boston Celtics to their first championship in more than two decades

The first of “The Big Three” was Paul Pierce. As Boston Celtics fans watched the team retire Pierce’s jersey in a ceremony on February 11, 2018, they remembered again the incredible performances Pierce put on in the city for fifteen years, helping the Celtics escape the bottom of their conference to become champions and perennial championship contenders. But Pierce’s time in the city wasn’t always so smooth. In 2000, he was stabbed in a downtown nightclub eleven times in a seemingly random attack. Six years later, remaining the sole star on a struggling team, he asked to be traded and briefly became a lightning rod among fans.

Then, in 2007, the Boston Celtics General Manager made two monumental trades, bringing Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to Boston. A press conference on July 31, 2007 was a sight to behold: Pierce, KG, and Ray Allen holding up Celtics jerseys for the flood of media. Coach Doc Rivers made sure the team bonded over the thought of winning a title and living by a Bantu term called Ubuntu, which translates as “I am because we are.” Rivers wanted to make it clear that togetherness and brotherhood would help them maximize their talent and win. What came next — the synthesis of the Celtics’ “Big Three” and their dominant championship run — cemented their standing as one of great teams in NBA history, a rival to Kobe Bryant’s Lakers and LeBron James’s Cavaliers.

The story of the 2007-9 Celtics has popped up in a couple of NBA books that I’ve read recently, and thought I wanted to learn some more — more than I could learn from the internet, certainly. I saw that this book was on the way, and was lucky to receive a review copy. It’s a well-written and balanced story, told with authority and also affection — for the team, the players, and the sport. I really enjoyed this. Continue reading →