New year = new books from Adrian Tchaikovsky!
First, we have The Doors of Eden. With this novel, the author seems to be taking on a new (sub-)genre — specifically some kind of portal fantasy, which Stephen Baxter has described as “a terrific timeslip/lost world romp”. The synopsis sounds fantastic, of course, and I’m really looking forward to reading this:
The world is stranger than they’d thought. And more dangerous than they’d feared.
Lee’s best friend went missing on Bodmin Moor, four years ago. She and Mal were chasing rumours of monsters when they found something all too real. Now Mal is back, but where has she been, and who is she working for?
When government physicist Kay Amal Khan is attacked, the security services investigate. This leads MI5’s Julian Sabreur deep into terrifying new territory, where he clashes with mysterious agents of an unknown power who may or may not be human. And Julian’s only clue is some grainy footage – showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.
Khan’s extradimensional research was purely theoretical, until she found cracks between our world and countless others… Parallel Earths where monsters live. These cracks are getting wider every day, so who knows what might creep through? Or what will happen when those walls finally come crashing down.
Easily one of my most-anticipated of 2020, The Doors of Eden is due to be published by Tor Books in the UK, on May 28th, 2020. (Some of his recent novels have been published in North America by Orbit — such as Children of Time and Children of Ruin — but at the time of writing I couldn’t find any information about a US publisher for this book.)
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Tchaikovsky’s other novel, also due out in May, Firewalkers, is a slimmer tale (only about 200 pages) and appears to be a dystopian tale of environmental collapse, economic inequality, and resource scarcity:
Firewalkers are brave. Firewalkers are resourceful. Firewalkers are expendable.
The Earth is burning. Nothing can survive at the Anchor; not without water and power. But the ultra-rich, waiting for their ride off the dying Earth? They can buy water. And as for power?
Well, someone has to repair the solar panels, down in the deserts below.
Kids like Mao, and Lupé, and Hotep; kids with brains and guts but no hope.
The Firewalkers.
Really looking forward to reading this. Firewalkers is due to be published by Solaris Books in North America and in the UK, in mid-May 2020.
Civilian Reader 
I didn’t know about either of these…jotting them down.
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