This September, Gollancz are due to publish Soulstealer by Miles Cameron, the first novel in the Soulflake fantasy series! The excellent cover by Fran Vegas was unveiled earlier this week by Grimdark Magazine, along with the synopsis, and both the artwork and plot caught my attention. Here’s what it’s about:
Bekka Trevelyan is an arcanist, and the first woman to be made a Gentleman Scholar of Arcany at the University of Kabakak. Her graduate work was in refining a device to measure the potency of the winds of magic. Over her Yule holidays from teaching, she travels east on a field trip to test her theory about the Winds in the true Wyld. Instead, she finds herself swept up in the investigation of a kidnapping of an indigenous woman and her child by a demon that has possessed the body of a tracker.
Tam Warden was a war hero, and then a sort of government enforcer. He gave up rank and fame to marry across class lines. But government isn’t done with him yet. He’s called back to action to investigate Bekka’s claims – discreetly. This is delicate work, because the truth could unbalance the nation.
Essa Bateman is a mercenary spy, a hard woman with no attachments and very few ethics. Few, it turns out, is more than ‘none.’ She sees the ripples of unrest from the underbelly of society, but deciding what to do about them is a different beast entirely.
In a world where gunpowder is manufactured from the souls of executed criminals, and the ultra-rich seek immortality at any price, where children labour in factories and the desperate poor turn to vampirism, where slavery is rampant and gangs rule the streets…
A few people are about to be heroes. They just don’t know it yet.
But maybe, just maybe, the Revolution is coming.
Mile Cameron’s Soulstealer is due to be published by Gollancz in the UK, on September 3rd. The author’s sci-fi series, Arcana Imperii, is also published in the UK by Gollancz, and in North America by Saga Press. (He is also a prolific historical fiction author, as Christian Cameron.)
Also on CR: Excerpt from Storming Heaven, Guest Post on “How I do Research”
Yesterday, I spotted Life of M on NetGalley. It’s the next novel by Rachel Cusk, the acclaimed, best-selling author of the Outline Trilogy and many others. I haven’t actually read anything by Cusk (not actually sure why), but the synopsis for this next book caught my attention. I’ve popped it on my anticipated list, and I’m really looking forward to reading it. Here’s the synopsis:
Next month, 
For FBI Special Agent Ben Walker and his rookie colleague, Officer Zoe Hill, the pressure to solve the case is unimaginable. There aren’t enough police officers to cover every house, and vigilante residents are attacking anyone who rings their doorbell. Main Street might be one of America’s most popular addresses, but for those living at number 138, it comes down to fight or flight.
If you’ve been reading CR for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the fact that I am a huge fan of Jill Lepore’s work. Whether a full-length book, or one of her frequent articles in the 
With Orwellian overtones, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State demonstrates how technology has corroded global democracy, leading to the destruction of both human community and capacity for self-government, creating a new form of AI government, a digital citizen’s assembly, where AI will recommend the course of action to humans in place of human-run legislatures. Especially sobering with this proliferation of “dizzying, ever-changing schemes, prophesies, and predictions” is that the Artificial State has come at the expense of the natural world, leading to catastrophic loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity.
This August, 
In October, 
This September, 
Early next year, 
Civilian Reader 