Upcoming

Upcoming: THE GOD GAME by Danny Tobey (St. Martin’s Press/Gollancz)

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In January, St. Martin’s Press and Gollancz are due to publish a new novel by Danny Tobey that has caught my attention: The God Game. Based on the synopsis (below), it looks like it should appeal to fans of novels like Ready Player One and You, as well as fans of techno-thrillers. Looking forward to this one.

You are invited!
Come inside and play with G.O.D.
Bring your friends!
It’s fun!
But remember the rules. Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.™ Lose, you die!

With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone-screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seem harmless at first. Fun even.

But then the threatening messages start. Worship me. Obey me. Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game, and how far will they go to win?

And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you die? Dying in a virtual world doesn’t really mean death in real life — does it?

As Charlie and his friends try to find a way out of the game, they realize they’ve been manipulated into a bigger web they can’t escape: an AI that learned its cruelty from watching us.

God is always watching, and He says when the game is done.

The God Game is due to be published by St. Martin’s Press in North America (January 7th) and Gollancz in the UK (January 9th).

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: AGENCY by William Gibson (Berkley/Viking)

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William Gibson needs no introduction. But, just in case: he is one of the father’s of Cyberpunk, and author of the acclaimed Neuromancer (among many other classics). Next year, he returns with a new novel, Agency. (Two very different covers, up there.) Here’s the synopsis:

A science fiction thriller heavily influenced by our most current events.

Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. “Eunice,” the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t.

Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in a different time line entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it.

I’m really looking forward to this. Agency is due to be published in January 2020 by Berkley (North America) and Viking (UK).

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Upcoming: UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com)

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GaileyS-UprightWomenWantedI enjoyed Sarah Gailey‘s American Hippo novellas — a fun, interesting and imaginative take on the alternate history western genre. (If you haven’t tried them, yet, I’d highly recommend giving them a try.) Next February, the author returns with Upright Women Wanted, another pulpy western:

“That girl’s got more wrong notions than a barn owl’s got mean looks.”

Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her—a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

Upright Women Wanted is due to be published by Tor.com in North America and in the UK, on February 4th, 2020. Gailey’s latest novel, Magic For Liars, is also out now.

Also on CR: Interview with Sarah Gailey (2017); Review of River of Teeth

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Upcoming: PROSPER’S DEMON by K.J. Parker (Tor.com)

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ParkerKJ-ProspersDemonJust a quite post to draw your attention to this, the latest novella by master of the form K.J. Parker: Prosper’s Demon is out in late January 2020, and is easily one of my most-anticipated books of next year. Here’s the synopsis:

In a botched demonic extraction, they say the demon feels it ten times worse than the man. But they don’t die, and we do. Equilibrium.

The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out — he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.

Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.

Parker’s novellas are among some of my favourite reads of the past few years. The Devil You Know, in particular, cemented his place among the ranks of my favourite authors.

Prosper’s Demon is due to be published by Tor.com in North America and in the UK, on January 28th, 2020.

Also on CR: Reviews of The Devil You Know, The Last Witness, and Downfall of the Gods

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads

Upcoming: SIXTEENTH WATCH by Myke Cole (Angry Robot)

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ColeM-SixteenthWatchMyke Cole, the acclaimed author of the Shadow Ops and Sacred Throne series, is back with new novel next year: Sixteenth Watch! Here’s the synopsis:

A lifelong Search-and-Rescuewoman, Coast Guard Captain Jane Oliver is ready for a peaceful retirement. But when tragedy strikes, Oliver loses her husband and her plans for the future, and finds herself thrust into a role she’s not prepared for. Suddenly at the helm of the Coast Guard’s elite SAR-1 lunar unit, Oliver is the only woman who can prevent the first lunar war in history, a conflict that will surely consume not only the moon, but earth as well.

Sixteenth Watch is due to be published by Angry Robot Books in North America and in the UK, in March 2020. It’s unclear if this is the first in a planned series, or a stand-alone. Myke is also the author of the acclaimed Legion Versus Phalanx history book, which I would also highly recommend.

Seems like March 2020 is going to be “Coast Guard… in Space!” month. (See also: K.B. Wagers’s A Pale Light in the Black.)

Also on CR: Interview with Myke Cole (2011); Guest Post on “Influences & Inspirations”; Review of Control Point, Fortress Frontier, Breach Zone, and The Armored Saint

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: A PALE LIGHT IN THE BLACK by K.B. Wagers (Voyager)

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WagersKB-NeoG1-APaleLightInTheBlackUSK.B. Wagers is the author of the acclaimed Indranan War and Farian War series, published by Orbit (the latter is still ongoing). Next year, the author launches a new series — NeoG — which will be published by Voyager. A Pale Light in the Black is a “rollicking” first entry in the NeoG series, that introduces readers to the Near-Earth Orbital Guard: a military force patrolling and protecting space inspired by the real-life mission of the U.S. Coast Guard. Here’s the synopsis for the upcoming novel:

For the past year, their close loss in the annual Boarding Games has haunted Interceptor Team: Zuma’s Ghost. With this year’s competition looming, they’re looking forward to some payback — until an unexpected personnel change leaves them reeling. Their best swordsman has been transferred, and a new lieutenant has been assigned in his place.

Maxine Carmichael is trying to carve a place in the world on her own — away from the pressure and influence of her powerful family. The last thing she wants is to cause trouble at her command on Jupiter Station. With her new team in turmoil, Max must overcome her self-doubt and win their trust if she’s going to succeed. Failing is not an option — and would only prove her parents right.

But Max and the team must learn to work together quickly. A routine mission to retrieve a missing ship has suddenly turned dangerous, and now their lives are on the line. Someone is targeting members of Zuma’s Ghost, a mysterious opponent willing to kill to safeguard a secret that could shake society to its core… a secret that could lead to their deaths and kill thousands more unless Max and her new team stop them.

Rescue those in danger, find the bad guys, win the Games. It’s all in a day’s work at the NeoG.

There seems to be a trend in sci-fi at the moment: plucky bands of adventurers venturing out into space and getting up to shenanigans. Personally, I am very much on board for this trend.

A Pale Light in the Black is due to be published by Voyager in North America and in the UK, in March 2020.

Also on CR: Interview with K.B. Wagers (2016)

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Upcoming: THE GLASS HOTEL by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf)

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Like many readers, I absolutely loved Emily St. John Mandel‘s Station Eleven. I was, therefore, extremely happy to learn about the author’s follow-up, The Ghost Hotel. We still have quite some time to wait before it arrives in bookstores (curses!), but I wanted to give it a quick shout-out here, just in case you’d missed it. Here’s the synopsis:

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, a captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on an island in British Columbia. Jonathan Alkaitis works in finance and owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, Vincent’s half brother, Paul, scrawls a note on a windowed wall of the hotel: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company named Neptune-Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.

Weaving together the lives of these characters, The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and the wilderness of northern Vancouver Island, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.

The Glass Hotel is due to be published by Knopf in North America (March 24th, 2020) and Picador in the UK (April 30th, 2020).

Also on CR: Review of Station Eleven and Last Night in Montreal

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Upcoming: THRAWN – TREASON by Timothy Zahn (Century), plus pre-order special!

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ZahnT-SWThrawn3-Treason-PreorderPicThe third novel in Timothy Zahn‘s rebooted Thrawn trilogy is out later this month! An enduring, fan-favourite character from the Star Wars Expanded Universe (he was introduced in 1991’s Heir to the Empire), the character was revived in Thrawn (2017).

Set within the new canon, the new series has been popular and fans have welcomed the return of the cold, calculating and brilliant Empire Admiral. In Thrawn: Treason, Zahn brings the trilogy to an end. Here’s the synopsis:

Grand Admiral Thrawn faces the ultimate test of his loyalty to the Empire in this epic Star Wars novel from bestselling author Timothy Zahn.

Such was the promise Grand Admiral Thrawn made to Emperor Palpatine at their first meeting. Since then, Thrawn has been one of the Empire’s most effective instruments, pursuing its enemies to the very edges of the known galaxy. But as keen a weapon as Thrawn has become, the Emperor dreams of something far more destructive.

Now, as Thrawn’s TIE defender program is halted in favor of Director Krennic’s secret Death Star project, he realizes that the balance of power in the Empire is measured by more than just military acumen or tactical efficiency. Even the greatest intellect can hardly compete with the power to annihilate entire planets.

As Thrawn works to secure his place in the Imperial hierarchy, his former protégé Eli Vanto returns with a dire warning about Thrawn’s homeworld. Thrawn’s mastery of strategy must guide him through an impossible choice: duty to the Chiss Ascendancy, or fealty to the Empire he has sworn to serve. Even if the right choice means committing treason.

To celebrate the release of the novel, Zahn’s UK publisher, Century, is holding a special giveaway for everyone who pre-orders the novel. If you send proof of the pre-order through this form, they will send you a special edition pin. (They did something similar for the release of Thrawn: Alliances.)

The novel is due to be published by Century in the UK (July 25th) and Del Rey in North America (July 23rd).

Further Reading: Interview with Timothy Zahn on The Verge (2018)

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Upcoming: THE BLACK HAWKS by David Wragg (Voyager)

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WraggD-1-BlackHawksUKI only learned about David Wragg‘s upcoming novel, The Black Hawks via the recent uptick in mentions on Twitter — ARCs have been made and (maybe) sent out to a luck few reviewers, and it is starting to generate some good buzz. The cover is attention-grabbing — same artist as for R.F. Kuang’s novels, perhaps? — and the synopsis also piques one’s interest:

Life as a knight is not what Vedren Chel imagined. Bound by oath to a dead-end job in the service of a lazy step-uncle, Chel no longer dreams of glory – he dreams of going home.

When invaders throw the kingdom into turmoil, Chel finds opportunity in the chaos: if he escorts a stranded prince to safety, Chel will be released from his oath.

All he has to do is drag the brat from one side of the country to the other, through war and wilderness, chased all the way by ruthless assassins.

With killers on your trail, you need killers watching your back. You need the Black Hawk Company – mercenaries, fighters without equal, a squabbling, scrapping pack of rogues.

Prepare to join the Black Hawks.

The Black Hawks is the first novel in the Articles of Faith series, and is due to be published by Voyager in the UK, on October 3rd, 2019. (I couldn’t find a North American publisher, but that doesn’t mean one isn’t in the offing.) I’m very much looking forward to reading this one.

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Trailer: STUMPTOWN (ABC)

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Announced during the TV upfronts last week, ABC’s Stumptown is based on the graphic novels series of the same name. The series stars Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother, Marvel’s cinematic universe). There are a couple of other crime/cop shows that were announced, but this is definitely one of the more interesting, to me. Looking forward to watching it. Here’s the network’s synopsis:

Based on the “Stumptown” graphic novel series, follows Dex Parios (Cobie Smulders) as a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great P.I., but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police. Continue reading →