The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Release Date: Early Nov
Erin Morgenstern‘s 2011 debut novel, The Night Circus was a genre blurring book that earned her a horde of readers keen for more. It’s been a while coming, but her fans are just as keen now as they were then, and with good reason. The Starless Sea is not a sequel, but a stand-alone book, though it is just as magical and fantastical. Imagine a labyrinth-like library where the realities within the stories are the same as those without. Where changing one changes the other and texts and possibilities are shuffled at will. What would the remorseless do in such a place? Or the hopeful, the lost and forlorn? The last three would describe Zachary who follows a chain of strange events into the library and also reluctantly into the job of saving it from destruction. Through dark tunnels and ballrooms, in the company of a mysterious magic worker and a handsome stranger Zachary will travel through a world made of stories that may perhaps even include the one of his own lost childhood. This is a celebration of the art of the story, and what stories mean to people. The prose has a stylised almost poetic quality that I enjoyed, so if you like your writing sparse and to the point it may not be for you. Needless to say you’re a fan of The Night Circus you’ll love this, and while it’s not really the same as Ada Palmer‘s Terra Ignota series or Susannah Clarke‘s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell, it is written with the same passion for narrative and love of language, so if that’s what enjoyed about those this is one for you.
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North
Release Date: Mid Nov
I’m always excited by the prospect of a new Claire North book. She seems to have an endless supply of strange ways to look at the world. Her books have been taking a darker path recently and her new one seems to be part of that trend. At first glance it appears to be a fairly standard ghost story trope, but with Claire‘s books you often find that familiar roads lead to unusual places. It’s also set in the past, which might be a first for Claire, beginning in 1884 in South Africa. William Abbey, a young English doctor is witness to the lynching of an African boy by white colonists. He’s horrified by what he is seeing, but too afraid to do anything to stop it. His feelings of guilt and cowardice are compounded when the mother of the murdered boy curses him. The terrible manifestation of the curse takes the form of a ghostly boy that follows William at a steady implacable walk. It can cross vast distances, over mountains and oceans at its slow and inexorable pace, and each time it catches William the person he loves most dies. But being the victim of such a curse also changes William, and he can see, hear and know things others cannot. He is also not the first to be cursed in this way and there are those who want to use what William has become, and who are prepared to do anything to do so. This is an unusual take on an old horror favourite and definitely one for those who prefer a creepy atmosphere over viscera and like a gradual building of tension over jump scares.
Escaping Exodus by Nicki Drayden
Release Date: Early Nov
This is the third standalone novel from Nicky Drayden, where she again flashes her highly unusual and compelling approach to science fiction. This time she merges some generation ship concepts with biotech and body horror, social class and agency and the clash between current needs and sustainability. In a far future, what is left of humanity lives in colonies built into the interiors of vast space-faring beasts that they consume from within, moving to another when the current host dies. Seske is a young woman preparing for her role as the leader of a matriarchal colony that traces its origins back to old Earth and Africa. Idealistic, she is already threatening the status quo by her relationship Adalla, a girl from a lower cast. When events within the body of the star-beast start to take an abnormal turn, it is up to Seska to find out why. Along the way she’ll have to deal with a coup, conflicting emotions and the revelation of the secret that underpins her whole world. This is very odd, but very clever science fiction, that not only explores the disturbing idea of living parasite-like inside something else but also a very different society of humans doing it. Polyamourous, bisexual and matriarchal, but with a rigid and restrictive class structure. There’s a lot going on in this book and it crosses a lot of genre lines, so expect to be surprised. If I had to, I’d stick this wonderfully transgressive book about half way between N K Jemisin and Jeff VanderMeer.
Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer
Release Date: Mid Nov
I don’t know why I always decide to try and write something about new VanderMeer books. The thing that makes his work so good is the way it evades clear description. But I like them so much, and so many of my customers do too that I feel like I have to at least try. So, here goes. Dead Astronauts is set in the same universe as his previous book Borne, the dead astronauts of the title having been mentioned in the book. Moving through it are a blue fox who creeps through warrens of time and space, an ancient fish-like leviathan lost in its own thoughts and the thoughts of others, a homeless and demon-haunted woman, a wandering madman lost in the desert, fearful and pursued. And above it all is The Company, all-powerful and amoral, with only these strange individuals to oppose its plans to control and combine everything. In a city that has no name they will come together, people and not-people, ideas and things, the miraculous and the disastrous, to decide the fate of everyone, everywhere, forever. Another serve of beautifully clever high weirdness. One for fans of experimental and surreal fiction who don’t mind when authors break all the rules. Can be read as a return to the world of Borne, but works equally well on its own.
Interference by Sue Burke
Release Date: Early Nov
Sue Burke‘s book Semiosis was one of my favourite science fiction books of 2018. It was also popular with our book club, and even though it does have an ending, many people wanted to see more of the multi species society formed at the book. I’m pleased to say that Interference does just that, returning to the world of Pax some time after the events of Semiosis. For a long time, the descendants of the original colonists were the only humans on Pax, but that is about to change with the arrival of another ship. These people, seeing through their own bias discount the glassmakers as pets and animals and cannot believe that the nominal leader of this society is Stevland, an intelligent plant. The challenges posed by this could pit human against human as the Paxians struggle to preserve their peace and culture, while unknown to all of them another ship, alien to both cultures, has landed. And whose occupants have their own terrible agenda. Clever and interesting science fiction that draws as much on organic sciences as physics. Definitely read Semiosis first. Also, there is no local or international paperback of this book and I’ve yet to see a date set for it, so all I can get at the time being is the hardcover edition. Not ideal, but I think her stuff is so good that I couldn’t not have it, whatever the format.
The Andromeda Revolution by Michael Crichton & Daniel H Wilson
Release Date: Mid Nov
Michael Crighton‘s 1969 book The Andromeda Strain, was not just his debut novel under that name, but possibly the start of what some would come to call technothrillers. While he would go on to write in a variety of genres, it was the ones that mixed in science that he is best known for. The Andromeda Strain is, according to the author Daniel H Wilson, both a sequel to The Andromeda Strain and an homage to Michael Crichton. Set fifty years after the events of the first book, where the alien pathogen codenamed Andromeda was believed destroyed, it follows a group of scientists who have been monitoring for signs or traces of Andromeda for decades and finding none. Then, through an entirely unexpected way, traces of Andromeda are once again found and the Wildfire team are for the second time all that stands between us and extinction. But Andromeda has changed, and what worked before will not work now. A second team and a second desperate race to understand, contain and stop Andromeda. A classic thriller in the modern era this is definitely one for technothriller and Crighton fans.
Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung by Nina MacLaughlin Release Date: Mid Nov There have been a few books over the last few years that take a story from classical literature and try to retell it from the perspective of the woman, who are so often relegated to the role of secondary characters. This month Ovid‘s Metamorphoses, the Roman epic of myth and mythologised history gets its turn. In here are many familiar stories of heroes and monsters, love and revenge, but told by voices who’ve not had the chance to speak before. Women who are pursued by gods and unwelcome suitors, or cursed and transformed for their defiance of roles set for them. Through them, another picture of the classical world appears as the underlying attitudes and expectations are revealed, challenged and the influence they would have for hundreds of years is explored. This is one for fans of Pat Barker‘s Silence of the Girls, Madeline Miller‘s Circe and Margaret Atwood‘s Penelopiad, or anyone interested in feminist exploration of one of the most well know classical epics.
Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie
Release Date: Mid Nov
This is the third book by the British-Nigerian author, though I’m ashamed to say the first to appear on my radar. Once it did however, it only took a few minutes to discover that she does the kind of unusual and innovative style of speculative fiction that I like so much. This is fairly slim short story collection that features fifteen pieces that vary from traditional short story length to flash fiction. All offer a slightly skewed vision of the world. A woman searching the seas for love arrives at an island of eunuchs, a group of dimensional-hopping monks end up in a ruined abbey and in considerable danger and a journalist finds herself in a situation where ‘you are what you eat’ has become disturbingly literal. These stories are all wonderfully weird and vary from quirky through to shocking. This one is for fans of Borges and Etgar Keret. Also, for trivia buffs a Nudibranch is a rather exotic looking kind of sea-slug. It’s also the title of one of the stories in the collection, but to find out what the connection is you’ll have to read it for yourself.
The Wailing Woman by Maria Lewis
Release Date: Early Nov
In addition to being an absolute delight to hang out with at conventions, Maria Lewis also writes enormously fun urban fantasy. So far she’s given us werewolves, witches, a merman (merlad?) and more. And if you’re any kind of folk-lore fan you can probably guess what this one is about. The protagonist, a young girl named Sadie is a banshee. Because of the inherent power and danger of her voice, it was taken from her as a child. Now as a young woman, she moves though the world mute and communicating by sign language. When someone from her childhood reappears in her life, it’s the catalyst for series of events that have her running for her life and contending with demons, ghosts, selkies and more. This is a fun and dynamic urban fantasy that ticks all the supernatural adventure boxes but also takes time to invest in the characters as people, particularly through Sadie’s experiences in society as someone who is non-verbal. This book works fine as a standalone book, but does share a world with her other books. So if you like them, you’ll like this and vice versa, because they’re all terrific urban fantasy stories with kick-ass heroines. Probably because they’re written by one.