September Top Picks

Goldenhand by Garth Nix
Release Date:  Late Sept
Garth Nix‘s Old Kingdom trilogy (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen) is probably one of the most popular Australian YA fantasy series ever. I’ve been hand selling them for fifteen years or longer and they still thrill readers as much as when they first came out. A few years ago Garth released Clariel which was the back story for one of the series antagonists Chlorr of the Mask. That was well received, but what readers really wanted was to continue with characters of the original series. This is exactly what Goldenhand does. At the end of Abhorsen, many readers felt that the story between Lirael and Nicholas Sayre felt unfinished. It appears that Garth agrees. The book picks up sometime after Abhorsen, with Lirael now officially the Abhorsen-in-waiting.  An unexpected attack on Nicholas by a Free Magic creature results in her having to take him back to her childhood home in the Clayr’s Glacier. Along the way they find out that their world faces another great threat. One that must be fought not only in the world of the living, but also in the realm of the dead. This book sounds like everything people loved about the Old Kingdom and I imagine that, just like me, loads of people will be keen to return.

Always Coming Home by Ursula K LeGuin
Release Date:  Mid Sept
While Ursula K LeGuin has always been part of any good science fiction library, and most of her works have always been available in some form or other, the last few years have seen a resurgence in her popularity with several of her books being given major re-issues. I’ve featured most of these as they’ve come out and even put up a few for our book club. While I’m always going to think a new LeGuin release is worth talking about, this one is special even if you’re not quite the devotee of her work that I am. LeGuin‘s interest in anthropology and social systems crops up in a lot of her work, but nowhere as much as Always Coming Home. The book is part story, and part cultural history. About a third is narrative, while the rest is the annotated writing and observations on a long lost culture. It’s a post post-apocalyptic story, with the many times removed descendants of the survivors of the world changing event acting as the narrators in this exploration of the culture that grew in the aftermath.  

Obelisk by Stephen Baxter
Release Date:  Early Sept
There’s been a bit of a flurry of short fiction collections recently, and since this one is from the same publishers as a couple I mentioned last month, Alastair Reynolds‘ Beyond the Aquila Rift and Hannu Rajaniemi‘s Invisible Planets, it should not really be a surprise. The collection is divided into four parts. The first few stories are set in the same universe as the Proxima and Ultima books. The rest are alternate history stories of the past, present and future, presented in sections titled Other Yesterdays, Other Todays and Other Tomorrows. Personally, I think the short story format is perfect for this kind of thing. Short ‘what if’ thought experiments about our world and what it could become.  I’m a fan of Baxter‘s books, so I’m looking forward to this one.

Luna by Ian McDonald
Release Date:  Mid Sept
Ian McDonald is one of those authors who I think deserves more attention than he get. He’s not terribly prolific, but I’ve really liked everything of his that I’ve read. His new book is part of the genre that I think of as ‘small universe science fiction’ in that it is confined to the solar system and to technologies not vastly different from our own. In this case it’s primarily about the struggles between corporate dynasties on the moon. It’s like The Godfather or Renaissance Italian politics, but played out where every resource is strictly controlled by someone. This is an action thriller in an exotic location as much as science fiction, and while it does use a variety of science fiction elements in the story, I think a pure thriller reader would still enjoy it. New Moon is the first of the Luna books, and it does end on a bit of a cliff hanger. The second of the Luna books Wolf Moon is due out in February 2017.

Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah
Release Date:  Early Sept
I’ve always been a fan of classic sleuth fiction, and Agatha Christie was one of the undisputed giants of the genre. Her books have been endlessly reprinted and adapted to just about every possible medium. In 2014 the Christie estate took a bold step by allowing author Sophie Hannah to write a new book featuring Christie‘s most famous character, Hercule Poirot. The response was generally positive, and while most agreed that it was not quite the same as Christie would perhaps have written, it was close and certainly hit the same sweet spot that her work had created. This has been enough to justify a second book The Closed Casket. Like the first one, it is based on the books, rather than other media (so no Captain Hastings in other words) and follows the traditional Christie structure. Poirot finds himself inexplicably invited to a house party at the mansion of Lady Athelinda Playford in County Cork. Once there he witnesses Lady Athelinda publicly disinherit her children and announce that she has changed the beneficiary of her will to a terminally ill friend. The fact that she has invited Poirot, and also Inspector Catchpool of Scotland yard suggests that she suspects, or even intends for a crime to be committed. Why would someone want to provoke a murder?  Poirot is forced to fully engage his ‘little grey cells’ when despite his best efforts a murder is committed, but the victim is not one that anyone anticipated.  

Death’s End by Cixin Liu
Release Date:  Late Sept
If you’ve had anything to do with the store, or science fiction in general, then you’ll be familiar with the splash that Cixin Liu‘s book The Three-Body Problem made when it hit shelves in 2014. Massive sales, a Hugo Award and a sequel, The Dark Forest, later, we are now a few weeks away from what is probably the most eagerly anticipated series finale in years. I’d love to be able to give you some idea of what to expect, but I’ve not managed to secure a preview copy. Normally after two books, readers would have a fair idea of what to expect with a third but given how wholly different The Dark Forest was from The Three-Body Problem, Death’s End could be almost anything. What I do know is that it’s set about fifty years after the events of The Dark Forest, in a world where there is a tentative peace between the Humanity and the Trisolarans. Earth enjoys an unprecedented era of prosperity, thanks to shared Trisolaran technologies. But peace has been bought with the threat of the ultimate destruction of both Trisolaris and Earth. Humanity now knows that the natural state of almost all intelligent life in the universe is to destroy anything that could be perceived as a rival. The threat of broadcasting the location of Earth and Trisolaris, and the inevitable destruction of both worlds that would follow is a shaky basis for peace, but even under such circumstances it is possible to get complacent. A woman from the 21^st century is about to wake from hibernation. She brings with her the knowledge of a long forgotten program from the early days of the conflict hundreds of years ago. The future of the human race is balanced on a knife edge and the actions of one person could destroy it forever or hand it the stars.