Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
Release Date: Late Jul
This is the 6th book in the Murder Bot Diaries series and the second to be novel-length. SecUnit, while living on Preservation Station, stumbles across a dead body and of course, given his former occupation and proclivity to violence when required, is suspected of the murder. His supporters get him added to the case as a special investigator, partially because of his unique skill-set and abilities, but also because they want others to recognise that SecUnit can be a useful part of Preservation. Over the course of the investigation we learn a lot more about Preservation Station and the machines, robots and artificial intelligences that live on it and in SecUnit’s world. This is a wonderful crime story with SecUnit’s hilarious and satirical voice commenting on life and humanity, feelings and relationships while at the same time dealing with an adversary who is extremely clever and perhaps even better at covering their tracks than SecUnit is at finding them. This one will keep you guessing right until the end and it is such a wonderful ending too.

The Best of Greg Egan by Greg Egan
Release Date: Late Jul
Without a doubt, Greg Egan is one of the best science fiction writers that Australia has ever produced and is responsible for some truly remarkable novels and short fiction. This new collection brings together 20 short stories and novellas into a fairly comprehensive and certainly fascinating chronological history of Greg Egan’s work. Included are some of his most famous and iconic stories like Learning to be Me, Reasons to be Cheerful, Luminous and Instantiation. Egan is powerfully insightful when it comes to self-consciousness and the human experience while at the same time having a deep understanding of just how deep the rabbit hole goes with modern science and its implications. I would highly recommend this collection to any science fiction fan. If you haven’t read Greg Egan then you have definitely need to, and if you are familiar with his work there’s still a good chance that there will be something in her you might have missed so it’s worth a look.

Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North
Release Date: Late Jul
Claire North is one of my favourite speculative fiction writers, most particularly because each one of her novels is a standalone and does something completely different, with new ideas explored in a unique ways. In this book, she undertakes her own view of a dystopian future where, post collapse, a holy man vaguely reminiscent of the monks from Walter M Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, is responsible for translating lost texts. However, he is also enjoined to make sure that some information remains hidden to prevent the environmental and technological disasters from the past from repeating. When he is compelled or requested to translate some things that break these rules and could perhaps return something dangerous to the world, he faces a terrible ethical dilemma. I have loved all of Claire North’s previous work and so even though I haven’t had the chance to read a preview of this one, I am very confident that it will be an insightful and fascinating take on the dystopian idea.

Arrowood and Meeting House Murders by Mick Finlay
Release Date: Early Jul
This is the fourth in a series of historical crime novels set in the same London as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, only this time we are meeting one of Homes’ rivals – William Arrowood. Arrowood works for the poor, whereas Holmes works for the rich, and in this book he has been asked to secure the safety of some African travellers who feel they are going to be dragooned into performing in a showman’s exhibition. When he arrives to help them however, he finds a scene of murder and destruction and has to adventure into the seedy world of Victorian carnival performers to rescue his clients. These are wonderful historical crime, particularly if you think that Holmes is just a little bit too snooty for your tastes, and have a desire to wander the seedy back streets of Victorian London.

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki
Release Date: Early Jul
July seems to be a very good month for international science fiction, and to that pile we are adding this one. This is a short story collection by Japanese author Izumi Suzuki, and features a variety of speculative fiction tales from things that are reminiscent of Margaret Atwood or Haruki Murakami and of modern things like Black Mirror or classics like Philip K Dick. This is a mix of the bizarre and the surreal from future wars to holidays on alien planets to dystopian utopias and more. This is a fascinating collection of short fiction. It’s only slim, but very, very clever and definitely worth adding to any short story collection fan’s shelves.

The God Is Not Willing by Steven Erikson
Release Date: Early Jul
Steven Erikson’s Malazan books represent some of the most complex and detailed world-building in fantasy. There’s also about a dozen of them and their each the size of house-bricks, and a pithy paragraph to bring folks up to speed is pretty much impossible so those unfamiliar with the series will be a bit left out by the next bit, Sorry about that. So, The God is Not Willing is not the next Kharkanas book but is the start of a new trilogy. It’s set about ten years after the events of The Crippled God and in northern Genabackis. The story moves between the Kasa worshipping Treblor tribes and a group of Malazan marines sent to reinforce the region amidst fears of a Treblor uprising. It’s mostly new story thread with a few throwbacks to earlier books (Spindle and his hairshirt!), but even so a firm grounding in the world of the Malazan books is recommend. Epic fantasy in every sense.

A Song of Flight by Juliet Marillier
Release Date: Late Jul
If you’ve not read any of these, it’s the third in the Warrior Bards series, which we’ll have the privilege of launching with Juliet on the 31st. They’re set in the Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada, which covered parts of Western Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland in the early part of the first millennium. This one begins with the kidnapping of a prince of that kingdom and the wounding of his companion. The protagonists of the book, a warrior and a warrior /bard set out to find the lost prince, while others try to figure out who the kidnappers are and why they would do such a thing. Both paths lead to danger. For fans: the companion is Galen, so Liobhan is one of those sent by Swan island, and it looks like the Crow Folk are responsible. These are fantastic Celtic fantasy stories that have a wonderful lyrical quality that is such an important part of Gaelic culture. As I’ve said before, I think Juliet is one of the best writers of this style of fantasy and we’re very lucky to have her in WA. You should read the first two books before this one, but luckily, and in preparation for the event we also have plenty of copies them too.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
Release Date: Early Jul
I’ve enjoyed Rivers Solomon‘s previous books so much that this one was an instant yes at ordering time. I set their novella The Deep as our book club book back in March, so there have been quite a few of us eagerly waiting to see what Rivers was going to do next. What we have looks to be a mix of social and cultural critique, with Gothic, science fiction and fantasy elements. Vern is an albino, intersex and pregnant when they run from Cainland and the cult that run it. Living in isolation in the woods, Vern gives birth to two children named Feral and Howling. The children grow up in tune with nature, free of imposed structure. But it appears that something else has happened as well and that the children are different. Vern is also changing and these changes force a return to the world they fled with surprising consequences. That’s the simple version. The complex version is that the situations, beliefs and actions in the book are all reflections of the world we live in. Racism, marginalisation, fanaticism, culturally ignored abuse, they’re all real, just like those who seek to escape them. Like The Deep, expect this to be a read that challenges you, doesn’t soften blows, and comes with all the trigger warnings. That said, I am still recommending this book because I think some of the best speculative fiction is the stuff than looks at uncomfortable truths, however confronting that may be. Definitely one for fans of Octavia Butler, Anne Charnock and Claire G Coleman.

The House of Always by Jenn Lyons
Release Date: Late Jul
This is the fourth book in a series that I think has one of the most interesting fantasy worlds that I have read in years. It is not the final book however – that is due next year. The story up to now has introduced us to Kihrin, a boy who have variously been an orphan, a criminal, a noble, then a slave. Freed to be the pawn of the powerful and spending time in a parallel dimension that is kind of like hell. Then discovering to his despair that he is not entirely the person he thought he was but is in fact a fragment of the consciousness of Vol Karoth – the imprisoned King of Demons.  We also discovered in the last novel that the eight immortals that serve as gods for this world are not who they appear to be either and indeed the villain who had bene plotting to destroy the world, Relos Var, may in fact have a completely different agenda. This is a brilliant and very complex fantasy that spans multiple realities, multiple incarnations and multiple ways of looking at the world. I adore this series, and even though I am not entirely sure if the villain is even the villain, I am desperate to find out. Very much looking forward to this one and the final book next year.