A Memory of Light

Okay, so this was a very difficult review to write. . . I took my time before writing it, not wanting the extreme disappointment I felt when I reached the last page of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's A Memory of Light to have too much of a negative influence on this review. But even after waiting for the dust to settle, looking back I can't quite come up with anything positive to say about the final installment of The Wheel of Time. Other than it's finally over, that is. Sadly, and this was my biggest fear as I was reading along, the book is all filler and no killer. In my opinion, A Memory of Light is by far the weakest WoT volume of the entire series, weaker even than Crossroads of Twilight. At least CoT had some good stuff at the end. . .

I began reading The Wheel of Time in 1991, right after The Dragon Reborn was released in hardcover. I've been a big fan ever since. And regardless of its shortcomings, I've always maintained that Jordan's magnum opus remained one of the very best fantasy series out there. The first six volumes raised the bar to such a high level that Jordan's subsequent efforts could never match, true. Still, overall, a new WoT installment was always a literary highlight of any given year for me, as we were always one step closer to reaching the Last Battle. Having finished A Memory of Light and seeing how poorly it was all brought to a close, I'm not sure where I'd rank The Wheel of Time among other popular SFF series that left their mark on the genre anymore. Nowhere near the top, that's for sure. . .

Given how Jordan vehemently defended the fact that A Memory of Light would be written as a single book even if it had to be 2000 pages long and then later, after Tom Doherty discussed the last WoT volume, admitted that it might have to be split into two installments but no more, from the start I suspected that Team Jordan's decision to split it into three volumes was just all the parties involved selling out and trying to cash in on the ending of this beloved series as much as humanly possible. I've been quite vocal about this since it was first announced, and Sanderson himself got in touch with me, telling me to be patient, to read and find out that three volumes were indeed required to bring the series to a close the way Robert Jordan had always envisioned it. As expected, it turns out it was bullshit. . .

There are so many problems with A Memory of Light that I don't even know where to start. But in a way, I'm glad it's over. No, most long-time fans didn't get the ending they were hoping for now that Jordan has passed away. But it is an ending. I for one hope that the outrigger series will never see the light. After 14 volumes, I think it's time to lay this series to rest. . .

Here's the blurb:

‘And it came to pass in those days, as it had come before and would come again, that the Dark lay heavy on the land and weighed down the hearts of men, and the green things failed, and hope died.’ From Charal Drianaan te Calamon, The Cycle of the Dragon.

In the Field of Merrilor the rulers of the nations gather to join behind Rand al’Thor, or to stop him from his plan to break the seals on the Dark One’s prison – which may be a sign of his madness, or the last hope of humankind. Egwene, the Amyrlin Seat, leans toward the former.

In Andor, the Trollocs seize Caemlyn.

In the wolf dream, Perrin Aybara battles Slayer.

Approaching Ebou Dar, Mat Cauthon plans to visit his wife Tuon, now Fortuona, Empress of the Seanchan.

All humanity is in peril – and the outcome will be decided in Shayol Ghul itself. The Wheel is turning, and the Age is coming to its end. The Last Battle will determine the fate of the world.

For twenty years The Wheel of Time has enthralled more than forty million readers in over thirty-two languages. A MEMORY OF LIGHT brings this majestic fantasy creation to its richly satisfying conclusion.

Working from notes and partials left by Robert Jordan when he died in 2007, and consulting with Jordan’s widow, who edited all of Jordan’s books, established fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson has recreated the vision Jordan left behind.

In both The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight, the problem was that in order to get to the good stuff, one was required to sift through a lot of extraneous plotlines or scenes that didn't always have that much of an impact or influence on the principal story arcs of the series. We now know that all three books were filled with padding material and that splitting A Memory of Light into two halves would have been possible and would have made for a much better reading experience. As it is, all three installments were plagued by a sluggish pace for sizable chunks of the narrative, during which the plot was going nowhere.

The better part of A Memory of Light is essentially an unending panoply of battle scenes that do nothing to move the various storylines forward. I doubt that Robert Jordan meant for the grand finale of The Wheel of Time to be an interminable ensemble of boring battles seen through the eyes of basically every single character that has ever appeared in the series. I mean, did we truly need POVs from secondary protagonists such as Uno, Tam al'Thor, Juilin Sandar, Leane, etc. For Christ's sake, I expected Bela to have her own POV!

The main problem with A Memory of Light is that after such a long build-up, the most important key scenes left to wrap up the series are either rushed in such a way as to rob them of the impact they so rightfully deserve, or they are done so clumsily that it kills any emotional impact that should have been associated with them. For example, Sanderson felt the need to show readers virtually every single skirmish taking place in Andor and the Borderlands, filling up hundreds of pages with fights against Trollocs and other agents of the Shadow. And yet, the culmination of the prophecy "He will bind the nine moons to serve him," which is crucial if the forces of Light are to have a chance to win the Last Battle, was so damn lame that it's almost a joke.

There are plenty of long-awaited scenes that were dealt with very poorly. The worst has to be the resolution of the Padan Fain storyline. I've always believed that Jordan meant for Fain to be some sort of Gollum character and that he would play a key role at the end. Well, after writing hundreds of pages of meaningless and interchangeable battles, Sanderson deals with that plotline almost as an afterthought. Other aspects such as Logain's prophesied glory are also dealt with in a similar fashion.

The same can be said of the body count and its impact on the reader. A number of characters do bite the dust, which was surprising. But it's Jordan, so a number of them at first thought to be dead do survive in the end. Fans have grown attached emotionally to several WoT protagonists over the years. Everyone knows that. I know that and you know that. Team Jordan supposedly knew that, and so did Sanderson. Oddly enough, though page after page are "wasted" chronicling the deaths of nameless soldiers falling to the Trollocs and the Fades, the death of main characters are rushed through so fast it robs them of any emotional impact whatsoever.

The characterization is the weakest facet of this novel. There is no point discussing Mat ad nauseam. Brandon Sanderson pretty much killed him in TGS. I've always claimed that the author can't quite manage shades of grey, that most of his characters are always black or white. That's pretty much been the case since he started working on the WoT, which means that he's more comfortable with certain characters and could never really do anything with others. That is probably why he focused on Androl and Pevara to bring the Black Tower storyline to its culmination. His depiction of villains such as Mazrim Taim and Demandred was so bad it made me long for well-drawn protagonists such as Jar-Jar Binks. Awful. . . Just awful. . .

Speaking of the infamous Forsaken, his coming out of left field with a powerful army could have been foreshadowed much better than this. Jordan provided a few hints in the past, but almost nothing from TGS and ToM could prepare us for what came out of that gateway. Again, that was poor execution regarding an important plot point. I was forced to peruse my copy of The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time to find out more about his army and their channelers. I mean, we were forced to sift through interminable sequences featuring Lan and other fighters battling the forces of the Shadow, yet Sanderson didn't see fit to give us a few paragraphs elaborating on the newcomers to refresh our memories. In addition, Demandred enters the Last Battle bearing one of the only two sa'angreal more powerful than Callandor that a male channeler can use. For some unfathomable reason, Sanderson and Team Jordan felt that some background information on the Sakarnen, what it does and where it was found, was unnecessary.

A Memory of Light is written in Brandon Sanderson's own narrative voice. In TGS, Sanderson explained that he tried to adapt his own writing style to The Wheel of Time. But in this last volume, it's Sanderson through and through. Which doesn't really work all that well, to tell the truth. A Memory of Light reads more like The Way of Kings than any other WoT installment.

For years we've known that Robert Jordan wrote the final scene when he started working on The Eye of the World. I've read the last few chapters a number of times and I still can't put my finger on which one, scene or full chapter, could have been written by Jordan. He often mentioned that there was a "hook" in that final scene, but for the life of me I can't really see what it was. Once more, the endgame was rushed rather thoroughly. After nearly 900 pages of sluggishness, all of a sudden everything goes downhill and it all ends in a matter of about 20 pages or so. The epilogue does little to tie up a few loose ends, bringing the series to a decidedly lackluster ending.

I've been a WoT fan for more than two decades. I so wanted to love this book. You have no idea how much. But the structure of the novel, what with about 750 pages worth of bloody battle after bloody battle, precluded any kind of depth and failed to cap off The Wheel of Time with an exclamation point. As I mentioned before, it was all filler and no killer.

Bloated and uninspired, A Memory of Light is the biggest literary disappointment of my life. I would have preferred Jordan's notes and the outline to what we ended up getting. . .

May Robert Jordan rest in peace.

The final verdict: 5/10

For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe

The Gathering Storm

First of all, I would like to thank Brandon Sanderson, Team Jordan, and the folks at Tor Books for giving me the opportunity to get an early read of the most eagerly anticipated fantasy title of the year. After speaking out against A Memory of Light being split into three volumes, I didn't expect that. And as a big WoT fan, well I relished the chance to read it before most people out there, even though I couldn't post my review until the release date.

The first thing I wish to address is Brandon Sanderson's writing. Like many others, when it was announced that Sanderson had been selected by Harriet McDougal and Tom Doherty to complete The Wheel of Time, I doubted that he was a great fit for the role. Based on his novels, I felt that his and Jordan's styles were worlds apart. Sanderson said himself that he cannot replace Robert Jordan. Yet he intends to remain true to the author's vision. And reading The Gathering Storm, one can't help but see that it's nothing short of Brandon Sanderson's best effort. Which begs the question: Will that be enough? I'm afraid that you'll have to find out for yourself. There are legions of WoT crackpot fans out there who would love the book even if it had been written by the legless wonder Robert Stanek. Others, may not enjoy it as much. In any event, expectations are so high that there is no way Sanderson can possibly satisfy everyone.

Sanderson explains that he didn't try to imitate Jordan's style. Instead, he attempted to adapt his writing style to be appropriate to The Wheel of Time. In some instances, this works beautifully. In others, sadly, it doesn't quite work, and one gets the distinct impression that the character is being played by a new actor. The narrative voice is irrevocably changed, and there's no helping that. Whether we like it or not, no one could write these books the way Robert Jordan would have. Fortunately, he left extensive notes, scenes, and outlines. Hence, even though Jordan is not writing it, Sanderson's words recount the exact same tale Robert Jordan wanted to tell.

And although Sanderson's style doesn't always work well with certain scenes and characters, you can see that the author is doing everything he can to remain true to Jordan's vision. Though I doubted his ability to complete this gargantuan task, I now have faith in Brandon Sanderson. I bemoan the fact that some scenes will never be as good as Jordan would have written them, but at least we know that Sanderson's artistic integrity won't permit him to produce something akin to the latest Dune novels. Whereas Frank Herbert is undoubtedly turning in his grave when he sees the travesty that Dune has become, I have a feeling that Jordan would give Sanderson the thumbs-up.

Overall, The Gathering Storm reminded me of Winter's Heart the most. There are some cool and very important scenes similar to the cleansing of saidin. Yet in order to get to the good stuff, one is required to sift through a lot of extraneous plotlines that don't always have that much of an impact or influence on the principal story arcs of the series. Which, as was the case with The Path of Daggers, Winter's Heart, and Crossroads of Twilight, was what many readers found offputting.

Geographically speaking, the novel is all over the place. The action occurs in Bandar Eban, Ebou Dar, Tear, the Blight, and several other locations.

The pace of the book is decidedly uneven. Sluggish in certain portions of the novel, yet extremely rushed in other sequences. I was a bit dismayed by the fact that the narrative focus can remain on what I consider secondary plotlines for pages and even chapters, and then rush through scenes that we've been waiting for for well over a decade. More than one showdown with the Forsaken suffers from that sad state of affairs. And such face-offs, though long-awaited, leave you feeling as much satisfaction as Rand's battle with Sammael in Shadar Logoth in A Crown of Swords. Another consequential storyline which suffers from the same treatment would have to be the fate of the male a'dam. Known as a Domination Band, its importance has been hinted at since it was first glimpsed in Tanchico. The build-up surrounding this particular plotline has spanned several WoT volumes. And yet, as was the case with the Bowl of the Winds' resolution, the culmination is reached and over with before you know it.

There is a momentum shift in the final third of the book, when Sanderson finally kicks it into high gear. But the first two-thirds of The Gathering Storm suffer from broken rhythm. I felt that there were a number of missed opportunities and a few scenes were impaired by faulty execution.

The characterization is probably the aspect which leaves the most to be desired. I've always believed that Brandon Sanderson would manage to get many of the characters right, but that he would have a hard time with others. Before I elaborate on this, you should know that The Gathering Storm focuses on two characters in particular: Rand and Egwene. If, like me, you are not that fond of Egwene, this may cause a problem.

I felt that Sanderson had absolutely no problem with Rand al'Thor. Though the narrative voice has changed, Rand doesn't feel much different. The same thing goes for Nynaeve (even though at times she seems a bit more immature than before), Cadsuane (who is even more annoying, if that's possible), the assorted Wise Ones, and Min. Indeed, Sanderson steps in without missing a beat. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Aviendha, Rhuarc, Semirhage, and Moridin. The shift is palpable where those characters are concerned.

At the very beginning, it felt as though Egwene was being played by a new actress, but Sanderson quickly regains control of the character. The same cannot be said about Elaida, Siuan, and most Aes Sedai. For women who have been basically ruling the world from 3000 years, collectively they appear to have become rather dense in this novel. Just as it often appears that the three ta'veren don't even have one set of balls between them, it's does seem that brains are hard to come by in the White Tower and the rebels' camp these days. On the other hand, Sanderson did a great job with Tuon and the Seanchan. I doubt Jordan could have done it any better. Another character he seems to have gotten perfectly is Perrin. And another one whose POV worked rather well was Gawyn, whose storyline has been drifting since the battle of Dumai's Wells.

To my ever-lasting chagrin, however, Sanderson pretty much killed Mat, by far my favorite character in the series. He simply tries too hard to be funny, and it doesn't work at all. It doesn't help that Mat's appearances serve absolutely no purpose, for the most part. He appears only in a few chapters, and these bring close to nothing to the tale, other than demonstrating yet again that the Dark One's touch is unraveling the Pattern. We don't see much of Perrin, either, which is weird given that both are ta'veren. No sign of Lan and Elayne at all, which is odd given their respective importance. But I guess that splitting A Memory of Light into three installments will do that. . .

All in all, Sanderson's characterization is brilliant in some instances and somewhat clumsy in others. In a way, this could be construed as nitpicking. The author is following Jordan's blueprint, so the overall plot is as Jordan intended. It just feels weird when long-time characters talk or act so differently. Some fans will find that offputting, while others will just move forward without regard for these things, the way they did through the uneventful Crossroads of Twilight.

Although The Gathering Storm doesn't move the plot forward as much as I expected, there is plenty of things that should satisfy WoT fans. Rand's confrontations with the Forsaken, his attempt to sue for peace with the Seanchan, the hunt for the Black Ajah, the Aes Sedai schism, revelations concerning Verin's secret plans, and more! And yet, as I mentioned earlier, in order to get to the juicy stuff, one is forced to wade through a lot of extraneous plotlines which break the rhythm of the novel.

Sanderson needs to create a better momentum, for too often the culmination and resolution of storylines fail to live up to the build-up. Essentially, this robs those important scenes of the impact they so deserve. He must also be careful with the more emotional scenes. There is one incredibly important scene in which Rand is reunited with someone he hasn't seen in a long time. But that scene turns out to be a monumental failure to launch, with absolutely no emotional impact. And at times, I felt that Sanderson has a tendency to take the easy route, especially with Egwene and Cadsuane's plotlines. Too often does everything falls right into place too easily, which seems contrived and stretches the limits of realism and credibility.

My biggest complaint would have to be that when one reaches the end of The Gathering Storm, you simply don't get the feeling that you are any closer to Tarmon Gai'don than we were at the end of Knife of Dreams. Splitting A Memory of Light into three installment would affect the plot, that goes without saying, but I was expecting more in terms of moving the story forward toward the Last Battle. The pace picks up late in the book, true, but I felt that the first 500 pages or so contained more filler than killer material. Eleven previous WoT volumes were enough of a build-up, methinks, and I thought that The Gathering Storm would at least allow us to witness the beginning of Tarmon Gai'don. Splitting A Memory of Light into two volumes would likely have allowed Team Jordan to do that. . .

Though it suffers from a few shortcomings, I enjoyed The Gathering Storm. It was more or less what I expected, to be honest. And Sanderson surprised me a number of times. He surpassed himself and exceeded expectations in certain aspects of the novel, yet his writing style proved to be inadequate in other areas. But overall, the positive outweighs the negative. And in the end, The Gathering Storm should satisfy the majority of WoT fans out there. It may not be The Shadow Rising or Lord of Chaos, but it marks the beginning of the end of the biggest fantasy epic of our time. So let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time!

Roll on Towers of Midnight!

The final verdict: 7.75/10

For more info about this title: Canada, USA, Europe

A MEMORY OF LIGHT: Final update

A final update as I finished Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's A Memory of Light (Canada, USA, Europe) yesterday. This was the Facebook update I posted a few minutes after reaching the end:

Just finished A MEMORY OF LIGHT. . . Fuck. . . Nowhere near as bad as the Dune travesty, thankfully. But close. . . Sanderson, though it wasn't perfect, did a relatively good job with THE GATHERING STORM and THE TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT. How he could mess it up so badly at the end, I'll never know. . . =( Waited 22 years for this. . . Biggest literary disappointment of my life. . . Would have preferred the notes and the outline to what we ended up getting. . . =( Bad. . .

A Memory of Light is by far the weakest installment in the series, weaker even than Crossroads of Twilight. Man, I so wanted to love this book. How can WoT end on such a crappy note???

Expect my review in the near future. . . =(

Slate, New York Times to fantasy buffs: Grow up

Less than an hour to go before the premiere of Game of Thrones on HBO, and I just stumbled upon this.

This from salon.com:

Reviews of HBO's adaptation of "Game of Thrones" paint fantasy fiction as silly trash aimed at boys only.

I try to stay away from reviewing other people's reviews; "There but for the grace of God" and all that. But two recent pieces on HBO's "Game of Thrones" -- by Troy Patterson of Slate and Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times -- demand a response because they're deeply condescending.

Patterson's Slate review, titled "Quasi-Medieval, Dragon-Ridden Fantasy Crap: Art Thou Prepared to Watch 'Game of Thrones'?" is less a review than a creative writing exercise, penned in the style of....well, it's hard to say what, exactly. It's not a parody of George R.R. Martin's prose, which tends to avoid the turgid, translated-from-the-ancient-Hobbitesese diction that marks inferior sword-and-sorcery novels. It seems more like a goof on what Patterson imagines fantasy fiction to be.

There are unscalable slabs of expositionistic dialogue clogging the forward movement of the story. Sonorous and/or schmaltzy talk substitutes for the revelation of character through action. There is the sense of intricacy having been confused with intrigue and of a story transferred all too faithfully from its source and thus not transformed to meet the demands of the screen. For long stretches of each episode, the reviewer hangs on to consciousness only by trancing out on the strings of digits of the anti-counterfeiting watermark at the top of the screen, hanging on to the serifs by the nails.

The sex and violence also add interest, the former being unhealthily kinky, the latter abusively deft, both conducted with adolescent passion. No matter how dull the body of each installment of 'Game of Thrones,' it pulls itself together for a meticulously choreographed finish that builds its own discrete tension. The episode endings create anticipation like small marvels of cliff-hanging that erase the torpor of foregoing knightly knonsense from memory and get you hankering for the next look at the opening title sequence (which is a little masterpiece of welcoming design). Many of these cliffhangers depend on the infliction of imaginative horrors on women, precocious children, and four-legged animals, often with quite a light touch.

[...]

At least Patterson cops to never liking fantasy fiction, and even admits (hilariously) to canceling a date in college once he found out that the young woman in question attended Renaissance festivals dressed as a "serving wench." (That detail would have increased my interest, but to each his own.) Better to concede your prejudices upfront than re-frame them as proof of intellectual superiority and smear a genre and its fans as stupid, childish and low-class -- which is what Ginia Bellafante does in her New York Times review of "Thrones." Like Patterson, Bellafante somehow gets through a whole review without mentioning a single character or scene in detail. The piece is mainly interested in blasting TV for sexing-up the costume drama while de-carnalizing scripted shows set in modern times.

That's an intriguing premise. Unfortunately, Bellafante's gripes don't compute. "It says something about current American attitudes toward sex that with the exception of the lurid and awful 'Californication,' nearly all eroticism on television is past tense," Bellafante says, ignoring the likes of "Hung," "Rescue Me," "Skins," "Episodes," "Weeds," "Nurse Jackie," "Archer," "Sons of Anarchy," "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," and "True Blood," which the author herself cites as an example of HBO degrading its brand.

[...]

Then there's this doozy of a passage:

"...[Y]ou get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to 'The Hobbit' first. 'Game of Thrones' is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half."

Say what? The implication that women are predisposed to enjoy explicit sex scenes and female nudity may or may not be true, but it flies in the face of conventional industry wisdom about what women want from film and television. Filmmakers and TV producers are more likely to try to appeal to women by avoiding or deleting graphic sex and nudity while leaving in the kissing, cuddling, and heart-to-heart talks -- a patronizing strategy descended from the Old Hollywood "women's picture" and the early days of TV soaps. Is that what Bellafante is alluding to? If so, she's confusing the issue by conflating relationship melodrama with softcore porn.

As for the detail about Martin's work being "boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population's other half," (a) I doubt Martin would have spent so much time on the book's trysts, affairs and marriages if he didn't find them personally interesting, and (b) Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. le Guin, Carol Berg, Holly Phillips, Juliet Marillier, Lynn Flewelling, Jacqueline Carey and Sharon Shinn would be surprised to learn that they've been writing "boy fiction" all this time.

[...]

These reviews are also disappointing because they're penned by critics I like. Patterson is one of the sharpest, funniest TV reviewers out there, and Bellafante is the only one of the New York Times' primary TV critics who doesn't write as if the medium were innately unworthy of her time. Something about the subject matter brought out their inner snobs. No other popular genre would be treated with such knee-jerk distaste by critics for major publications.
----------------------------

Follow this link to read the full piece by Matt Zoller Seitz.

Well, looks like Game of Thrones is leaving no one indifferent. We'll know in about 30 minutes just how good the series is.

Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: Some of my favorite reads

My review of Mark Lawrence's King of Thorns will mark the Hotlist's 357th book review! Man, that's a lot of books!!!

I had no idea I had reviewed so many novels! Going through this blog's index, I took a trip back memory lane and realized that there were quite a few gems among all these books.

So here are, in no particular order, some of my favorite reads, both old and new, since the creation of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist!

Enjoy!
--------------------

- R. Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought (Canada, USA, Europe)

The Darkness That Comes Before, R. Scott Bakker s magnificent debut, drew thunderous acclaim from reviewers and fellow fantasy authors, such as Steven Erikson and Kevin J. Anderson. Readers were invited into a darkly threatening, thrillingly imaginative universe as fully realized as that of any in modern fantasy and introduced to one of the genre s great characters: the powerful warrior-philosopher Anas rimbor Kelhus, on whom the fate of a violently apocalyptic Holy War rests.

Bakker s follow up to The Darkness That Comes Before, The Warrior Prophet enticed readers further into the richly imagined world of myth, violence, and sorcery. With the ultimate battle drawing near, Anas rimbor Kelhus closed in on the elusive goal of reuniting with his father, mastering the ancient arts he will need to prepare himself for the encounter. Will Kelhus be able to rise to claim his role within the ascendancy, or will he be overtaken by his enemies both within and without Will he reach the ancient city of Shimeh and reunite with his father. Upon the apocalypse, will there be survivors left to write the history of the Holy War.

The startling and far-reaching answers to these questions, left hanging at the conclusion of The Warrior Prophet, are brought into thrilling focus in The Thousandfold Thought, the conclusion to the Prince of Nothing series. Casting into question all the action that has taken place before, twisting readers intuitions in unforeseen directions, remolding the fantasy genre to broaden the scope of intricacy and meaning, R. Scott Bakker has once again written a fantasy novel that defies all expectations and rewards the reader with an experience unlike any to be had in the canon of fantasy literature.

- Ian McDonald's River of Gods (Canada, USA, Europe)

August 15th, 2047. Happy Hundredth Birthday, India... In the mid twenty-first century, Mother India is all the things she is now - ancient and vibrant, poor yet staggeringly rich. Diverse, violent, beautiful and terrible, thrilling and bewildering. A nation choked with peoples and cultures, riven with almost seismic contrasts and contradictions. Nearly two billion humans crowd the subcontinent and her seething cities - the cyberabads - where timeless culture and the highest of high-technologies meet to spawn new societies, and - possibly - new sentient species. RIVER OF GODS is a book as big and brawling as its subject. Its magnificently diverse array of characters - from genetically enhanced 'Brahmins' to body-part runners, American scientists to 'Dharma-cops' (government Artificial Intelligence assassins) - are drawn in interwoven stories towards a cosmic-scale conclusion that will forever change the way we understand ourselves, life, and the universe we inhabit.

- Ekaterina Sedia's The Secret History of Moscow (Canada, USA, Europe)

Every city contains secret places. Moscow in the tumultuous 1990s is no different, its citizens seeking safety in a world below the streets - a dark, cavernous world of magic, weeping trees, and albino jackdaws, where exiled pagan deities and faerytale creatures whisper strange tales to those who would listen. Galina is a young woman caught, like her contemporaries, in the seeming lawlessness of the new Russia. In the midst of this chaos, her sister Maria turns into a jackdaw and flies away - prompting Galina to join Yakov, a policeman investigating a rash of recent disappearances. Their search will take them to the underground realm of hidden truths and archetypes, to find themselves caught between reality and myth, past and present, honor and betrayal . . . the secret history of Moscow.



- Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven (Canada, USA, Europe)

UNDER HEAVEN will be published in April 2010, and takes place in a world inspired by the glory and power of Tang Dynasty China in the 8th century, a world in which history and the fantastic meld into something both memorable and emotionally compelling. In the novel, Shen Tai is the son of a general who led the forces of imperial Kitai in the empire's last great war against its western enemies, twenty years before. Forty thousand men, on both sides, were slain by a remote mountain lake. General Shen Gao himself has died recently, having spoken to his son in later years about his sadness in the matter of this terrible battle.

To honour his father's memory, Tai spends two years in official mourning alone at the battle site by the blue waters of Kuala Nor. Each day he digs graves in hard ground to bury the bones of the dead. At night he can hear the ghosts moan and stir, terrifying voices of anger and lament. Sometimes he realizes that a given voice has ceased its crying, and he knows that is one he has laid to rest.

The dead by the lake are equally Kitan and their Taguran foes; there is no way to tell the bones apart, and he buries them all with honour.

It is during a routine supply visit led by a Taguran officer who has reluctantly come to befriend him that Tai learns that others, much more powerful, have taken note of his vigil. The White Jade Princess Cheng-wan, 17th daughter of the Emperor of Kitai, presents him with two hundred and fifty Sardian horses. They are being given in royal recognition of his courage and piety, and the honour he has done the dead. You gave a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly.

You gave him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor. Tai is in deep waters. He needs to get himself back to court and his own emperor, alive. Riding the first of the Sardian horses, and bringing news of the rest, he starts east towards the glittering, dangerous capital of Kitai, and the Ta-Ming Palace - and gathers his wits for a return from solitude by a mountain lake to his own forever-altered life.

- Robin Hobb's Fool's Fate (Canada, USA, Europe)

The triumphant conclusion to our three thrilling fantasy series, from the author of the bestselling Farseer and Liveship traders trilogies. The only hopes for an end to war and insurrection in the Six Duchies rests in the hands of the small party that are embarked on a desperate quest to the frozen island of Aslevjal. Here, so legend says, lies the sleeping form of the legendary great black dragon, Icefyre. The beast is of holy significance to the people of the OutIslands, a powerful talisman, but it is this dragon that their Narcheska has challenged Prince Dutiful to kill. All he has to help him in this in the company of his small coterie: the mercurial old assassin, Chade, the gifted but slow-witted servant boy, Thick, and their Skillmaster, Fitz. The other member of the group has been left behind in Buckkeep, but the Fool will do everything in his power to be with them on the island - he has seen that this is his final destiny. When the ship finally reaches the desolate island it seems out of the question that anything could exist on this wasteland, yet the discoveries that Dutiful and his friends make will not only put the quest and their lives in jeopardy, it will also shape the future of the whole world. The Tawny Man Book 3 brings not only this trilogy but also the Farseer trilogy begun with ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE in 1996 to a spectacular conclusion. Filled with breathtaking drama and powerful character-led story-telling, Robin Hobb's writing is in a class of its own.



- Paul Kearney's Kings of the Morning (Canada, USA, Europe)

For the first time in recorded history, the ferocious city-states of the Macht now acknowledge a single man as their overlord. Corvus, the strange and brilliant boy-general, is now High King, having united his people in a fearsome, bloody series of battles and sieges. He is not yet thirty years old. A generation ago, ten thousand of the Macht marched into the heart of the ancient Asurian Empire, and fought their way back out again, passing into legend. Corvus’s father was one of those who undertook that march, and his most trusted general, Rictus, was leader of those ten thousand. But he intends to do more. The preparations will take years, but when they are complete, Corvus will lead an invasion the like of which the world of Kuf has never seen. Under him, the Macht will undertake nothing less than the overthrow of the entire Asurian Empire.

Kings of Morning is the thrilling conclusion to Paul Kearney's Macht trilogy.

- Steven Erikson's Memories of Ice (Canada, USA, Europe)

The ravaged continent of Genabackis has given birth to a terrifying new empire: the Pannion Domin. Like a tide of corrupted blood, it seethes across the land, devouring all. In its path stands an uneasy alliance: Onearm's army and Whiskeyjack's Bridgeburners alongside their enemies of old--the forces of the Warlord Caladan Brood, Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii mages, and the Rhivi people of the plains.

But ancient undead clans are also gathering; the T'lan Imass have risen. For it would seem something altogether darker and more malign threatens this world. Rumors abound that the Crippled God is now unchained and intent on a terrible revenge.

Marking the return of many characters from Gardens of the Moon and introducing a host of remarkable new players, Memories of Ice is both a momentous new chapter in Steven Erikson's magnificent epic fantasy and a triumph of storytelling.



- David Louis Edelman's Geosynchron (Canada, USA, Europe)

The Defense and Wellness Council is enmeshed in full-scale civil war between Len Borda and the mysterious Magan Kai Lee. Quell has escaped from prison and is stirring up rebellion in the Islands with the aid of a brash young leader named Josiah. Jara and the apprentices of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp still find themselves fighting off legal attacks from their competitors and from Margaret Surina's unscrupulous heirs -- even though MultiReal has completely vanished.

The quest for the truth will lead to the edges of civilization, from the tumultuous society of the Pacific Islands to the lawless orbital colony of 49th Heaven; and through the deeps of time, from the hidden agenda of the Surina family to the real truth behind the Autonomous Revolt that devastated humanity hundreds of years ago.

Meanwhile, Natch has awakened in a windowless prison with nothing but a haze of memory to clue him in as to how he got there. He's still receiving strange hallucinatory messages from Margaret Surina and the nature of reality is buckling all around him. When the smoke clears, Natch must make the ultimate decision - whether to save a world that has scorned and discarded him, or to save the only person he has ever loved: himself.



- Ian McDonald's The Dervish House (Canada, USA, Europe)

It begins with an explosion. Another day, another bus bomb. Everyone it seems is after a piece of Turkey. But the shock waves from this random act of twenty-first-century pandemic terrorism will ripple further and resonate louder than just Enginsoy Square.

Welcome to the world of The Dervish House—the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. The year is 2027 and Turkey is about to celebrate the fifth anniversary of its accession to the European Union, a Europe that now runs from the Arran Islands to Ararat. Population pushing one hundred million, Istanbul swollen to fifteen million, Turkey is the largest, most populous, and most diverse nation in the EU, but also one of the poorest and most socially divided. It's a boom economy, the sweatshop of Europe, the bazaar of central Asia, the key to the immense gas wealth of Russia and central Asia. The Dervish House is seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core—the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself—that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama, and a ticking clock of a thriller.

- Steven Erikson's Deadhouse Gates (Canada, USA, Europe)

In the vast dominion of Seven Cities, in the Holy Desert Raraku, the seer Sha'ik and her followers prepare for the long-prophesied uprising known as the Whirlwind. Unprecedented in size and savagery, this maelstrom of fanaticism and bloodlust will embroil the Malazan Empire in one of the bloodiest conflicts it has ever known, shaping destinies and giving birth to legends . . . Set in a brilliantly realized world ravaged by dark, uncontrollable magic, this thrilling novel of war, intrigue and betrayal confirms Steven Erikson as a storyteller of breathtaking skill, imagination and originality--the author who has written the first great fantasy epic of the new millennium.

- Hal Duncan's Vellum (Canada, USA, Europe)

It's 2017 and the end days are coming, beings that were once human gathering to fight in one last great war for control of the Vellum - the vast realm of eternity on which our world is just a scratch. But to a draft-dodging Irish angel and a trailer-trash tomboy called Phreedom, it's about to become brutally clear that there's no great divine or diabolic plan at play here, just a vicious battle between the hawks of Heaven and Hell, with humanity stuck in the middle, and where the easy rhetoric of Good and Evil, Order versus Chaos just doesn't apply. Here there are no heroes, no darlings of destiny struggling to save the day, and there are no villains, no dark lords of evil out to destroy the world. Or at least if there are, it's not quite clear which is which. Here, the most ancient gods and the most modern humans are equally fate's fools, victims of their own hubris, struggling to save their own skins, their own souls, but sometimes...just sometimes...sacrificing everything in the name of humanity.

- Peter Watts' Blindsight (Canada, USA, Europe)

Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence, while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed, and the fainter one she'll do any good if she is. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.

But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...

- Kameron Hurley's God's War (Canada, USA, Europe)

Nyx had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn't make any difference...

On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there's one thing everybody agrees on--

There's not a chance in hell of ending it.

Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx's ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war--but at what price?

The world is about to find out.

- Richard Morgan's Black Man/Thirteen (Canada, USA, Europe)

One hundred years from now, and against all the odds, Earth has found a new stability; the political order has reached some sort of balance, and the new colony on Mars is growing. But the fraught years of the 21st century have left an uneasy legacy ... Genetically engineered alpha males, designed to fight the century's wars have no wars to fight and are surplus to requirements. And a man bred and designed to fight is a dangerous man to have around in peacetime. Many of them have left for Mars but now one has come back and killed everyone else on the shuttle he returned in. Only one man, a genengineered ex-soldier himself, can hunt him down and so begins a frenetic man-hunt and a battle survival. And a search for the truth about what was really done with the world's last soldiers. BLACK MAN is an unstoppable SF thriller but it is also a novel about predjudice, about the ramifications of playing with our genetic blue-print. It is about our capacity for violence but more worrying, our capacity for deceit and corruption. This is another landmark of modern SF from one of its most exciting and commercial authors.

- George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords (Canada, USA, Europe)

Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as violently as ever, as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey, of House Lannister, sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the land of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, the victim of the jealous sorceress who holds him in her evil thrall. But young Robb, of House Stark, still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Robb plots against his despised Lannister enemies, even as they hold his sister hostage at King’s Landing, the seat of the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world. . .

But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost line of civilization. In their vanguard is a horde of mythical Others--a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords. . .



- Kay Kenyon's Prince of Storms (Canada, USA, Europe)

Finally in control of the Ascendancy, Titus Quinn has styled himself Regent of the Entire. But his command is fragile. He rules an empire with a technology beyond human understanding; spies lurk in the ancient Magisterium; the Tarig overlords are hamstrung but still malevolent. Worse, his daughter Sen Ni opposes him for control, believing the Earth and its Rose universe must die to sustain the failing Entire. She is aided by one of the mystical pilots of the River Nigh, the space-time transport system. This navitar, alone among all others, can alter future events. He retires into a crystal chamber in the Nigh to weave reality and pit his enemies against each other.

Taking advantage of these chaotic times, the great foe of the Long War, the Jinda ceb Horat, create a settlement in the Entire. Masters of supreme technology, they maintain a lofty distance from the Entire's struggle. They agree, however, that the Tarig must return to the fiery Heart of their origins. With the banishment immanent, some Tarig lords rebel, fleeing to hound the edges of Quinn's reign.

Meanwhile, Quinn's wife Anzi becomes a hostage and penitent among the Jinda ceb, undergoing alterations that expose their secrets, but may estrange her from her husband. As Quinn moves toward a confrontation with the dark navitar, he learns that the stakes of the conflict go far beyond the Rose versus the Entire—extending to a breathtaking dominance. The navitar commands forces that lie at the heart of the Entire's geo-cosmology, and will use them to alter the calculus of power. As the navitar's plan approaches consummation, Quinn, Sen Ni, and Anzi are swept up in forces that will leave them forever changed.

In this rousing finale to Kenyon's celebrated quartet, Titus Quinn meets an inevitable destiny, forced at last to make the unthinkable choice for or against the dictates of his heart, for or against the beloved land.

- Neil Gaiman's American Gods (Canada, USA, Europe)

After three years in prison, Shadow has done his time. But as the days, then the hours, then the hours, then the seconds until his release tick away, he can feel a storm building. Two days before he gets out, his wife Laura dies in a mysterious car crash, in apparently adulterous circumstances. Dazed, Shadow travels home, only to encounter the bizarre Mr Wednesday claiming to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America. Together they embark on a very strange journey across the States, along the way solving the murders which have occurred every winter in one small American town. But they are being pursued by someone with whom Shadow must make his peace... Disturbing, gripping and profoundly strange, Neil Gaiman's epic new novel sees him on the road to finding the soul of America.

- Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold (Canada, USA, Europe)

Mercenaries are a wonderful thing: they fight as you tell them, whom you tell them, and when you tell them, for nothing more precious or complicated than money. And Monzcarro Mercatto, and her brother (and lover) Benna Mercatto, are the two most successful, most popular, and most wealthy mercenaries in Styria...but wealthy, popular mercenaries are not such a good thing. In fact they're a downright dangerous thing. Which is why Grand Duke Orso of Styria arranges to have them dealt with. Permanently. With hindsight, he may come to consider this a tactical error. Through sheer good luck - which her brother doesn't share - Monzcarro survives the long and fatal drop Orso arranged for her, and staggers away from her encounter with a ruined right hand, an opium addiction ...and a plan to come back with a fortune, plenty of bladed weapons, and a single-minded determination to kill the seven men in the room when her brother was murdered. Preferably in as gruesome a manner as she can ...



- Brian Ruckley's Fall of Thanes (Canada, USA, Europe)

Tension between the clans of the Black Road and the True Bloods is mounting, as each side in the conflict becomes ever more riven by internal dissent and disunity. And Aeglyss the na'kyrim continues to spread chaos in the world, exerting a dangerous, insidious influence over events both near and far. As events mount to a climax, the world will change and no side can anticipate the twisted pattern of what lies ahead.

- Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams (Canada, USA, Europe)

The Wheel of Time turns, and Robert Jordan gives us the eleventh volume of his extraordinary masterwork of fantasy.

The dead are walking, men die impossible deaths, and it seems as though reality itself has become unstable: All are signs of the imminence of Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle, when Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, must confront the Dark One as humanity’s only hope. But Rand dares not fight until he possesses all the surviving seals on the Dark One’s prison and has dealt with the Seanchan, who threaten to overrun all nations this side of the Aryth Ocean and increasingly seem too entrenched to be fought off. But his attempt to make a truce with the Seanchan is shadowed by treachery that may cost him everything. Whatever the price, though, he must have that truce. And he faces other dangers. There are those among the Forsaken who will go to any length to see him dead--and the Black Ajah is at his side....

Unbeknownst to Rand, Perrin has made his own truce with the Seanchan. It is a deal made with the Dark One, in his eyes, but he will do whatever is needed to rescue his wife, Faile, and destroy the Shaido who captured her. Among the Shaido, Faile works to free herself while hiding a secret that might give her her freedom or cause her destruction. And at a town called Malden, the Two Rivers longbow will be matched against Shaido spears.

Fleeing Ebou Dar through Seanchan-controlled Altara with the kidnapped Daughter of the Nine Moons, Mat attempts to court the woman to whom he is half-married, knowing that she will complete that ceremony eventually. But Tuon coolly leads him on a merry chase as he learns that even a gift can have deep significance among the Seanchan Blood and what he thinks he knows of women is not enough to save him. For reasons of her own, which she will not reveal until a time of her choosing, she has pledged not to escape, but Mat still sweats whenever there are Seanchan soldiers near. Then he learns that Tuon herself is in deadly danger from those very soldiers. To get her to safety, he must do what he hates worse than work....

In Caemlyn, Elayne fights to gain the Lion Throne while trying to avert what seems a certain civil war should she win the crown....

In the White Tower, Egwene struggles to undermine the sisters loyal to Elaida from within....

The winds of time have become a storm, and things that everyone believes are fixed in place forever are changing before their eyes. Even the White Tower itself is no longer a place of safety. Now Rand, Perrin and Mat, Egwene and Elayne, Nynaeve and Lan, and even Loial, must ride those storm winds, or the Dark One will triumph.



- Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl (Canada, USA, Europe)

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" ( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions.



- Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon (Canada, USA, Europe)

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . .



- C. S. Friedman's Legacy of Kings (Canada, USA, Europe)

What will future minstrels sing of the days leading up to the final battle?

They will sing of the Souleaters with their stained-glass wings, who feasted upon the life-essence of mankind and brought down the First Age of Kings. And of the army of martyrs that gathered to fight them, led by the world's last surviving witches. By fire and faith they herded the great beasts into an arctic prison, where the incessant cold and long winter's darkness would rob them of strength, and hopefully of life. And the gods themselves struck the earth with great Spears, it was said, erecting a barrier born of their Wrath which would hold any surviving Souleaters prisoner until the end of time. For forty generations the Wrath held strong, so that the Second Age of Kings could thrive. But it was not truly a divine creation, merely a construct of witches, and when it finally faltered the Souleaters began their invasion.

They will sing of the Magisters, undying sorcerers who wielded a power that seemed without limit, and of how they were bound by their Law to the fates of mortal men. But no minstrel will sing of the secret that lay at the heart of that dark brotherhood, for no mortal man who learned the truth would be allowed to live. The Magisters fueled their sorcery with the life-essence of human consorts, offering up the death of innocents to assure their own immortality. Perhaps that practice was what corrupted their spirits, so that they became innately hostile to their own kind. . .or perhaps there was another cause. Colivar alone seemed to know the truth, but even his most ancient and determined rival Ramirus had not yet been able to pry that information out of him.

They will sing of Kamala, a red-headed child destined for poverty and abuse in the slums of Gansang, who defied the fates and became the first female to learn the art of true sorcery. But her accidental murder of Magister Raven broke the brotherhood's most sacred Law, and even her reclusive mentor Ethanus dared not give her shelter any longer. Forced to masquerade as a witch, she traveled the world in search of some knowledge or artifact that she might barter for her safety, so that she could bear the title of Magister openly and claim her proper place in the brotherhood of sorcerers.

They will sing of Danton Aurelius, who ruled the High Kingdom with an iron fist until the traitor Kostas brought him down. They will craft lamentations for the two young princes who died alongside their father, even as they celebrate the courage of Queen Gwynofar in avenging her husband's death. Alas, it was not to be the end of her trials. For when prophecy summoned her to Alkali to search for the Throne of Tears, an ancient artifact that would awaken the lyr bloodline to its full mystical potential, the gods demanded her unborn child in sacrifice, and later her beloved half-brother, Rhys.

They will sing of the Witch-Queen Siderea Aminestas, mistress of Magisters and consort to kings, whom the sorcerers abandoned when her usefulness ended. And of the Souleater who saved her life, at the cost of her human soul. Vengeance burned bright in her heart the day she fled Sankara on the back of her jewel-winged consort, seeking a land where she could plant the seeds of a new and terrible empire.

They will sing of Salvator, third son of Danton Aurelius, who set aside the vows of a Penitent monk to inherit his father's throne, rejecting the power and the protection of the Magisters in the name of his faith. Songs will be crafted to tell how he was tested by demons, doubt, and the Witch-Queen herself, even while the leaders of his Church argued over how he might best be manipulated to serve their political interests.

And last of all they will sing of the confrontation that was still to come, in which fate of the Second Age of Kings -- and all of mankind -- would be decided. And those who hear their songs will wonder whether a prince-turned-monk-turned-king could really save the world, when the god that he worshiped might have been the one who called for its destruction in the first place.



- Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City (Canada, USA, Europe)

Tanner Mirabel was a security specialist who never made a mistake - until the day a woman in his care was blown away by Argent Reivich, a vengeful young postmortal. Tanner's pursuit of Reivich takes him across light-years of space to Chasm City, the domed human settlement on the otherwise inhospitable planet of Yellowstone. But Chasm City is not what it was. The one-time high-tech utopia has become a Gothic nightmare: a nanotechnological virus has corrupted the city's inhabitants as thoroughly as it has the buildings and machines. Before the chase is done, Tanner will have to confront truths which reach back centuries, towards deep space and an atrocity history barely remembers.



- James S. A. Corey's Leviathan Wakes (Canada, USA, Europe)

Welcome to the future. Humanity has colonized the solar system – Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond – but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for – and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathizer, Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations – and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

- Ian Tregillis' The Coldest War (Canada, USA, Europe)

In Ian Tregillis' The Coldest War, a precarious balance of power maintains the peace between Britain and the USSR. For decades, Britain's warlocks have been all that stands between the British Empire and the Soviet Union—a vast domain stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the English Channel. Now each wizard's death is another blow to Britain's national security.

Meanwhile, a brother and sister escape from a top-secret facility deep behind the Iron Curtain. Once subjects of a twisted Nazi experiment to imbue ordinary people with superhuman abilities, then prisoners of war in the immense Soviet research effort to reverse-engineer the Nazi technology, they head for England.

Because that's where former spy Raybould Marsh lives. And Gretel, the mad seer, has plans for him.

As Marsh is once again drawn into the world of Milkweed, he discovers that Britain's darkest acts didn't end with the war. And while he strives to protect queen and country, he is forced to confront his own willingness to accept victory at any cost.