The BoSS for 20/03/10

Another week, another bag full o' speculative swag.

Click through to read Meet the BoSS for an introduction and an explanation as to why you should care about the Bag o' Speculative Swag.

Nothing quite so mindlessly exciting as some of last week's lot of review copies came through the letterbox this week - no slight intended on the various books the Speculative Scotsman has received over the past seven days. And perhaps that's just as well: with Ian McEwan's Solar and Under Heaven by the great Guy Gavriel Kay, as previewed in the last edition of The BoSS, I've plenty to keep me busy, and it wouldn't do to be drawn away from either of those fantastic novels.

Still, a good few very promising forthcoming proofs arived with me this week, so here, as ever, is a look at some of the fiction you can expect to see coverage of on TSS in the coming months.

***

The Poison Throne
by Celine Kiernan

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

01/04/10 by Orbit

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "Young Wynter Moorehawke returns to court with her dying father, but her old home is cloaked in fear. The once-benevolent King Jonathon has become a violent despot, terrorising his people while his son Alberon plots a coup from exile. Then darkness spreads as the King appoints Alberon's half-brother Razi as heir.

"Wynter must watch her friend obey his father's untenable commands, as those they love are held to ransom. And at the heart of matters lies a war machine so lethal that none dare speak of it. The kingdom would belong to its master, yet the consequences of using it are too dire to consider. But temptation has ever been the enemy of reason."

Commentary: The lovely Celine Kiernan (who I once mistook for an alter-ego of The Red Tree writer Caitlin R. Kiernan) seems to be a fairly regular visitor to The Speculative Scotsman, and it's a pleasure to have her. That said, I haven't yet read any of her work; a ghastly oversight that, thanks to Orbit, I'll be remedying in the near future. For whatever reason - perhaps all my characteristic Scottish grouching - Celine doesn't think I'll like The Poison Throne. Well... although it might be a while before I can gorge on the remainder, I've read the first chapter, and I think I can safely say she's sorely mistaken. Take that!

 

White is for Witching

by Helen Oyeyemi

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

02/04/09 by Picador

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "High on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the loss of Lily, mother of twins Eliot and Miranda, and beloved wife of Luc. Miranda misses her with particular intensity. Their mazy, capricious house belonged to her mother’s ancestors, and to Miranda, newly attuned to spirits, newly hungry for chalk, it seems they have never left.

"Forcing apples to grow in winter, revealing and concealing secret floors, the house is fiercely possessive of young Miranda. Joining voices with her brother and her best friend Ore, it tells her story: haunting in every sense, and a spine-tingling tribute to the power of magic, myth and memory."

Commentary: This one came as a complete surprise - it wasn't on my radar at all. At first glance, the cover is lovely, the premise is very promising, and though the mostly mediocre reviews on Amazon give me pause, this is a short novel; perfect fodder for devouring in an evening to cleanse my literary palate of one epic fantasy saga or another. Not to mention that - to my surprise - my wonderful other half pressganged it from me just about the moment it popped through the letterbox, read it in the space of 24 hours and (mostly) loved it. Me next!

Secrets of the Fire Sea
by Stephen Hunt

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

04/02/10 by HarperVoyager

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "The isolated island of Jago is the only place Hannah Conquest has ever known as home. Encircled by the magma ocean of the Fire Sea, it was once the last bastion of freedom when the world struggled under the tyranny of the Chimecan Empire during the age-long winter of the cold-time. But now this once-shining jewel of civilization faces an uncertain future as its inhabitants emigrate to greener climes, leaving the basalt plains and raging steam storms far behind them.

"For Hannah and her few friends, the streets of the island's last occupied underground city form a vast, near-deserted playground. But Hannah's carefree existence comes to an abrupt halt when her guardian, Archbishop Alice Gray, is brutally murdered in her own cathedral. Someone desperately wants to suppress a secret kept by the archbishop, and if the attempts on Hannah's own life are any indication, the killer believes that Alice passed the knowledge of it onto her ward before her saintly head was separated from her neck.

"But it soon becomes clear that there is more at stake than the life of one orphan. A deadly power struggle is brewing on Jago, involving rival factions in the senate and the island's most powerful trading partner. And it's beginning to look as if the deaths of Hannah's archaeologist parents shortly after her birth were very far from accidental. Soon the race is on for Hannah and her friends to unravel a chain of hidden riddles and follow them back to their source to save not just her own life, but her island home itself."

Commentary: The publicity for Secrets of the Fire Sea asserts that it's "a tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style world as the acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Rise of the Iron Moon," which, well, I haven't read, but as you'll see shortly, that's something of a recurring theme in this edition of The BoSS. Saying that, I don't think Stephen Hunt's new book is a direct sequel; more like another bit of fun set in a fantasy setting shared with those other novels. This looks like a great pseudo-Dickensian romp, and I'm all for that. A fine place to jump into the series.

Thirteen Years Later

by Jasper Kent

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

18/03/10 by Bantam Press

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "Aleksandr made a silent promise to the Lord. God would deliver him - would deliver Russia - and he would make Russia into the country that the Almighty wanted it to be. He would be delivered from the destruction that wasteth at noonday, and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness - the terror by night...

"1825. Russia has been at peace for a decade. Bonaparte is long dead and the threat of invasion is no more. For Colonel Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, life is calm. The French have been defeated, as have the twelve monstrous creatures he once fought alongside, and then against, all those years before. His duty is still to his tsar, Aleksandr the First, but today the enemy is merely human. However, the tsar himself knows he can never be at peace. He is well aware of the uprising fermenting within his own army, but his true fear is of something far more terrible - something that threatens to bring damnation upon him, his family and his country. Aleksandr cannot forget a promise: a promise sealed in blood... and broken a hundred years before.

"Now the victim of the Romanovs' betrayal has returned to demand what is his. The knowledge chills Aleksandr's very soul. And for Aleksei, it seems the vile pestilence that once threatened all he held dear has returned, thirteen years later."

Commentary: And we're two for two! Despite all the great buzz surrounding Twelve, it was one of a few 2009 debuts I just didn't have the chance to read upon their release. Well, here's to resolving that particular dilemma. In light of Thirteen Years Later, I've got my grubby paws on a copy of the first novel in Kent's bloody alt-historical saga, and I'm rearing to get going with it. It might be a while before you see any coverage of these books - given all the high-profile forthcoming releases scheduled over the next few months - but be sure: it's coming.

The Orphaned Worlds

by Michael Cobley

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
29/04/10 by Orbit

Review Priority:

2 (Fair)

Plot Synopsis: "Darien is no longer a lost outpost of humanity, but the prize in an intergalactic power struggle. Hegemony forces have a stranglehold over the planet and crack troops patrol its hotspots while Earth watches, passive, rendered impotent by galactic politics.

"But its Darien ambassador will soon become a player in a greater conflict. There is more at stake than a turf war on a newly discovered world. An ancient Uvovo temple hides access to a hyperspace prison, housing the greatest threat sentient life has ever known. Millennia ago, malignant intelligences were caged there following an apocalyptic war. And their servants work on their release.

"However, Darien's guardians have not been idle, gathering resistance on the planet's forest moon. Knowledge has been lost since great races battled in eons past, and now time is short. The galaxy will depend on the Uvovo reclaiming their past - and humanity must look to its future. For a new war is coming."

Commentary: And three's the charm! The Orphaned Worlds is the second novel of Michael Cobley's "galaxy-spanning space opera" series, Humanity's Fire. Who's read The Seeds of Earth? Not I. But give me time, will you? Iain Banks' cover quote reminds me I still have plenty of his own genre novels to catch up on. In the interim, his recommendation of Humanity's Fire is enough to have peaked my interest. Hard sci-fi isn't usually my thing, but then again, I really haven't read very much from the genre, and I'm all for new experiences. Here's hoping this represents a positive enough one that I can finally call myself a sci-fi fan.

The Demon King

by Cinda William Chima

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
04/02/10 by HarperVoyager

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "When 16-year-old Han Alister and his Clan friend Dancer encounter three underage wizards setting fire to the sacred mountain of Hanalea, he has no idea that this event will precipitate a cascade of disasters that will threaten everything he cares about. Han takes an amulet from one of the wizards, Micah Bayar, to prevent him from using it against them. Only later does he learn that it has an evil history-it once belonged to the Demon King, the wizard who nearly destroyed the world a millennium ago. And the Bayars will stop at nothing to get it back.

"Meanwhile, Princess Raisa ana'Marianna, the heir to the Gray Wolf throne of the Fells, has just spent three years of relative freedom with her father's family at Demonai Camp-riding, hunting, and working the famous Clan markets. Now court life in Fellsmarch pinches like a pair of too-small shoes. Wars are raging to the south, and threaten to spread into the high country. After a long period of quiet, the power of the Wizard Council is once again growing. The people of the Fells are starving and close to rebellion.

"Now, more than ever, there's a need for a strong queen. But Raisa's mother Queen Marianna is weak and distracted by the handsome Gavan Bayar, High Wizard of the Fells. Raisa wants to be more than an ornament in a glittering cage. She aspires to be like Hanalea-the legendary warrior queen who killed the Demon King and saved the world. With the help of her friend, the cadet Amon Byrne, she navigates the treacherous Gray Wolf Court, hoping she can unravel the conspiracy coalescing around her before it's too late."

Commentary: The first in a new fantasy trilogy from debut author Cinda Williams Chima, whose name I rather like, The Demon King saw some pretty positive publicity around the blogosphere earlier in the year. I'm a little late to the party, but for me, a little distance from the sort of mad rushes of buzz that surrounds such releases is only ever a good thing, and I'm excited to get started on another very promising debut in what has to be the busiest season for new genre fiction in memory.

The Convent

by Panos Karnezis

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
07/01/10 by Jonathan Cape

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "Those whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad...

"The crumbling convent of Our Lady of Mercy stands alone in an uninhabited part of the Spanish sierra, hidden on a hill among dense pine forest. Its inhabitants are devoted to God, to solitude and silence; six women cut off from the world they've chosen to leave behind. This is all to change, on the day that Mother Superior Maria Ines discovers a suitcase punctured with air-holes at the entrance to the retreat. Soon she is to find the box and its contents are to have consequences beyond her imagining, and that even in her carefully protected sanctuary she is unable to keep the world, or her past, at bay."

Commentary: Says The Times: "The Convent is at once a still, almost silent thing, and a blistering human drama," and though much of the praise lavished upon this, Karnezis' fourth novel, is similarly subdued, I'm looking forward to it. For one thing, it's nice and short, and that's a refreshing prospect given all the 800 pages epics; which, needless to say, tend to take their toll on my reading habits. And that cover is right up my street. I have high hopes.