New Books

Three Axes To Fall is Out!

Here is the book having a nice drink with its friend, the knife.

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

How have you been doing, by the way? It’s 2022, but only just. Two years ago, the world started falling apart. Many years before that, it started thinking about it. It’s been tough on a lot of people–I hope you’re coming out of it okay.

Me? I’ve been busy. I wrote a book. It’s called Three Axes To Fall.

It’s the book that comes after the second, Ten Arrows Of Iron.

And that book came after the very first book, Seven Blades In Black.

These books are special to me because they represent something important I discovered about myself. I’ve been writing for awhile now (you might have read some of my other books) and in all that time, I’ve had an issue I didn’t know about. I was writing for someone who wasn’t me.

I think it’s easy for a lot of writers to develop a belief about what they think success should look like. Maybe it’s even inevitable. Social media means you’ll never be unaware of how other people are doing–their successes, their reach, the ways they decide to portray their lives–and you’ll never be able to not compare yourself. It’s easy to start thinking that success looks only one way, that you need to be doing the things that make it look that way, that if you aren’t doing those things, you need to be worried.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Because it was me. I was keen to do things that I thought a writer like me should be doing, things that I thought looked like what I thought success should be, whether I wanted to or not. It was a grievous place to be, mentally–a place where I couldn’t pursue a definition of success that was my own and couldn’t satisfy a definition I’d created that was impossible.

Until these books.

It wasn’t all them–I’ve been in therapy for a few years now and it’s helped a lot. But something about these books, these books about broken people who keep fucking up and keep trying despite it, about healing from wounds in a way that isn’t pretty, about the physical vices we take up to escape our emotional vices…

Yeah. Something about them was real good to me.

And I hope they’re good to you, too. Because you earned it.

And so have I.

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Sean Won’t Leave You Hanging

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Sean Williams’ The Hanging Mountains is in from the printer! That means it should start to show up for online ordering any day now and will begin appearing in stores in about three weeks. This is the third book in Sean’s epic Books of the Cataclysm quartet, which SFF World previously described as:

“The story has the mythic resonance of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and American Gods, the dark fantasy/horror one might associate with something like Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga, the multiple universes/realities of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion mythos, and the strange, weird creatures one might associate with China Miéville’s Bas-lag novels. Williams imagined world is equal part those novels which preceded his, but fortunately, there is enough newness to both the approach and vision to make this the work of a singular vision….”

What’s more, I’m also very pleased to announce that The Hanging Mountains has been designated as a Book Sense Notable for July!!!!!

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Breaking Out the Bright

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Although I’m still waiting on my own copies (suspense = killing me), I see that Amazon is now listing both Joel Shepherd’s Breakaway and Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky as available to order, which means that you can now, you know, order them. But also that they are about a week away or so (if not sooner), from showing up in stores everywhere. (Regarding Bright of the Sky, signed copies are available from A Book for All Seasons.)

Meanwhile, if I may be forgiven for the reminder/plug, Publishers Weekly said of Breakaway, “Beneath the glitz of snazzy weaponry, unstoppable heroes and byzantine political machinations is a very real struggle about the nature of humanity and trust.” While, in their starred review of Bright of the Sky, they said, “Kenyon’s deft prose, high-stakes suspense and skilled, thorough world building will have readers anxious for the next installment.”

I’m really, really anxious to see this one in the flesh (see above aside about suspense), as we used a silver treatment on the title we’ve not used before, eye-catching and appropriate to a mysterious river that factors in Kay’s story.

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New Books by Robson & Meaney Out This Month

This month, we have two new books making their debut (and already spotted on the shelf at a local B&N). Coincidentally, both are tales of technological mind-control, albeit one is a techno-thriller set just around the corner from now and the other takes place in the future on a world far, far away.

Justina Robson’s Mappa Mundi is a novel of hard SF exploring the nature of identity both inherited and engineered, from one of Britain’s most acclaimed new talents. In the near future, when medical nanotechnology has made it possible to map a model of the living human brain, radical psychologist Natalie Armstrong sees her work suddenly become crucial to a cutting-edge military project for creating comprehensive mind-control. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Jude Westhorpe, FBI specialist, is tracking a cold war defector long involved in everything from gene sequencing to mind-mapping. But his investigation has begun to affect matters of national security—throwing Jude and Natalie together as partners in trouble—deep trouble from every direction. This fascinating novel explores the nature of humanity in the near future, when the power and potential of developing technologies demand that we adapt ourselves to their existence—whatever the price.

Publishers Weekly gave Mappa Mundi a starred review, saying, “Robson’s third novel to appear in the U.S. … maintains throat-tightening suspense from its teasingly enigmatic introduction of its major characters to its painful conclusion that evil will succeed if well-meaning people try to achieve good at any cost….Shortlisted for the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award, this near-future SF thriller presents convincing characters caught in profound moral dilemmas brought home through exquisite attention to plot details and setting.”

John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity is a stand-alone novel set in the same universe as (but centuries before) his acclaimed Nulapeiron Sequence.

Devastated by her husband’s death, Earth-based biologist Yoshiko Sunadomari journeys to the paradise world of Fulgar to see her estranged son in the hope of bridging the gulf between them. But Tetsuo is in trouble. His expertise in mu-space technology and family links with the mysterious Pilots have ensured his survival — so far. Now he’s in way over his head — unwittingly caught up in a conspiracy of illegal tech-trafficking and corruption, and in the sinister machinations of one of Fulgar’s ruling elite: the charismatic Luculentus, Rafael Garcia de la Vega. When his home is attacked, Tetsuo flees to the planet’s unterraformed wastes, home to society’s outcasts and eco-terrorists.

So Yoshiko arrives on Fulgar to discover Tetsuo gone … and wanted for murder. Ill at ease in this strange, stratified new world seething with social and political unrest but desperate to find her son and clear his name, she embarks on a course of action that will bring her face to face with the awesome, malevolent mind of Rafael.

Connie Willis says of John Meaney’s To Hold Infinity: “Dazzlingly imagined and dazzlingly executed…this is a work of true uniqueness by a true talent. Wow!” Publishers Weekly claims that Meaney “…brings a bright lights/big city sensibility to the normally streetwise milieu of advanced neuro-tech.”

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