Our Most Anticipated Releases of the Month
The end of the year in publishing is generally reserved for retrospectives. Best-of lists and bestseller lists are the norm and the industries focus lies in selling already published books as holiday gifts rather than marketing new releases. Still there are five new releases in fantasy and science fiction I'd like to highlight this month and make sure you don't miss in the holiday marketing deluge.
#1 Tailored Realities by Brandon Sanderson
December 9 | Tor Books
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson―creator of the Stormlight Archive, the Mistborn saga, and numerous smash-hit works of science fiction and fantasy―comes Tailored Realities, a new short fiction collection including the never-before-published novella "Moment Zero."
Spanning the genres of fantasy and science fiction, Tailored Realities includes ten works of short fiction from the ingenious mind of one of the genre's most beloved bestselling authors.
From futuristic detective thrillers to inventive space opera, superhero action, high-tech fantasy, and beyond, these gripping standalone reads have never before been gathered into one volume, with many available here in print for the first time.
Along with the thrilling new science fiction novella "Moment Zero," this collection includes:
- "Snapshot"
- "Perfect State"
- "Defending Elysium" (from the world of Skyward)
- "Firstborn"
- "Mitosis" (from the world of the Reckoners)
- and four other stories
Also including author's notes and stunning interior illustrations for each story, this visionary collection is a must-read whether you're new to Sanderson or a longtime fan.
#2 Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher
December 1 | 47north
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes an enthralling contemporary fantasy seeped in horror about a woman trying to escape her past by moving to the remote US desert--only to find herself beholden to the wrath of a vengeful god.
With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt's house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind.
Because in Quartz Creek, there's a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena's ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena's house at night, keeping watch. Mostly benevolent, says her neighbor Grandma Billy. That doesn't ease the prickly sense that one of them watches too closely and wants something from Selena she can't begin to imagine. And when Selena's search for answers leads her to journal entries that her aunt left behind, she discovers a sinister truth about her new home: It's the haunting grounds of an ancient god known simply as "Snake-Eater," who her late aunt made a promise to that remains unfulfilled.
Snake-Eater has taken a liking to Selena, an obsession of sorts that turns sinister. And now that Selena is the new owner of his home, he's hell-bent on collecting everything he's owed.
#3 This Brutal Moon by Bethany Jacobs
Kindom Trilogy #3 | December 2 | Orbit
Bethany Jacobs returns with the thrilling conclusion to The Kindom Trilogy that began with the Philip K. Dick Award-winning These Burning Stars, the debut epic space opera trilogy about revenge, power, and the price of legacy.
Violence has erupted across the Treble. The colony that Jun Ironway and Masar Hawks have fought to protect is now woefully compromised, and its people, unwilling to submit to tyranny once more, face a brutal fight for their lives and freedom.
In the midst of upheaval and rebellion, new enemies arise at every corner, including a familiar player who won't let power slip through his fingers again. Not when he has every Kindom Hand under his heel. And whether he will be as bloody-minded as his predecessors remains to be seen.
As the quiet ones launch their attack and all hope seems lost, Cleric Chono looks to unlikely allies to fight a final battle for peace. But one crucial question remains: where is Six?
Praise for The Kindom Trilogy:
★ "An exciting start from a fresh talent, offering emotional and political complexity plus plenty of interplanetary action." - Kirkus (Starred Review) on These Burning Stars
★ "Plotted like a chess match, confident and surprising as Jacobs moves each piece thoughtfully across her board ... If Jacobs' second entry is anything like the first, we'll have so much more to discover across her universe in the years to come." - BookPage (Starred Review) on These Burning Stars
"There's no shortage of twists, betrayals, and unexpected alliances in this intricate story of revenge and survival. This sets things up nicely for a grand finale in book three." -Publishers Weekly on On Vicious Worlds
#4 The Mill of the Gods by Tim Powers
December 2 | Baen
A HARROWING SUPERNATURAL ADVENTURE, FULL OF COLOR, DRAMA, AND ROMANCE, AS ONLY TIM POWERS CAN DELIVER
PARIS, 1925
HARRY NOLAN is an expatriate American, making a meager living as an illustrator for a low-paying magazine, but his life is upended when he is assigned to illustrate an anonymous article about the death of a god--because a centuries-old French brotherhood, the s auteurs, are determined to suppress the story the article tells. The s auteurs have burned the magazine's office and killed the editor, and Nolan has the only surviving copy of the article. The author turns out to be a local writer named ERNEST HEMINGWAY, who--at first--tries to distance himself from the article and its lethal consequences.
VIVI CHASTAIN is a rootless 19-year-old orphan who sustains herself by betting on horse races--aided by the spirit of the man she was in a previous life. But now that old identity is crowding her consciousness, threatening to push her own precarious identity into oblivion. It was her alcoholic occasional "stepfather" who told Hemingway the story about killing a god, and the s auteurs are now aware of the story--and of her.
The SAUTEURS maintain their identities past death through controlled reincarnation--when members die and are reborn, the brotherhood finds their newborn incarnations, kidnaps them, and raises them in special nurseries, where they can fully resume their previous lives. Vivi escaped from one of these nurseries when she was six years old, and so her previous identity has not yet consummated his possession of her. The s auteurs want that consummation to happen--soon.
GERTRUDE STEIN is the hub of literary and artistic Paris, and knows many of the city's supernatural secrets. She has written a book that appears to be nonsense but which can be used to deflect the kind of psychic assault that threatens Vivi, and she becomes a Merlin-like mentor to Vivi and Nolan--
--who find themselves reluctantly thrown together as hunted fugitives. Their struggles to evade the murderous s auteurs and free Vivi from her increasingly intrusive previous self lead the pair to a mysterious hermit who lives in the towers of Notre Dame cathedral, and the haunted catacombs under Paris, and a confrontation with the Roman goddess Cybele in an other-worldly temple on an island in the Seine. In pursuit of a secret painting by PABLO PICASSO, they learn that the god whose death the Hemingway manuscript describes is Moloch, the child-devouring Phoenician god mentioned in the Bible--and that the s auteurs make sacrifices to Moloch to maintain their reincarnations.
From the narrow streets and rooftops of post-war Paris to, finally, a supernatural battle between gods in a remote village in Spain, Nolan and Vivi contend with forces natural and supernatural, enemies living and dead, and ultimately find themselves pitted against the god Moloch himself--at peril of their eternal souls.
The Mills of the Gods is a harrowing supernatural adventure, full of color, drama, and romance, as only Tim Powers could tell it.
#5 We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older
December 2 | Saga Press
From genre luminaries, esteemed organizers, and exciting new voices in fiction, an anthology of stories, essays, and interviews that offer transformative visions of the future, fantastical alternate worlds, and inspiration for the social justice movements of tomorrow.
In this collection, editors Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older champion realistic, progressive social change using the speculative stories of writers across the world. Exploring topics ranging from disability justice and environmental activism to community care and collective worldbuilding, these imaginative pieces from writers such as NK Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, Alejandro Heredia, Sam J. Miller, Nisi Shawl, and Sabrina Vourvoulias center solidarity, empathy, hope, joy, and creativity.
Each story is grounded within a broader sociopolitical framework using essays and interviews from movement leaders, including adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, charting the future history of protest, revolutions, and resistance with the same zeal for accuracy that speculative writers normally bring to science and technology. Using the vehicle of ambitious storytelling, We Will Rise Again offers effective tools for organizing, an unflinching interrogation of the status quo, and a blueprint for prefiguring a different world.
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