Release Week: 30 January 2024
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Release Week: 30 January 2024
Posted on 2024-01-30 at 12:00 by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn
I expected a quiet week, with only 2 titles on my watch list somehow, and that's pretty much what we seem to have found ourselves with. So this week's roundup will have room for a few more "indie" sf/f books than usual...
PICKS:
A Quantum Love Story By: Mike Chen, read by Patti Murin for Harlequin -- "Grieving her best friend's recent death, neuroscientist Mariana Pineda’s ready to give up everything to start anew. Even her career—after one last week consulting at a top secret particle accelerator. Except the strangest thing happens: a man stops her…and claims they've met before. Carter Cho knows who she is, why she's mourning, why she's there. And he needs Mariana to remember everything he’s saying. Because time is about to loop. In a flash of energy, it’s Monday morning. Again. Together, Mariana and Carter enter an inevitable life, four days at a time, over and over, without permanence except for what they share. But just as they figure out this new life, everything changes. Because Carter's memories of the time loop are slowly disappearing. And their only chance at happiness is breaking out of the loop—forever."
Your Utopia: Stories By: Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur, and read by Greta Jung for Algonguin -- "From the internationally acclaimed author of Cursed Bunny, in another thrilling translation from Korean by Anton Hur, this collection shares tales of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, death and immortality."
Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too by Ijeoma Oluo, read by the author for Harper -- "Looking at many of our most powerful systems—like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more—she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live."
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid, read by Nicole Lewis for Books On Tape -- "From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students."
The City of Stardust By: Georgia Summers, read by Kitty Parker for Redhook -- "A young woman descends into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge to break her family's curse in this spellbinding contemporary fantasy debut."
SERIES WATCH:
- Kinning: Everfair, Book 2 By: Nisi Shawl, read by Allyson Johnson for Tantor -- Whew! This was on my "most missing" list a couple weeks back, good to see/hear that listeners will be able to continue their way in this series. "Kinning continues the stunning alternate history where bark cloth airships soar through the sky, varied peoples build a new society together, and colonies claim their freedom from imperialist tyrants."
BACKLIST WATCH:
Dilvish, the Damned By: Roger Zelazny, read by Eric Michael Summerer for Tantor -- "Dilivish, a half elf-half man hybrid, failed in his attempt to rescue a young maiden being ritually sacrificed by the dark sorcerer Jelerak. In his anger at the attempt Jelerak kills the maiden and turns Dilvish's body to stone and banished his soul to Hell."
Helix By: Eric Brown (2007), read by Gideon Emery for Recorded Books -- "With a brand new introduction by Stephen Baxter, this reissue of Eric Brown's famous Helix is to commemorate the life and work of a preeminent British SF author. Helix is a fast-paced action adventure novel following the plight of four humans when they crashland on what they think is a desolate ice-bound planet. Daylight brings the discovery that the planet is one of thousands arranged in a vast spiral wound about a central sun. They set off to discover a more habitable Earth-like world and come across strange races of aliens, and life-threatening perils, on their way."
A Song of Steel: The Light of the North Saga, Book 1 By: J C Duncan (2020), read by Ulf Bjorklund for Podium -- "Alternate history—1116 AD. Three hundred years of cruel Viking raids have finally united Christian Europe against the pagan Northlands. A great crusade has been called to pacify the wild Norse kingdoms. The banner of the cross has been raised against the North, and all the power and fury of the West rides under it. Ordulf, a talented young German swordsmith, is ripped from his comfortable life and cast into the bloody chaos of the crusade. As fate deals him a cruel blow in the lands of his enemies, he will have to forge a new path through the chaos or be consumed by it."
MORE SCI-FI and FANTASY:
Shanghai Immortal By: A.Y. Chao, read by Mei Mei Macleod and A.Y. Chao for Tantor -- "Pawned by her mother to the King of Hell as a child, Lady Jing is half-vampire, half-hulijing fox-spirit, and all sasshole. As the King's ward, she has spent the past ninety years running errands, dodging the taunts of the spiteful hulijing courtiers, and trying to control her explosive temper—with varying levels of success. So when Jing overhears the courtiers plotting to steal a priceless dragon pearl from the King, she seizes her chance to expose them, once and for all."
Grim: Withering Mysteries Series 1 By: Amy Boyles, read by Michael Kirby for Tantor -- "It only takes an instant for Grim—monster hunter and emotionally scarred hero—to lose everything. Grim is having a bad year. A hunter by trade, his world is ripped apart when he is cursed with a sickness that is slowly changing him into one of the very creatures he hunts."
Once There Were Heroes: A Time of Dragons, Book 1 By: Philip C. Quaintrell, read by Steven Brand for Podium -- "The Gods are dead. In their absence, there can be only chaos, only war. And they are not all that has faded from the world of Verda..."
MOST MISSING:
- Women of Horror and Speculative Fiction in Their Own Words edited by Sébastien Doubinsky and Christina Kkona (Bloomsbury) -- "This collection of interviews elicits truly honest and thought-provoking responses that focus on the biographical dimension in speculative fiction, questions of intersectionality, genre (re)definitions and the politicization of fiction. It gives voice to women of different races, nations, classes and sexual orientations who write and edit speculative fiction – such as Ellen Datlow, Kathe Koja, Angela Mi Young Hur, Eugen Bacon, and Cat Rambo. The interviews clarify how the junction of genre and gender is a key element to understanding this literary field, while simultaneously contextualizing and theorizing the interview itself, as a literary genre and a research tool."