Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.
The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett
Promo copy:
The time has come to stand against the night.
As darkness falls each night, the corelings rise–demons who well up from the ground like hellish steam, taking on fearsome form and substance. Sand demons. Wood demons. Wind demons. Flame demons. And gigantic rock demons, the deadliest of all. They possess supernatural strength and powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards–symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and mystery, and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile.
It was not always this way. Once, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms. Once, under the leadership of the legendary Deliverer, and armed with powerful wards that were not merely shields but weapons, they took the battle to the demons . . . and stopped their advance.
But those days are gone. The fighting wards are lost. Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault.
Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past.
Arlen will pay any price, embrace any sacrifice, for freedom. His grim journey will take him beyond the bounds of human power.
Crippled by the demons that killed his parents, Rojer seeks solace in music–only to discover that music can be a weapon as well as a refuge.
Beautiful Leesha, who has suffered at the hands of men as well as demons, becomes an expert healer. But what cures can also harm. . . .
Together, they will stand against the night.
City without End by Kay Kenyon
Promo copy:
In this series Kay Kenyon has created her most vivid and compelling society yet, the universe Entire. Reviewers have called this "a grand world," "an enormous stage," and "a bravura concept."
On this stage unfolds a mighty struggle for dominance between two universes. Titus Quinn has forged an unstable peace with the Tarig lords. The ruinous capability of the nanotech surge weapon he possesses ensures détente. But it is a sham. In what the godwoman Zhiya calls a fit of moral goodness, he’s thrown the weapon into the space-folding waters of the Nigh. This clears the way for an enemy he could have never foreseen: the people of the Rose. A small cadre led by Helice Maki is determined to take the Entire for itself and leave the earth in ruins. The transform of earth will begin deep in a western desert and will sweep over the lives of ordinary people, entangling Quinn s sister-in-law Caitlin in a deepening and ultimate conspiracy.
In the Entire, Quinn stalks Helice to the fabled Rim City, encircling the heart of the Entire. Here he at last finds his daughter, now called Sen Ni, in the Chalin style. Outside of earth-based time, she has grown to adulthood. He hardly knows her, and finds her the mistress of a remarkable dream-time insurgency against the Tarig lords and more, a woman risen high in the Entire’s meritocracy. Quinn needs his daughter’s help against the woman who would destroy the earth. But Sen Ni has her own plans and allies, among them a boy-navitar unlike any other pilot of the River Nigh a navitar willing and supremely able to break his vows and bend the world.
Quinn casts his fate with the beautiful and resourceful Ji Anzi who sent on a journey to other realms holds the key to Quinn’s heart and his overarching mission. But as he approaches the innermost sanctuary of the Tarig, he is alone. Waiting for him are powerful adversaries, including a lady who both hates and loves him, the high prefect of the dragon court, and Quinn’s most implacable enemy, a warrior whose chaotic mind will soon be roused from an eternal slumber.
Shadow Valley by Steven Barnes
Promo copy:
In the great tradition of Jean Auel, this novel—the sequel to Great Sky Woman—imagines life in prehistoric Africa
Thirty thousand years ago, in the shadow of Kilimanjaro…
Since the beginning of time, the peaceful Ibandi people had been sheltered by their god-mountains, Great Earth and Great Sky. When the savage Mk*tk threatened their way of life, their gods told Sky Woman—last of the true Dream Dancers—and her mate Frog Hopping to take the people north in search of new lands. As the Ibandi meet strange new peoples and discover a land of promise and plenty, the deeds of a man thought long dead will rouse the Mk*tk to a bloody frenzy and send them on a quest for vengeance that could shatter the Ibandi’s dreams. All is lost . . . unless Sky Woman can regain her power, unless Frog Hopping can become the first true warrior, and unless a dead man can find the heart to forgive. All their fates, and more, will be decided in the place called Shadow Valley.
Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald
Promo copy:
Ian McDonald’s River of Gods called a "masterpiece" by Asimov’s Science Fiction and praised by the Washington Post as a –"major achievement from a writer who is becoming one of the best SF novelists of our time"– painted a vivid picture of a near future India, 100 years after independence. It revolutionized SF for a new generation by taking a perspective that was not European or American. Nominated for the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and winning the BSFA Award, the rich world of this novel has inspired McDonald to revisit its milieu in a series of short stories, all set in the world of River of Gods.
Cyberabad Days is a triumphant return to the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, water-wars, strange new genders, genetically improved children that age at half the rate of baseline humanity, and a population where males outnumber females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas.
Cyberabad Days is a collection of seven stories, one Hugo nominee and one Hugo winner among them, as well as a thirty-one-thousand word original novella. As with everything Ian McDonald does, it is sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year.