02/06/2017
The political is personal in this elaborate opening segment of a high fantasy series that entwines family quarrels with imperial ambitions. An enormous empire controls its subject kingdoms through the ancient practice of hostage taking. King Arko Hark-Wadi, spared being a hostage in his youth, is given back his son but must surrender himself to the imperial court, a virtual death sentence. His daughters quarrel over a hastily arranged marriage to a usurper, uniting their subject kingdoms but splitting their romantic hopes. Their mother, now the chief priestess of the imperial sun god, schemes to become first minister for the unseen emperor and must play off the ambitious top general against her estranged husband, all while trying to discover why the sacred grain crop is failing. Johnston (Golden) relies on history and myth (a god named Mithra-Sol, an emperor named Tolemy, five sacred days at the end of the year) to ground his work, but the uneasy mix of ancient practices of marriage and modern sensibilities toward love muddy the characters’ motivations and make reader loyalties uncertain. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (June)
Epic fantasy has also been a great vehicle for analyzing the follies of empire, and it has certainly done so as of late: a gorgeous look at a kingdom in the midst of overstretch and reformation in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series; Seth Dickinson’s engrossing The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which effectively explores the essential conflicts inherent […]
For nearly two decades, Jim Killen has served as the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble. Every month on Tor.com and the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jim shares his curated list of the month’s can’t-miss new SFF releases.
Author Mary Robinette Kowal, one of the great book people to follow on social media, recently tweeted a bit of advice to burgeoning writers: “In fiction, stakes have to be personal to motivate action. ‘Raise the stakes’ means make it more personal. The fate of the world? Feh.” This is, in a nutshell, why I love […]