In an ongoing effort to discover more of what’s up in current SF/F, I’ve sampled all the available Amazon previews of new titles linked in SFSignal’s March round-up, and I’ve chosen a few to highlight.

• Mark Smylie, The Barrow. Immediately upon reading this preview, I sent a bunch of my friends a one-line note: “Holy crap, it’s an Artesia novel!” At least three of us bought it instantly. Whatever its flaws may be, don’t mistake this first novel for a typical grim fantasy GRRM knock-off/D&D campaign journal. Smylie’s Artesia is easily the richest and most thoughtful sword & sorcery comic book I’ve ever read–the setting, plot, and characters are all amazing. The novel may be rougher. Certainly, there’s prolific cursing, and others’ reviews promise there are disturbing sex scenes, which I’d count as a negative. But Artesia was so good that it has bought Smylie an awful lot of latitude with me as a reader.
• Brad Aiken, Small Doses of the Future: A Collection of Medical Science Fiction Stories. Aiken is a practicing physician, so these stories ought to be well-informed if nothing else. The preview seems well-written in a careful, precise sort of way. And I’m especially intrigued by the context, because this seems to be part of a relatively new series called Science and Fiction by Springer, a scientific publisher.
• Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer, The Time Traveler’s Almanac. Like The Weird, this seems to be the VanderMeers’ attempt at a comprehensive anthology synopsizing a very large SF/F sub-genre, and looking at the table of contents, I think they may have been successful once again. The stuff included in the preview reminds me how many old time travel stories are a little too pat and almost silly. But then we get some Ursula Le Guin, and I’m hooked.
• Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street. What a charming magical realist premise: a woman is given an opportunity to stay in a house where many famous women have figured out what to do with their lives and where, apparently, their portraits on the walls will talk her through the same problem. The preview seems warm and inviting itself.
• Andrzej Sapkowski, Baptism of Fire. This is the third novel in Sapkowski’s Witcher Saga, and the preview seems typical. I can see why these books are so popular in Europe. They’re clear, straightforward sword & sorcery stories that put dark magic and difficult ethical dilemmas into the foreground. They’re what Warhammer Fantasy novels seem to aspire to be.
• Chris Wooding, The Iron Jackal. I’m not sure this is new even in the US, but it’s new to me. It’s the third in a series that I’ve heard described as a “steampunk Firefly,” and the preview fits that description pretty well, which means I’m sold.
• Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender. This is a young adult magical realist novel in which a girl is born with wings. I’m not sure I like how the preview spends so much time on the multi-generational backstory. Fortunately, it delivers the magic right up front very vividly, and the multi-generational part is written well enough that I remain hopeful about the return to the main character.

As part of my ongoing experiment to discover more of what’s up in SF/F as a whole, I’ve tried all the available Amazon previews of new titles linked in SFSignal’s February round-up, and I’ve chosen a few to highlight.

• Andy Weir, The Martian. A fairly gripping survival thriller about an astronaut stranded on Mars. Surprisingly, he’s pretty phlegmatic about it and intends to survive the four years it’ll take to get rescued.
• Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation. This appears to be a weird fiction take on Roadside Picnic. I have minor qualms about the prose, but I love the basic premise of explorers going into extremely mysterious and dangerous terrain that’s been mythologized because of past discoveries and extraordinary failures therein.
• Charles Adler, Wizards, Aliens, and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction. This is sort of like a “physics of Star Trek” book, except it has a good bit more math in it and a much greater focus on written SF, making it more intriguing to me than most pop sci books about SF/F. I could definitely see this being used as a textbook in a “physics for poets” class.
• Sharon Lee, Carousel Sun. The sequel to Carousel Tides, which I have not read yet either. It’s sort of an urban fantasy set at a beach town in Maine and featuring a carousel owner who is also part dryad? OK, well, that’s unusual. It’s also smoothly written and warm in tone, which is typical for Sharon Lee.
• Daniel Price, The Flight of the Silvers. A very cinematic SF story about two sisters saved from death twice by some folks with strange powers. Somehow, I got sort of a Heroes or FlashForward vibe from it, but I may have imagined it—looking at the description, those shows may not reflect the direction the book goes in.
• Ian McDonald, Empress of the Sun. This seems to be an exaggerated and somewhat campy YA SF adventure novel combining steampunk, parallel Earths, and the discovery of an Alderson disk. The first in the series is Planesrunner.
• M. D. Waters, Archetype. A dystopic thriller about a woman whose memory and identity have been manipulated to make her an ideal wife in a society where women are scarce. I suspect the reader’s own experience of gender dynamics may be critical to appreciating it fully, but I can understand it having an audience.
• Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me. Apparently, this is the conclusion to a YA series that’s kind of a big deal, although I had never heard of it. The prose is certainly distinctive, which is an accomplishment, but it’s pushed nearly to the point of self-parody. Still, part of what I’m doing here is learning about new things in SF/F, and when I went back and looked at the preview for the first book, Shatter Me, it became clear the series is at least noteworthy.

Continuing a little experiment, I’ve tried all the available Amazon previews of new SF/F linked in SFSignal’s January round-up, and I’ve chosen a few to highlight.

• Jo Walton, What Makes This Book So Great. I wasn’t fond of the same author’s novel Among Others in part because of the many unilluminating references to familiar books. But here, there are enough things to mentally praise or dispute as you read that it’s like shooting the breeze with an SF/F-loving friend.
• Simon Morden, Arcanum. Very neat insertion of grim fantasy action into an interesting and relatively unused corner of semi-historical Europe.
• Seanan McGuire, Indexing. I like the idea of a folklore index being especially meaningful in an urban fantasy world, and as usual, McGuire’s work is ultra-readable.
• Marko Kloos, Lines of Departure. This is actually the second novel in a series, and the first (Terms of Enlistment) was on the January list too. But I liked the preview of the sequel best. It begins the story at a more intriguing place, and it seems to stand alone.
• Joanna Wiebe, The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant. Maybe it’s just that I like boarding school novels and tend to read them less critically, but I read the 73-page preview (minus a few “not included” pages) without noticing the time passing.
• Karen Traviss, Halo: Mortal Dictata. The author’s Star Wars novels are extremely popular, and apparently, she’s doing well with Halo too, in spite of irritating a few fans with her treatment of one character. I have essentially no previous experience with the setting, but I liked the AI and alien characters here, and I’m persuaded there’s something interesting happening in Halo branded fiction in general (certainly the authors are famous: Greg Bear, William C. Dietz, Tobias Buckell, Eric Nylund, etc.).
• Brian Staveley, The Emperor’s Blades. The prologue and the character names didn’t instill much hope, but later chapters were pretty fun, and this seems to be the fat fantasy that a bunch of folks are excited about this month.

As part of an ongoing exercise, I’ve read the available Amazon previews of new SF/F linked in SFSignal’s December round-up, and I’ve chosen a few to highlight.

• Isabel Greenberg, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth. Thoroughly charming fantasy Earth folklore in graphic novel form. I’ve already picked up a copy, because it’s that neat.
• Ian Tregillis, Something More Than Night. In the future (at a point after weather satellites are no longer operational), an angel with an apparent fondness for noir fiction enigmatically narrates what he’s doing to handle the death of the archangel Gabriel. It’s a premise that wouldn’t normally appeal to me, but the writing in the preview is pretty solid.
• George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, Dangerous Women. The preview features stories by Joe Abercrombie and Megan Abbott, both of whom I like, so this has my attention even if anthology previews are a little tricky to judge.
• Joseph Wallace, Invasive Species. Zoological thriller. The preview reminds me of a Michael Crichton novel and/or 1970s zoological horror flicks, which aren’t my favorite things, but it’s better written than most things out this month.
• David Garnett, Lady into Fox. Originally published in 1922, this is a short novel I had never heard of about a man living with his wife after she has literally turned into a fox. The situation is apparently dealt with in a straightforwardly accepting way, sort of like Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (published in 1915) with less existential angst. Reviews suggest the gender dynamics and ultimate resolution of the story may be problematic, but the preview is both intriguing and well-written.

Continuing a little project from September and October, I’ve read all the available Amazon previews of new SF/F linked in SFSignal’s November round-up, and I’ve chosen a few titles to highlight, below.

Previously, I’ve sort of skirted the issue of what counts as new, because SFSignal seems not to care. I think I’ll go with “either truly recent or at least offering something new to me,” because that gets to the heart of why I’m bothering. I’m delighted that The Invisible Man, Riddley Walker, The Princess Bride, and other classics have new editions, but what I’m doing is casting a wide net to discover new-ish things, not celebrate old stuff.

• Miyuki Miyabe, Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo. Miyabe writing ghost stories full of historical details about Japan? Unquestionably the book on this list that I’m most interested in reading.
• Peter Watts, Beyond the Rift. I was surprised Watts’s short stories hadn’t already been collected somewhere. I’ve read “The Things” and “The Island” before, and I’d be glad to read more by him.
• Gail Carriger, Curtsies & Conspiracies. I’ve heard this YA series is decent. The style seems affected, but it sort of suits the genre, and I liked the strange test the main character took in the preview.
• Rachel Bach, Fortune’s Pawn. This is another one I’d heard positive things about, and the preview was basically fun. It appears to be a space opera written in a breezy contemporary first-person style I associate with urban fantasy.
• Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam. I’ve always been sort of lukewarm about the “Industrial Revolution” Discworld novels (Moving Pictures, Going Postal, etc.). I like them, but not as much as the other sub-series. I’m sure I’ll read this though.
• Daniel Abraham, Balfour and Meriwether in The Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs. Another affectatious Victorian fantasy, but it seems above average and conjures up its world pretty effectively in the preview.
• J. Kathleen Cheney, The Golden City. An urban fantasy featuring selkies and sirens … in Portugal in 1902. The choice of setting alone makes this one stand out. The story appears to have a straightforward crime/mystery plot, but the prose seems OK.
• Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Trade Secret. The preview isn’t really convincing, but I’ll probably read this eventually based on the strength of the Clan Korval sub-series in the same setting, though I’m well aware not all Liaden Universe books are equally good.
• Alex Bledsoe, Swords Are My Business. Kindle omnibus edition of a fantasy noir series I had somehow never encountered, although it seems to be reasonably popular. The preview shows it to be ordinary pulp crime fiction, just with swords, but it seems at least as good as Glen Cook’s Garrett P.I.