Weekly Bestsellers, 29 April 2024
Slipping only a bit in the rankings, Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar remains among the top 10 fiction hardcovers on all four print lists compiled here.
Slipping only a bit in the rankings, Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar remains among the top 10 fiction hardcovers on all four print lists compiled here.
A View from the Stars, Cixin Liu (Tor 978-1250292117, hardcover, 224pp, $27.99) April 2024
Most authors segregate their fiction from their non-fiction, compiling the two classes of work into separate collections. I always recall one exception I read as a teen, a minor Frederik Pohl volume titled Digits & Dastards, which featured two essays along with the stories. And I suppose that Harlan Ellison’s inclusion of long anecdotal ...Read More
Read moreIn Universes, Emet North (Harper 978-0063314870, hardcover, 240pp, $26.99) April 2024
I never would have predicted that the fantastika genre would be graced in 2024 with a novel that resonated so vibrantly with two classics from the 1970s: Joanna Russ’s The Female Man and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. And yet that is precisely the vibe that I feel confident in proclaiming emanates from Emet ...Read More
Read moreLeigh Bardugo’s standalone fantasy novel The Familiar (Flatiron) debuts strongly, ranking #1 or #2 on all four print lists compiled here. Further down the lists is one other debut: Hannah Whitten’s The Hemlock Queen (Orbit), second in her Nightshade Crown series, ranking as high as #14 on the NYT list.
Three titles debut on lists this week. Kelly Andrew’s Your Blood, My Bones (Scholastic) ranks #9 on the New York Times‘ Young Adult Hardcover list; F.T. Lukens’s Otherworldly (McElderry) is #10 on the same list; and Jennifer Thorne’s Diavola (Tor Nightfire) is #114 on the USA Today list.
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Angel of Indian Lake (Saga), third in his Indian Lake Trilogy, debuts on two lists this week.
The third book in Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series, Onyx Storm (Entangled: Red Tower Books), is now available on the Amazon sites for pre-publication sales — it will be published Jan. 21, 2025. This morning it ranks #1 on Amazon.com and Amazon Canada, #10 on Amazon UK.
Those Beyond the Wall, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey 978-0593497500, hardcover, 384pp, $28.99) March 2024
It seems safe to say that the evergreen SF trope of a high-tech city or culture besieged by low-tech outsiders or “barbarians” goes back at least to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) with its depiction of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Of course, Wells had myriad historical examples to inspire his conception, ...Read More
Read moreJay Kristoff’s Empire of the Damned (St. Martin’s), sequel to his Empire of the Vampire (2021), debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #4 on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly lists.
Meanwhile, just as editions of Frank Herbert’s Dune have returned to bestseller lists in recent weeks, the trade paperback of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem ranks on several lists today, as high as #7 on the
The Morningside, Téa Obreht (Random House 978-1984855503, hardcover, 304pp, $20.00) March 2024
Is the New Weird still a going concern? Dating roughly from the turn of the century (China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station is the Monolith that enlightened the hominid readers), with the term itself harking to the year 2002 (courtesy of M. John Harrison), the subgenre with famously leaky borders and hazy definitions is approaching its 25th birthday. ...Read More
Read moreThe Stars Turned Inside Out, Nova Jacobs (Atria 978-1668018545, hardcover, 320pp, $27.99) March 2024
With the loss (hopefully not permanent) of Gregory Benford’s talents to a medical incident a bit over a year ago, the SF field was deprived of perhaps the most accomplished voice in depicting the reality of “doing science.” His masterpiece, Timescape, is of course the most salient example of that mode, but the steeped-in-the-academy-and-the-laboratory ...Read More
Read more» Slate, Shasha Leonard, 18 Mar 2024: Two Decades in, the Queen of Faerie Fantasy Is Doing Just Fine, subtitled “Author Holly Black reflects on the rise of ‘romantasy’ novels, explicit sex scenes, and BookTok.”
» The New Yorker, Katy Waldman, 17 Mar 2024: Kelly Link Is Committed to the Fantastic, subtitled “The MacArthur-winning author on the worthwhile frivolity of the fantasy genre, how magic is and is ...Read More
Read moreHolly Black’s The Prisoner’s Throne (Little, Brown), second book in her Elfhame series following The Stolen Heir, debuts on three lists, ranking #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover list. All ten books on that list, this week, are genre titles.
A fantasy novel by Danielle L. Jensen, A Fate Inked in Blood (Del Rey), debuts at #3 on both the USA Today and Publishers Weekly lists.
Tomorrow’s Children, Daniel Polansky (Angry Robot 978-1915202857, trade paperback, 384pp, $18.99) February 2024
Postapocalypse tales don’t get any grimmer or funnier, more slambang or more nuanced, more hopeful or more despairing, than Daniel Polansky’s Tomorrow’s Children. If that catalog of virtues sounds oxymoronic, please restrain your doubts. Polansky’s accomplished novel is large and contains multitudes, and foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind.
This is my ...Read More
Read moreSeveral titles and sets of Frank Herbert’s series that begins with Dune (Ace), including a three-book boxed set and a six-book boxed set, are selling on the Amazon sites today. Two of them rank as high as #3.
Equimedian, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Hex 979-8988082712, hardcover, 326pp, $31.99) February 2024
I would venture to guess that most SF fans know Alvaro Zinos-Amaro as one of our best critics and interviewers. Case in point is his recent volume, Being Michael Swanwick, which I reviewed on this platform just a short time ago. But like Green Arrow or Hawkeye, the man has more than one arrow in his quiver. (I ...Read More
Read moreBeggar’s Sky, Wil McCarthy (Baen 978-1982193188, hardcover, 320pp, $28.00) February 2024
Wil McCarthy has had an atypical career that is almost neatly bifurcated. He came out of the gate strong with a duology, Aggressor Six, from 1994-1996. With the dawn of a new century, he delivered an even better, more mature and inventive series, Queendom of Sol (2000-2005). But then, for whatever reason, he fell more or less ...Read More
Read more» Vox, Constance Grady, 27 Feb 2024: Why half the people you know are obsessed with this book series, subtitled “With A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas has established herself as the reigning queen of romantasy.”
» The New Yorker, Rivka Galchen, 27 Feb 2024: Thinking About A.I. with Stanisław Lem, subtitled “The science-fiction writer didn’t live to see ChatGPT, but he foresaw so much ...Read More
Read moreKelly Link’s The Book of Love (Random House) debuts on two lists this week, ranking as high as #2 at the L.A. Times. And T. Kingfisher’s What Feasts at Night (Tor Nightfire) debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #9 at Publishers Weekly.
Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow slips out of first place on the four print lists compiled here, but remains in the top 10 on all of them, and ahead of the two Rebecca Yarros novels.
Exordia, Seth Dickinson (Tordotcom 978-1250233011, hardcover, 544pp, $29.99) January 2024
Seth Dickinson’s Baru Cormorant trilogy, known collectively as The Masquerade, was a splashy debut, earning him many accolades and fans. So when his next book, “a gonzo space opera and alien techno-thriller” titled Exordia, was announced in 2018, excitement grew. Six years later, after some public wistful wondering as to when the book would actually appear, Exordia finally ...Read More
Read moreThe Best Horror of the Year: Volume Fifteen, edited by Ellen Datlow (Night Shade 978-1949102727, trade paperback, 432pp, $19.99) January 2024
“Curation” is an overworked word these days, when, on the internet, everything from a collection of Pez dispensers to an Instagram stream of dinner photos is deemed to be “curated.” And yet there’s really no better term to be applied to an assemblage of art put together by ...Read More
Read more» NY Times: Amal El-Mohtar reviews Kelly Link’s The Book of Love
» Washington Post: Ron Charles reviews Kelly Link’s The Book of Love
» Esquire: Adam Morgan interviews Kelly Link
» Business Insider: Inside the rise of Sarah J. Maas, the best-selling author who’s taking the “romantasy” genre to the next level
» NY Times: Gabino Iglesias reviews Emily Ruth Verona, Jenny Kiefer, Christopher Golden, and Tlotlo Tsamaase ...Read More
Read moreAs anticipated, Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury), third in the Crescent City series, debuts strongly — ranking at #1 — on all four print lists compiled here.
The Glass Box, J. Michael Straczynski (Blackstone 979-8212007795, hardcover, 350pp, $25.99) January 2024
We are lucky that Mr. Straczynski—hereafter, the familiar JMS—has taken some time off from his comics and television work to gift us with a fine new novel. Considering also his heavy duties administering the estate of Harlan Ellison—I for one eagerly await the reprinting of Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, and the birth of ...Read More
Read morePublished last Tuesday, Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury), third in the Crescent City series, still ranks on the Amazon lists this morning; expect it on the print lists next week.
Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Del Rey), second in her Emily Wilde series, debuts strongly on all four print lists compiled here.
Meanwhile, Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow, third in her Crescent City series, which has ranked on this page for nearly four months with Amazon pre-publication orders, is due for actual publication tomorrow.
Two new novels debut this week: Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Complex (Tor), conclusion of her Atlas trilogy; and Aurora Ascher’s Sanctuary of the Shadow (Entangled: Red Tower), first book in her Elemental Emergence series.
The Guardian: Lisa Tuttle reviews Aliya Whiteley, Alice McIlroy, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, Emma Hinds, and Maud Woolf
Scott Edelman dines with Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Pat Murphy
Washington Post, 13 Jan 2024: A 1993 dystopian novel imagined the world in 2024. It’s eerily accurate. — George Bass on Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ ...Read More
Read moreRebecca Ross’s Ruthless Vows (Wednesday Books) is #1 on the YA lists of both New York Times and Publishers Weekly this week.
Short, Michael Blumlein (Subterranean Press 978-1645241522, hardcover, 424pp, $45.00) December 2023
Long, Michael Blumlein (Subterranean Press 978-1645241539, hardcover, 360pp, $45.00) December 2023
For many years, I saw Michael Blumlein regularly at Readercon. We had pleasant chats, for he was congenial, simpatico, funny, and smart. Then one year I asked him if he were returning to the West Coast immediately after the con. “No, we’re going to Rhode Island ...Read More
Read more