Cassandra Clare’s The Ragpicker King (Del Rey), second in the Chronicles of Castellane, debuts on all four print lists compiled here.
Suzanne Collins’s Sunrise on the Reaping, to be published tomorrow, is at the top of the three Amazon lists this morning.
Combat Monsters: Untold Tales of World War II, edited by Henry Herz (Blackstone 979-8874748432, trade paperback, 384pp, $18.99) February 2025
Henry Herz, we learn from the ancillary matter in the new original anthology Combat Monsters, has assembled six other anthologies, and yet I found myself unfamiliar with his name. The answer to my lamentable ignorance is that his prior books are intended for the Young Adult market — ...Read More
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T. Kingfisher’s Swordheart (Bramble) debuts on three lists, in the top 8 of each. And Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author (Morrow) and Samantha Shannon’s The Dark Mirror (Bloomsbury) debut further down on the USA Today list.
The Garden, Nick Newman (Putnam’s 978-0593717738, hardcover, 400pp, $29.00) February 2025
Any SF reader worthy of the name must be conversant with The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, helmed by John Clute, et al. An online treasure house of knowledge, continuously updated and freely accessible, it’s a reference work I have relied on and quoted from innumerable times.
Less well-known is that team’s Encyclopedia of Fantasy. This mammoth ...Read More
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Galaxy Raiders: Abyss, Ian Douglas (Harper Voyager 978-0063205741, trade paperback, 400pp, $18.99) February 2025
I think most folks are well aware of how SF/F/H concepts trickle out into the public domain, and percolate through the minds of citizenry who might never have read a relevant book or even experienced a relevant media presentation. Take “teleportation,” for instance. Once an abstruse notion that meant nothing to the average citizen of ...Read More
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Kristen Cicarelli’s Rebel Witch (Wednesday Books), second in the Crimson Moth series, debuts on three lists, ranking #1 on the young adult lists of both NY Times and Publishers Weekly. And Piper CJ’s The Fox and the Falcon (Bloom), second in the No Other Gods series, debuts on two lists.
This week’s debut is Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Del Rey), third in the Emily Wilde series, ranking in the top 10 of all four print lists compiled here.
The Way Up Is Death, Dan Hanks (Angry Robot 978-1915202949, trade paperback, 368pp, $18.99) January 2025
Dan Hanks’s third novel (I remain sheepishly ignorant of his first two: Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire [2020] and Swashbucklers [2021]) is built around a very familiar concept: the physical, mental, and moral testing, by unknown agents, of a pack of aspirants or seekers or, as in this case, kidnapped ...Read More
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Several debuts this week. TJ Klune’s The Bones Beneath My Skin (Tor) ranks on three lists, as high as #6 at New York Times. An omnibus of the first three Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Random House Worlds) debuts on the same three lists, as high as #5 at Publishers Weekly. And middle-grade fantasy Wings of Starlight by Allison Saft (Disney Press) debuts on three lists, two
Hammajang Luck, Makana Yamamoto (Harper Voyager 978-0063430822, trade paperback, 368pp, $15.99) January 2025
My partner Deborah Newton proclaims that her favorite type of movie is the heist film. I suspect that there are many who share her affection for this genre. From Rififi to The Italian Job, from A Fish Called Wanda to Ocean’s 11, such highly entertaining and suspenseful stories span a huge range and ...Read More
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Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory, Yaroslav Barsukov (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy 978-1647101367, trade paperback, 300pp, $19.99) November 2024
Simply put, this is the most impressive debut novel I have encountered since Simon Jimenez’s The Vanished Birds. It actually has a lot of similarities to that previous exemplar. Not in subject matter—Birds was a postmodern space opera, while Memory is an almost New Weird science fantasy—but in ...Read More
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A new novel by Chloe C. Peñaranda, The Night Is Defying (Bramble), second in her Nytefall trilogy, debuts in the top 10 on three lists. Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm remains at #1 or #2 on all four print lists.
Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm soars to the top of the four print lists compiled here, selling, according to the Publishers Weekly page, over a million units in its first week. Note that three of these four lists rank the “standard edition” separately from the “deluxe limited edition”; this Locus Online page has always compiled only the top ranking version of any particular title in a particular format.
Also of
Grady Hendrix’s Witchcraft for Wayward Girls (Berkley) debuts strongly on print lists, ranking as high as #1 at Publishers Weekly and #2 at New York Times.
Ludluda, Jeff Noon and Steve Beard (Angry Robot 978-1915998316, trade paperback, 400pp, $18.99) December 2024
I am happy to bring readers this exciting news: the genre known as New Weird is currently alive and kicking, despite any rumors of its moribund state, or lack of recent exemplars. The evidence? The fascinating and thrilling duology set before us, Gogmagog and Ludluda.
New Weird—with undeniably deeper roots, not to be ...Read More
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No fewer than nine titles published on January 7, 2025 debut on one or more lists this week, most prominently (on three lists each) Mai Corland’s Four Ruined Realms (Entangled: Red Tower Books) and Fonda Lee & Shannon Lee’s Breath of the Dragon (Wednesday Books). The other seven are by Lily Braun-Arnold, Seanan McGuire, Sue Lynn Tan, Kristin Cast, J.T. Geissinger, Danielle L. Jensen, and Martha Wells.
Depth Charge, edited by Hank Davis & Jamie Ibson (Baen 978-1982193829, trade paperback, 288pp, $18.00) December 2024
Not so very long ago, the fantastika publishing ecology held open a niche for a species known as the “reprint anthology.” These creatures flourished under the expert hands of such caretakers as Damon Knight, Groff Conklin, Isaac Asimov, Richard Lupoff, Judith Merril and scores of other expert compilers. Their reason for living ...Read More
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Disavowed, John E. Stith (Experimenter Publishing Company 979-8888315439, trade paperback, 510pp, $16.99) December 2024
I am extremely happy to see that John Stith’s career is experiencing something like a renaissance. His novel, Reckoning Infinity, the last in a continuous flow of fine books, appeared from Tor in 1997. We did not see another until Pushback in 2018—and that one was non-SF. Twenty-one years constituted a long gap for ...Read More
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Mechanize My Hands to War, Erin K. Wagner (DAW 978-0756419349, hardcover, 320pp, $28.00) December 2024
Erin Wagner’s debut novel is a highly sophisticated tale, constructed in clever fashion, which revolves around the classic motif of human versus nonhuman, specifically man against android. It does not necessarily expand the frontiers of this theme—Wagner’s sociological and technological speculations about androids and their uses hew pretty closely to the standard SF textbook, ...Read More
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With publication due a week from tomorrow, Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm remains at or near the top of the three Amazon lists today.
Xiran Jay Zhao’s Heavenly Tyrant (Tundra), sequel to Iron Window (2021), debuts on two lists, ranking #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover list, and #10 on the combined USA Today list.
» NY Times, 27 Dec 2024: The Hottest Trend in Publishing: Books You Can Judge by Their Cover, subtitled “Elaborately designed books with patterned edges and other effects started as a trend in romance and fantasy, and have now spread throughout the publishing industry.” (Discussing examples like Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing and her upcoming Onyx Storm.)
» Ted Chiang, The Humanist.com, 4 Dec 2024: The Distinction Between Imaginary Science ...Read More
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The Final Orchard, C.J. Rivera (Angry Robot 978-1915998262, trade paperback, 400pp, $18.99) November 2024
As her CV informs us: until now, C.J. Rivera’s creative output has occurred in media other than print, making this not only her debut novel, but apparently her debut prose fiction of any sort. (ISFDB believes so too.) But we need fear not, because her skills earned elsewhere translate to a rousing good tale benefiting ...Read More
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Suite 13, David J. Schow (Subterranean 978-1645241621, hardcover, 384pp, $45.00) November 2024
When I reviewed Cixin Liu’s story collection A View from the Stars a few months ago, I made a big deal of how Liu had pulled a radical move by issuing a hybrid volume of fiction and non-fiction. Well, now comes an identical blend from master of shocks David Schow, half tales, half essays. There must be ...Read More
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Already ranking on Amazon bestseller lists for 40 weeks now, and with publication due on January 21st, Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm creeps upwards on the three Amazon lists this week, ranking #1 on Amazon.com this morning.
Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth drops a notch or two on the four print lists compiled here, but remains solidly in the top 10 on all of them.
Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth (Tor), fifth volume in his Stormlight Archive, debuts strongly on print lists, ranking #1 on three of them and #2 on the fourth.
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked returns to fiction hardcover bestseller lists in a Collector’s Edition with green sprayed edges (William Morrow), ranking as high as #10 on the NY Times list. Two other books return to lists in similar special editions: R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War Collector’s Edition and Harley Laroux’s Her Soul to Take: Deluxe Special Edition (Kensington).
Again this week two fantasy novels debut on three lists each: Carissa Broadbent’s The Songbird & the Heart of Stone (Bramble), ranking as high as #3 on two lists; and Melissa Landers’s The Half King (Entangled: Red Tower Books), ranking as high as #12 on two lists.
Two fantasy novels debut this week: Mary E. Pearson’s The Courting of Bristol Keats (Flatiron), and Katee Robert’s Court of the Vampire Queen (Sourcebooks Casablanca), both ranking on three print lists.
The trade paperback edition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Anchor) returned to lists last week and this, ranking as high as #8 on the Los Angeles Times paperback fiction list.
A trend this past year has been for publishers to issue new hardcover “deluxe” editions of books. This week’s examples are Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (both Tor). The new editions rank on three lists, as high as #12.
Debuts of original books this week are by Kerri Maniscalco, ranking #2 on two lists, and M.L. Wang, ranking #9 on two lists.
