The SF Site: New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy

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The Church of Dead Girls
Stephen Dobyns
Henry Holt & Company hard cover
The latest from the talented author of The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini and Cemetery Night is one of this month's "New and Noteworthy" titles. Aurelius is an upstate New York town rocked by the vicious, seemingly random killing of a woman. Shortly thereafter, a young girl vanishes, and the townspeople quickly begin to mistrust outsiders. When a second girl disappears, even neighbors begin to eye each other with suspicion. But it's not until a third child goes missing that the sleepy little town awakens to a full-blown nightmare. Stephen King noted, "If ever there was a tale for a moonless night, a high wind, and a creaking floor, this is it... I don't expect to read a more frightening novel this year."

Art: Gerald DiMaccio

Reave the Just and Other Tales
Stephen R. Donaldson
Bantam Spectra (hardcover, 370 pages, $23.95 US/$35.95 Can)
Publication date: January 12, 1999
Second collection of fantasy tales from the author of the famed Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and the SF series The Gap, his first since 1983's Daughter of Regals. Contains five previously published stories and novellas and three brand new tales of fantasy, plus a new introduction by the author.

The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die
Stephen R. Donaldson
Bantam Spectra paperback
The conclusion of the five volume Gap saga--and by the expressive jacket (I mean, how do you condense a description of a Donaldson book), it sounds like an explosive finale.

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
Emma Donoghue
HarperCollins hard cover
A collection of thirteen linked stories that give old fairy tales a new twist. For young adults.

Black Wine
Candas Jane Dorsey
Tor (reprint, trade paperback
Winner of the 1997 William J. Crawford Memorial Award for first fantasy novel. Set on a primeval, barbaric world, Black Wine follows five generations of women, from a cruel tyrant to her great-great-granddaughter, who toils in a warehouse. From slave dens to merchant cities to isolated mountains, Dorsey's first novel covers a lot of ground as it explores questions of gender, identity, and freedom.

Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt
Carole Nelson Douglas
Forge (hardcover, 383 pages, $23.95 US/$32.95 Canada)
Publication date: July 14, 1998
I'll admit I puzzled over this one for a moment or two. Maybe someone in the Tor shipping department slipped coffee on the reviewer's list, and a huge crate of cookbooks is now on its way too. But Nelson Douglas' novels of Midnight Louie, the black tomcat detective with a nose for the notorious, have more then enough fantasy and mystery elements to snag our interest -- and in fact they have a rather large crossover audience in both genres. Plus, they're a lot of fun, and that never hurts. The ninth novel in the series finds Louie back in Las Vegas after a trip to the Big Apple, where he witnesses death on the Nile when the battling Egyptian barges outside the Oasis Hotel force a dead body to the surface.

Cat in a Diamond Dazzle
Carole Nelson Douglas
Tor paperback
Follow that feline sleuth, Midnight Louie, as he helps Temple Barr through murder and mayhem at a romance novel convention.

Luna Marine (The Heritage Trilogy, Book 2)
Ian Douglas
Avon/Eos (paperback, 402 pages, $5.99/$7.99 Can)
Publication date: June 8, 1999
The Heritage Trilogy began with Semper Mars last year, the opening volume in a tale of military adventure and alternate history on Mars. "In the year 2040, scientists unearth something astonishing in the subterranean ruins of a long-dead city on Mars: startling evidence of an alternate history that threatens to split humanity into opposing factions and plunge the Earth into chaos and war. The Marine Mars Expeditionary Force of the USMC was dispatched to the Red Planet to protect American civilians threatened by those who would devastate a world to keep a shocking, half-million-year-old secret buried in the Martian dust."

Semper Mars (The Heritage Trilogy, Book One)
Ian Douglas
Avon/EOS paperback
A first novel with a near-future setting and an intriguing sounding mystery. "In the year 2040, scientists unearth something astonishing in the subterranean ruins of a long-dead city on Mars: startling evidence of an alternate history that threatens to split humanity into opposing factions and plunge the Earth into chaos and war. And now the Marine Mars Expeditionary Force of the USMC has been dispatched to the Red Planet to protect, with lethal force if necessary, American civilians and interests suddenly threatened by great powers who would devastate a world to keep a shocking, half-million-year-old secret buried in the Martian dust." Book one of three.

Glaice
L. Warren Douglas
Penguin/ROC paperback

Stepwater: An Arbiter Tale
L. Warren Douglas
Roc paperback
Ex-Del Rey Discovery author presents us with a novel that "begins an incredible series that chronicles genengineered humans' battle for survival on alian planets". Let us know whether you agree.

Alien Voices: The Lost World
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Simon & Schuster Audio
The latest all-star dramatization from Simon & Schuster's Alien Voices line includes Leonard Nimoy, John de Lancie, Ethan Philips and many others as they bring to life Conan Doyle's famous story of an expedition to a volcanic plateau high over the vast Amazon rain forest. Trapped and menaced by hungry dinosaurs, it soons looks as though the expedition may never return. Professor Challenger is Conan Doyle's other famous character (after Sherlock Holmes), and if you have the patience to endure his racist behavior toward non-whites, you'll find this an engaging story.

The Stars Asunder
Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald
Tor (hardcover, 320 pages, $24.95)
Publication date: June, 1999
The first hardcover installment in the The Mageworlds series, from the co-authors of The Long Hunt and Knight's Wyrd. "The star systems of the Mageworlds are linked by magic. Only when trained Mages have found a Way to a new world can the great colonizing and trading starships follow. But beyond the furthest worlds is the great gap, beyond which, hint the legends, lie vast, rich human worlds long lost to the Mages' trade. Now the most powerful Mage-circle ever is determined to walk to those worlds, to reunite humanity's sundered branches and make a fortune in the process. And young Arekhon sus-Khalgath, scion of the most powerful of the clans of starship builders, has left his inheritance to join them. But immense forces are arrayed against them. Blood will be spilled, and dynasties thrown down, before the worlds of mankind are again united. For the first time in living memory, the Mages will go to war--with themselves." "No one -- no one -- writes big, chewy space opera like the husband-and-wife team of Doyle and Macdonald" � Jane Yolen.
Review by Rich Horton

Knight's Wyrd
Debra Doyle & James D. MacDonald
Harcourt Brace/Magic Carpet paperback
Paperback reprint of 1992 fantasy from the prolific husband-and-wife partnership of Doyle and MacDonald. A wizard predicts Will Odosson will die within a year, so naturally he seeks out dangerous adventures.

The Long Hunt
Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald
Tor paperback
Volume five in the Mageworlds is set 20 years after the events of the original trilogy and the Second Magewar. Some wag wondered: Next Generation of the Next Generation?

Books edited by Gardner Dozois

Books by David Drake

Red Queen
irk Draulens, Sam Garrett (Translator)
St. Martin's hard cover
Literary fantasy in translation from St. Martin's Press.

Babylon 5 Book #9: To Dream in the City of Sorrows
Kathryn M. Drennan
Dell
Former Babylon 5 commander Jeffrey Sinclair is one of the first humans to learn of the Shadows, the ancient race seeking the destruction of the galaxy. But Sinclair has also discovered a startling secret: according to prophecy, he is the linchpin in the plan to stop them. Now Sinclair is asked to revive the legendary Minbari warrior group, the Rangers, but it may cost him his one chance to love...and his life.

The Two Georges
Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove
Tor paperback
Alternate history of a present day America where George Washington and George III made peace. We know Turtledove is a sure bet, but why would an Oscar winning actor (good or bad depending on your opinion) guarantee sales?

Books by Diane Duane

My Soul to Keep
Tananarive Due
HarperCollins hard cover
5000 years ago in Abyssinia, Dawit of Lalibela was inducted into a secret society called The Immortals. Dawit is now called David and lives in Miami, his blood so rich with T-cells that no disease or injury -- including age -- can kill him. When Jessica meets and marries David, she finds he is everything she wants in a family man: smart, thoughtful, and ever youthful. But when people close to her begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession. From the author of The Between.

Art: Hal Just

The Gilded Chain (The King's Blades, Volume 1)
Dave Duncan
Avon EOS (hardcover, 338 pages, $23 US/$30 Can)
Publication date: October 7, 1998
Dave Duncan made his reputation with epic sword-and-sorcery adventure, in such fantasy series as A Handful of Men and The Seventh Sword. Following his success with The Great Game trilogy, he new returns to S&S with the story of a brilliant swordsman trained from early childhood to take his place among the King's elite corps of bodyguards in a dangerously uncertain realm. "Audaciously taking as his own name of Kingdom's most fabled champion of long ago, Durandel sees his lifelong dream of serving his liege dashed to bits when he is bonded for life, not to his beloved king, but to an effete noble fop. But Destiny has inscrutable plans for this able young knight in an ancient, isolated city in a land far from the blood intrigues of the perilous court. On a mission that promises glory and great treasures, grisly secrets of opulence and immortality will be revealed--while countless betrayals and untold horrors combine to threaten a remarkable future prophesied for a warrior who could be the mightiest hero in the history of the monarchy."
Review by Wayne MacLaurin

Future Indefinite (The Great Game, Book III)
Dave Duncan
Avon EOS (reprint, paperback, 476 pages, $6.50 US/$8.50 Can)
Publication date: September 9, 1998 (First Printing: August 1997)
The concluding volume to Duncan's fantasy trilogy The Great Game (following Past Imperative and Present Tense) is "tightly written, intelligent, and original." (Booklist). SF Site senior editor Wayne MacLaurin had a look at the entire series when this volume appeared in hardcover. "Foretold to help the beleaguered natives of Nextdoor overthrow their oppressive godlike rulers, Edward Exeter must destroy the god known as Zath, whose source of strength is in human sacrifice."
Series Review: The Great Game by Wayne MacLaurin

Present Tense (The Great Game, Vol. 2)
Dave Duncan
AvoNova
Edward Exeter is trapped in the alternate reality of "Nextdoor" where he's been pressed into military service. Hounded at every turn by the five evil gods who've ruled this realm for centuries, Edward at last discovers that he is the "Liberator" prophesized by legend, the man who will free the downtrodden citizens of Nextdoor.
Series Review

The Cursed
Dave Duncan
Del Rey paperback
Intriguing twists on some fantasy archetypes, Duncan has written a moving novel of love and succession.

Gallows Hill
Lois Duncan
Delacorte hard cover
Seventeen-year-old Sarah takes a job in a fortune-telling booth at a school carnival, only to find that she sometimes can really see the future. Some of the other students are more than a little suspicious of her new talent, however.

Full Tide of Night
J.R. Dunn
Avon/Eos (reprint, paperback, 312 pages, $5.99/$7.99 Can)
Publication date: July 6, 1999 (First Edition: August 1998)
Dunn's third novel, following the highly regarded Days of Cain (1997) and This Side of Judgment (1994), is inspired by John Webster's tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. "One starship escaped the holocaust that consumed the Earth, and fled across the light-years to ice-locked Midgard, a planet barely suited to human life. Now, more than a century later, life is a struggle for the descendants of the first colonists, Earth is but a wisp of memory, and an alienated group marches against the ageless, forbidding ruler Lady Amalfi, determined to command their own destinies. But the rebels are divided, and a starship is on its way from Earth, and there will be no hope for any of them if the dreaded Erinye -- the jealous ghosts who destroyed all life on Earth -- are on board."

Days of Cain
J. R. Dunn
Avon/EOS paperback
Paperback reprint of one of the most intriguing and controversial novels of last year. Gaspar James is a "monitor," a temporal agent whose job is to guard the historical integrity of the 24th century. But when one of his trainees vanishes into the most violent years of the 20th century, Gaspar finds himself faced with a heartbreaking moral dilemma. From the author of This Side of Judgement and the upcoming Full Tide of Night. Note the special introductory price of $3.99.

Days of Cain
J. R. Dunn
Avon Books hard cover, trade paper
New novel from the author of This Side of Judgment. When a rogue time monitor heads into the past to stop the Holocaust, bringing enough heavy ordinance with her to do the job, her mentor and friend finds himself ordered to stop her at all costs. With a strong cast of characters past and future, Nazi and Jew, this promises to be one of the most discussed novels of the year.

This Side of Judgment
J.R. Dunn
Roc paperback
"A solid near-future adventure thriller that combines the elements of both the Fugitive and Frankenstein" (Publishers Weekly)

Art: Jason Van Hollander

Dragonfly
Frederic S. Durbin
Arkham House (hardcover, 298 pages, $22.95 US)
Publication date: October, 1999
Arkham House doesn't publish much these days, but when they do it's something special. This debut novel of dark fantasy looks like it will fit right in with the wonderful legacy of material AH has published through the decades. "As Hallowe'en approaches, strange things are happening in the basement of Uncle Henry's funeral parlor, where he lives with his 10-year-old niece Bridget Ann (nicknamed "Dragonfly"). Concerned that dark forces are at work, Uncle Henry summons Mothkin, a hunter, to investigate. Exploring the basement Mothkin and Dragonfly find a doorway to a spooky underground world they will soon come to know as Harvest Moon, a place where every man and woman is enslaved by the evil master Samuel Hain, a vile despot who takes great pride in having started the black plague in the 13th century..."

Changespell
Doranna Durgin
Baen paperback
Jess has at last been returned to her own world of Camolen, where she sometimes takes the shape a human called Jess and is sometimes a horse called Lady. Now she must come to terms with the new emotions she feesl for her Rider, the man she's loved since she was a foal. But new events on Camolen soon threaten to demand all of her attention: where once she was unique as a were-horse, someone with a dark purpose is changing horses and other animals into humans...

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