FANTASY & SCI-FI
THE TANGLED LANDS (Head of Zeus £18.99) Magic’s a thorny problem in this arabian Nights dystopia. The price for each spell is a burgeoning tangle of lethal brambles that besieges cities, chokes fields and drugs careless humans into a coma. it’s the backdrop for a story cycle of high life and low, woven by two authors at the top of their game.
Each tale pulses with the siren call of power, the throb of remorse and dreams of redemption.
Here’s a magician building an alchemical, bramble-blasting blunderbuss, but getting tangled up in power politics; a brother searching for his comatose sister in the city’s brothels; a blacksmith’s daughter daring to speak truth to power; and (my favourite) a vengeful mother who runs a butcher’s shop, but finds her calling as an axe-wielding warrior. EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU (Orbit £14.99) FrEya might have lost her beloved sister, seen her boyfriend disappear into a world of immersive porn and marooned herself in a deadend job, but there’s always her online life for comfort.
it’s not just haptic beanbags adapting to her mood: smart specs drape drab cityscapes in pixelated foliage, while her digital assistant, an always-on alexa, anticipates her every whim.
But this dazzlingly realised mystery debut raises knotty issues.
The online assistant is an ai ghost, garnered from Freya’s browsing history and with the voice and personality of her sister who left home one day, never to return. is this disembodied presence real in some way, or merely a projection of Freya’s deepest desires?
Most importantly, can it solve the mystery of its own disappearance and possible murder? THE WOLF (Wildfire £16.99) THE anakim — austere, warlike, giant northerners — are under attack from the slightly less serious and rather more numerous sutherners. after the awful australs win a surprise away victory, it gets truly grim up north as the proud anakim descend into vicious infighting and teeter on the brink of civil war.
The story follows the fortunes of young roper, Black Lord of the anakim by inheritance, if not by right.
a power struggle ensues between him and Uvoren, the mightier warrior of the two...but who makes for a better leader?
roper must win first a battle of wits in his rocky fortress, then the hearts and minds of his legions, before taking on the greatest army ever mustered for a final, gore-spattered climax.