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The books coming out in 2015

AncalagonTheBlack

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The Empire Ascendant: Worldbreaker Saga #2 by Kameron Hurley (Angry Robot Books)
On Sale Date: July 7, 2015

When the dark star of the cataclysm ascends, one empire will rise… and many will perish.
Every two thousand years, the dark star Oma appears in the night sky, bringing with it a tide of death and destruction. Tattered rifts open between worlds; great empires are born, and mighty rulers die. Whole nations succumb to madness. And those who survive must contend with friends and enemies newly imbued with bloody powers.
The kingdom of Saiduan already lies in ruin, decimated by invaders from another world who share the faces of those they seek to destroy. Now the nation of Dhai is under siege by the same force. Their only hope for survival lies in the hands of an illegitimate ruler warring with his wife and former lover for control of the nation’s allegiance.
As the foreign Empire spreads across the world like a disease, one of their former allies takes up her own Empress’s sword again to unseat them, and two enslaved scholars begin a treacherous journey home with what they hope is the key to the Empire’s undoing.
But when the enemy you must overcome shares your own face, who can be trusted?
Story Locale: Two parallel fantasy worlds
Series Overview: Every two thousand years, two parallel worlds line up, allowing travel between them (through immense rituals of blood sacrifice). But when the convergence ends, only one of those words can survive.

Dave vs. the Monsters by John Birmingham (Del Rey)
On Sale Date: March 31, 2015

From one of Del Rey’s most enduringly popular authors comes an action-packed new back-to-back urban fantasy series for fans of Jim Butcher and Kevin Hearne. The Dresden Files meets Dirty Jobs in this thrilling series!
John Birmingham is the master of alternate history adventure—and now he’s mastered a new genre with the volcanically fast-paced and wildly inventive Dave Hooper urban fantasy series. The series is anchored by a thrilling high concept: An oil rig opens a rift deep in the ocean that unleashes terrifying monsters into the world. But perhaps its coolest asset is its hero, Dave Hooper, a tough, bleakly funny, down-on-his luck oil rig worker with an unlikely destiny as a monster-slayer and world savior! With a memorable concept and an unforgettable new hero, the Dave Hooper series will satisfy Birmingham’s large fanbase and convert a new legion of devoted fans.
Story Locale: New Orleans, LA
Series Overview: Dave Hooper must fight monsters that have been unleashed from a rift created by his oil rig.

The Last Temptation of Dave by John Birmingham (Del Rey)
On Sale Date: April 28, 2015
First blurbs from Pyr Books:
The Chart of Tomorrows by Chris Willrich

The poet Persimmon Gaunt and the thief Imago Bone had sought only to retire from adventuring and start a family, but they never reckoned on their baby becoming the chosen vessel of the mystical energies of a distant Eastern land. With their son Innocence hunted by various factions hoping to use him as a tool, they kept him safe at the cost of trapping him in a pocket dimension of accelerated time.
Now free, the thirteen-year-old Innocence has rejected his parents and his “destiny” and has made dangerous friends in a barbaric Western land of dragon-prowed ships and rugged fjords. Desperately, Gaunt and Bone seek to track him down, along with their companion Snow Pine and her daughter A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, who was once trapped with Innocence too.
But as the nomadic Karvaks and their war-balloons strike west, and a troll-king spins his webs, and Joy is herself chosen by the spirit of the very land Innocence has fled to, Gaunt and Bone find themselves at the heart of a vast struggle—and their own son is emerging from that conflict as a force of evil. To save him and everything they know, they turn to a dangerous magical book, The Chart of Tomorrows, that reveals pathways through time. Upon the treacherous seas of history, Gaunt and Bone must face the darkness in each other’s pasts, in order to rescue their future.
Story Locale: A snowy, mountainous realm inspired by Scandinavian myths, sagas, and folklore, where Gaunt and Bone have to contend with warriors and trolls, old gods, and strange magic.
Series Overview: A sword-and-sorcery sequence of epic landscapes and personal stakes, in which the rogues Gaunt and Bone battle bizarre foes and cross a wondrous continent, all to claim the elusive prize of settling down and starting a family

The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats by Mark Hodder

Sir Richard Francis Burton’s expedition has returned from the future, bringing with it knowledge of technologies that must remain secret if history is to proceed as it should. However, when one of his colleagues turns rogue, the secret falls into the hands of the very people most likely to misuse it.
Betrayed, Burton and Swinburne watch in horror as the Empire’s elite employ the technology to secure their positions of privilege. When London’s parks are transformed into concentration camps, artists and philosophers are declared enemies of the State, and propaganda proliferates, the king’s agent finds himself on the wrong side of—the king!
Can Burton and his band of hunted revolutionaries overthrow an apparently indestructible and immortal autocrat…and if so, at what personal cost?
The Spring Heeled Jack saga reaches its explosive conclusion!
Story Locale: A steampunk Victorian London and world beyond
Series Overview: A wildly imaginative alternate history set in motion by the assassination of Queen Victoria where Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Swinburne serve as the Holmes and Watson in a series of madcap and macabre mysteries.

Hexed: The Sisters of Witchdown by Michael Alan Nelson (Pyr)
On Sale Date: May 5, 2015

THE FIRST NOVEL BASED ON THE POPULAR HEXED COMIC FROM BOOM! STUDIOS
Luci Jenifer Inacio das Neves, Lucifer for short, isn’t your typical teenaged girl. She’s a thief who survives by stealing bad things from bad people in the magical and mystical underworld hidden beneath our own. So when a policeman’s daughter, Gina, is kidnapped by a force he can’t explain, Lucifer is the only one who has a chance at getting his daughter back.
With the unsolicited help of Gina’s friends, including Gina’s boyfriend David, Lucifer’s investigation leads to the unfortunate truth of the kidnapping. Gina was taken to an otherworldly dimension by a creature of unspeakable evil: one of the Seven Sisters of Witchdown. Against all odds, Lucifer must use every magical tool hidden in her trick bag to steal her way into the Shade and bring Gina back before the Sister sacrifices her for her own dark ends. But the closer Lucifer gets to Gina, the closer she gets to David. And David to her. Lucifer must risk her life by confronting demons, witches, and the cruel demigoddess controlling her destiny - all to save the one girl who stands in the way of Lucifer finally finding love.
Story Locale: An urban setting in which magic exists just under the surface of the normal world
Series Overview: In this YA urban fantasy in the style of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the (age appropriate) irreverence of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, the young thief Lucifer survives by stealing magical items from dangerous entities, while treading a fine line between our world and a hidden realm. Along the way she makes powerful allies and enemies, both human and other.

Dirty in Cashmere by Peter Plate (Seven Stories Press)
On Sale Date: July 14, 2015

Set in post-apocalyptic San Francisco, with nuclear contamination from Japan looming at California’s shores, this slim noir tale takes us into the mind of a nineteen-year-old self-described oracle whose own future is the only one he can’t predict.
Dirty in Cashmere follows Ricky through a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, a city dealing with the fall-out from a nuclear disaster in Japan, after which massive contamination spread across the Pacific Ocean to California. He’s set adrift in a world in which Life—the street name of an experimental radiation vaccine—is the currency by which both criminal enterprises and survival are won. As he squats in abandoned houses and brands himself as an “oracle” who can see the future—first for nefarious purposes, then for more noble ones—Ricky wonders whether there isn’t a bigger picture out there, one that maybe he can’t focus on or perhaps one that someone’s hiding from him. And as his skills as an oracle are called upon by more powerful forces, it becomes clear that the one thing Ricky wants most to predict—his own future—is the only thing impervious to his newfound insights.
Ricky Bellamy is shot in the head by a vigilante at the corner of Geneva and Mission in San Francisco. He’s declared brain-dead and hooked up to life support, but ten months later he emerges from his coma. The bullet stays lodged in his head—inoperable, the doctors say—but with it comes what Ricky calls “visions, a third eye.”

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AncalagonTheBlack Council Member

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Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
On Sale Date: April 14, 2015

Noah’s Ark . . . 30,000 years after the flood.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anatham, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting new science fiction epic that tells of global disaster, the near-extinction of all life on Earth, and the seven valiant survivors who battle against all odds to save the human race.

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Calibandar Council Member

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Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow/HarperCollins)

On Sale Date: April 14, 2015

It will focus on 7 females, specifically. Hence the title, "Seveneves".

That does have me less excited about this book, even though the premise of "Noah's Ark, thousands of years later" is cool.

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Jussi Council Member

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Blurb for Neal Stephenson's Seveneves:

The critically acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem and Cryptonomicon, returns with an epic sociopolitical-military thriller set 30,000 years in the future when seven distinct human subspecies—our descendants—attempt to recolonize the Earth

Months after our moon explodes, meteorite storms begin to pummel the Earth, rendering the planet uninhabitable. Before the deluge begins, the world’s nations transport as many humans as they can to the International Space Station, which is expanded to become a genetic Noah’s ark, stocked with seeds, DNA records, frozen sperm and embryos, and genetic engineering equipment.

But the ISS is in danger itself; losing communication with Earth, it is badly damaged by successive meteor strikes that destroy much of the equipment—including frozen embryos—and kill many of those on board. Ultimately, only seven women will remain alive. The future of mankind rests with these “Seven Eves” who devise a way to use their DNA stock and the genetic engineering equipment to reproduce.

Eons later—30,000 years to be precise—billions of humans live in a ring of space habitats that form a hyper-cosmopolitan, affluent society orbiting the Earth. Though the surface of the planet has been transformed, it is still recognizable . . . and it is calling them back. But these space dwellers do not know that two groups of humans managed to survive on the surface: one group living under the sea, another finding refuge in mines. Long ago the two groups joined together, and began repopulating this rocky, wild, beautiful, and largely inhospitable place. These indigenous humans are rustic and backward compared to their cousins, the descendants of the Seven Eves who dwell in orbit.

And now, the children of the Seven Eves—seven distinct human subspecies, each with physical and mental characteristics that can be traced back to each of their individual foremothers—are going to go home . . .

http://edelweiss.abovethetreeline.com/ProductDetailPage.aspx?group=related&sku=0062190377

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Wildalone by Krassi Zourkova (William Morrow)
On Sale Date: January 6, 2015

In this enchanting and darkly imaginative debut novel full of myth, magic, romance, and mystery, a Princeton freshman is drawn into a love triangle with two enigmatic brothers, and discovers terrifying secrets about her family and herself—a bewitching blend of Twilight, The Secret History, Jane Eyre, and A Discovery of Witches
Arriving at Princeton for her freshman year, Thea Slavin finds herself alone, a stranger in a strange land. Away from her family and her Eastern European homeland for the first time, she struggles to adapt to unfamiliar American ways and the challenges of college life—including an enigmatic young man whose brooding good looks and murky past intrigue her. Falling into a romantic entanglement with Rhys and his equally handsome and mysterious brother, Jake, soon draws Thea into a sensual mythic underworld as irresistible as it is dangerous.
In this shadow world that seems to mimic Greek mythology and the Bulgarian legends of the Samodivi or “wildalones”—forest witches who beguile and entrap men—she will discover a shocking secret that threatens everything she holds dear. And when the terrifying truth about her own family is revealed, it will transform her forever . . . if she falls under its spell.
Mesmerizing and addictive, The Wildalone is a thrilling blend of the modern and the fantastic. Krassi Zourkova creates an atmospheric world filled with rich characters as fascinating and compelling as those of Diana Gabaldon, Deborah Harkness, and Stephenie Meyer.

The Diabolical Miss Hyde: An Electric Empire Novel by Viola Carr (Harper Voyager)
On Sale Date: February 10, 2015

Forensic science, magic, mystery, and romance mix in this edgy steampunk fantasy—a retelling of the horror classic, in which Dr. Eliza Jekyll, daughter of the infamous Dr. Henry Jekyll—pursues a dangerous murderer in an alternate Victorian London
In an electrified Victorian London, Dr. Eliza Jekyll is a crime scene investigator, hunting killers with newfangled technological gadgets. She will need every advantage available to catch a terrifying new psychopath splattering London with blood. Hidden in the grimy shadows, the fiendish murderer preys on beautiful women, drugging them before slicing off their limbs. Finding the “Slicer” can make Eliza's career . . . or unmask her darkest secret. Like her father, she has a hidden second self that emerges when she drinks his forbidden magical elixir. Just a few sips, and a seductive and impulsive Lizzie Hyde is unleashed.
The members of the Royal Society do not trust Eliza, and they send their enforcer, the mercurial Captain Lafayette, to prove she’s a dangerous sorceress. The careful doctor knows that one wrong step can make her prey to the clever Lafayette, a man who harbors an evil curse of his own. No matter how much she craves the elixir, she must resist.
But as the Slicer case draws her into London's luminous magical underworld, Eliza will need the potion's power to help her . . . even if it might attract the attentions of Lafayette. .
Even if it means setting the wild Lizzie free. . . .

The Doomsday Equation by Matt Richtel (William Morrow)
On Sale Date: February 24, 2015

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author of A Deadly Wandering comes a pulse-pounding technological thriller—as ingenious as the works of Michael Crichton and as urgent and irresistible as an episode of 24—in which one man has three days to prevent annihilation: the outbreak of World War III
Computer genius Jeremy Stillwater has designed a machine that can predict global conflicts and ultimately head them off. But he’s a stubborn guy, very sure of his own genius, and has wound up making enemies, and even seen his brilliant invention discredited.
There’s nowhere for him to turn when the most remarkable thing happens: his computer beeps with warning that the outbreak of World War III is imminent, three days and counting.
Alone, armed with nothing but his own ingenuity, he embarks on quest to find the mysterious and powerful nemesis determined to destroy mankind. But enemies lurk in the shadows waiting to strike. Could they have figured out how to use Jeremy, and his invention, for their own evil ends?
Before he can save billions of lives, Jeremy has to figure out how to save his own. . . .

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AncalagonTheBlack Council Member

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We have a much bigger list here, 1st page :cool4: - http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/114540-the-books-coming-out-in-2015/#entry6052682

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Maester Llama Landed Knight

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Thanks very much for the catalogue! Always very interested to read these things. Initial thoughts:



The absences are disappointing, definitely -- full disclosure, I'm not crazily fannishly committed to any of those series, so their absence hurts me less. However, I seem to remember some updates in this thread not too long ago mentioning that Charlton's Spellbreaker had been turned in to the editor in draft, and that Scholes was hopeful of finishing the draft of Hymn in the next couple months, so we might still just barely hope for one or both of those at the very end of 2015, at least.



Interesting catalogue, with some promising-looking new stuff. The Marc Turner epic fantasy debut, When the Heavens Fall, intrigues me because I'm a sucker for epic fantasy, though I find Tor's editors' epic fantasy tastes and mine sometimes match but sometimes really don't. Looking forward to Walton's The Philosopher Kings and Gladstone's Last First Snow [Gladstone's Craft Sequence is the bomb], and interested in R. S. Belcher's urban fantasy novel Nightwise; his debut weird western had a lot of promise, I thought. Likewise James Cambias' Corsair; A Darkling Sea, his first sf novel, was great stuff. Also interested in Ives-Gilman's Dark Orbit; I've not read her stuff before, but the blurb makes the sf environment sound fascinating and Ursula Le Guin says it's good, and while author quotes aren't everything if you can't trust Ursula Le Guin who can you trust really? Also cautiously looking forward to Robert Brockway's The Unnoticeables and Kit Reed's Where, both of which sound pleasingly fucked. And OMG new Valente! Can't wait!



No new A. M. Dellamonica! Treachery! Come on Tor, we know it is done, give it to us. Give it to us I say!



I'm very pleasantly surprised to see that Melinda Snodgrass' Edge urban fantasy / cosmic conflict series is getting an ending [i assume it's an ending?] in the form of Edge of Dawn. I never got around to trying these, and when the series appeared to have been screwed by Tor's schedule implosion a couple years ago I kind of stopped trying, but it's always awesome when a series gets a chance to end, and hopefully I'll be motivated to check them out now.



Ben Bova has written a near future thriller that seems to be presenting itself very seriously; it is entitled Power Surge. I find this title hilarious.



Holy shit, people are still paying Ed Greenwood to write fiction. This baffles and astounds me. Greenwood is an RPG designer, world-builder, and storyteller of great skill and power -- it blows my mind how good he is at this stuff -- but his prose fiction ... does not work for me.



At risk of sounding like a nitpicking dick some of the copyediting in this catalogue is ... not great. Several of the book blurbs contain multiple significant word and sentence bork-ups. I mean, it's just cover copy, but these blurbs are supposed to be selling these books to us; how can we expect to sway the public toward buying one book out of thousands in an entertainment culture that will always have something else louder and more attention-grabbing to throw at them if the pitch text for that book contains multiple sentences that do not even scan as sentences? There are sentences in the Edge of Dawn blurb that legit do not scan, and, here and in one or two of the others, it confuses the meaning. This is a professional publication.



But really my only problem with the catalogue is no new Sophie book by Dellamonica.


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Jussi Council Member

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Thanks very much for the catalogue! Always very interested to read these things.

You are welcome.

Here are blurbs for two more books:

Leviathan's Brood by Ben Peek (July)

The next installment in Ben Peek's crackling, unputdownable epic fantasy series, introducing an original new world and an incredible heroine

At the end of The Godless, Mireea lay in ruins, the dead of the city had been risen as ghosts, and the keepers Fo and Bau were slain by Zaifyr.

The Mireeans have now fled to the city of Yeflam with the immortal Zaifyr in chains to barter for their safety. With the threat of war arriving at the Floating Cities, Zaifyr’s trial will become the center of political games. But Zaifyr is intent on using his trial to begin a new war that his many fear is an echo of the dangerous man he once was. Ayae, the young girl cursed with the gift of fire, sees a chance to learn more of her powers here in the floating city, but she is weighed down by her new responsibilities for the safety of the Mireean people.

Across the far ocean the exiled Baron Bueralan and the cartographer Orlan have arrived in Ooila city with some chilling cargo, the soul of a dead man. As the two men are accepted into the city’s court, they are pulled ever deeper into the Queen's web of lies and deceit. All the while a rumor begins to spread of a man who has come ashore, an innocent man whose presence threatens them all.

Leviathan’s Blood is the second installment in Ben Peek’s exciting epic fantasy series. Peek was previously nominated for the Australian Ditmar award (SciFi) in 2011 and is an internationally acclaimed author. Leviathan’s Blood will appeal to fans of vivid, and strikingly modern, epic fantasies.

The Stars Askew by Rjurik Davidson (October)

The stunning adventure begun in the critically acclaimed debut The Unwrapped Sky continues

The Stars Askew is the highly anticipated sequel to the New Weird adventure begun by talented young author Rjurik Davidson. With the seditionists in power, Caeli-Amur has begun a new age. Or has it? The House officials who escaped no longer send wheat and corn, and the city is starving.

When the moderate leader Aceline is murdered, the trail leads Kata to a mysterious book that contains the knowledge to control the fabled Prism of Alerion. But when the last person to possess the book is found dead, it becomes clear that a conspiracy is under-way. At its center is former House Officiate Armand, who has hidden the Prism. He and a family friend are vying for control of the Directorate, the highest political position in the city, but Armand is betrayed and sent to a prison camp to mine the deadly bloodstone.

Meanwhile, Maximilian has a second personality in his mind: that of the joker-god Aya. Aya leads Max to the realm of the Elo-Talern to seek a power source to remove Aya from Max’s brain. But when Max and Aya return, they find the vigilants destroying the last remnants of House power.

It seems the seditionists' hopes for a new age of peace and prosperity in Caeli-Amur have come to naught, and every attempt to improve the situation makes it worse. The question now is not only whether Kata, Max, and Armand can do anything to lift the state of bloody battle in the city, but if they can escape with their lives.

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Calibandar Council Member

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I really like the synopsis for Victor Milan's Dinosaur Lords.

Never heard of this author.

I also see Michael Swanwick has another novel out called "Chasing the Phoenix".

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I really like the synopsis for Victor Milan's Dinosaur Lords.

Never heard of this author.

He's one of the Wild Cards collective. In fact, I think he wrote one of the full-length WC novels, so I'm assuming that GRRM seems to regard him pretty highly.

Any one hear anything on the J V Jones front? She seems to have vanished.

She Tweeted recently to confirm her house wasn't destroyed by the California wildfires and Tor have said they are anticipating Endlords in 2015. Beyond that, nothing.

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