Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

Cheris thought of the name she would have been given if the Mwennin religious calendar hadn’t been suppressed by the hexarchate. Khiruev’s father crumpled into swans. Her parents’ execution and her people’s genocide, the riots, numbers written in pale ash. Servitors silenced for hundreds of years. Being ordered to fire on the Lanterners’ children. Her swarm massacred with a carrion bomb at the Fortress of Scattered Needles.

That was only a fraction of the atrocities the hexarchate had perpetrated in her lives. And people didn’t stop being people because they had choices.

She had found a gun with which to fight. It remained to be seen whether anyone had the will to use it well.

“No,” Cheris said. “The war never ends.”

THANK YOU TO the following people: my editor, Jonathan Oliver, and the wonderful folks at Solaris Books; my agent, Jennifer Jackson; and my agent’s assistant, Michael Curry.

I am grateful to my beta readers: Joseph Charles Betzwieser, Cyphomandra, Daedala, Isis, Yune Kyung Lee, Nancy Sauer, Sonya Taaffe, and Storme Winfield. Additional thanks to the following people from Fountain Pen Network for fielding my firearms questions: ac12, injesticate, openionated, ragpaper1817, and TheRealScubaSteve. All errors and narrative license taken are, of course, my own.

This one is for Nancy Sauer: yours in calendrical heresy, always.

YOON HA LEE is a writer and mathematician from Houston, Texas, whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld , Lightspeed and The Magazine Of Fantasy and Science Fiction . He has published over forty short stories, and his critically acclaimed collection Conservation of Shadows was released in 2013. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat.

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In the near future Dr. Holland, a scientist running from a painful past, joins the Mars colonisation effort, cataloguing the remnants of Mars’ biosphere before it is swept away by the terraforming programme.

When an artefact is discovered deep in the caverns of the red planet, Holland’s employers interfere, leading to tragedy. The consequences ripple throughout time, affecting Holland’s present, and the destiny of the red planet.

For in the far future, Mars is dying a second time. The Final War of men and spirits is beginning. In a last bid for peace, the disgraced Champion Val Mora and his ‘spirit’ lover are set free from the Arena to find the long-missing Librarian of Mars, the only hope to save mankind.

Holland’s and the Champion’s lives intertwine, across the millennia, in a breathtaking story of vast ambition.

“ Champion of Mars celebrates all that is best in SF. Simply put, Guy Haley is a very good writer, with an infectious love for sci-fi that shines off every page.”

The Guardian

“Haley weaves two tales into a tight, compelling narrative. Champion of Mars is a thriller, an unnatural mystery and a strange sort of love story. Highly entertaining and original, and well worth a look.”

Starburst Magazine

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A fascinating collection of new and classic tales of the fearsome Djinn, from bestselling, award-winning and breakthrough international writers.

Imagine a world filled with fierce, fiery beings, hiding in our shadows, in our dreams, under our skins. Eavesdropping and exploring; savaging our bodies, saving our souls. They are monsters, saviours, victims, childhood friends. Some have called them genies: these are the Djinn.

And they are everywhere. On street corners, behind the wheel of a taxi, in the chorus, between the pages of books. Every language has a word for them. Every culture knows their traditions. Every religion, every history has them hiding in their dark places.

There is no part of the world that does not know them. They are the Djinn. They are among us.

With stories from Neil Gaiman, Nnedi Okorafor, Amal El-Mohtar, Catherine Faris King, Claire North, E.J. Swift, Hermes (trans. Robin Moger), Jamal Majoub, James Smythe, J.Y. Yang, Kamila Shamsie, Kirsty Logan, K.J. Parker, Kuzhali Manickavel, Maria Dahvana Headley, Monica Byrne, Nada Adel Sobhi, Saad Hossein, Sami Shah, Sophia Al-Maria and Usman Malik.

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On what should have been a routine mission to the star system of 61 Cygni A, Delia Kemp finds herself shunted thousands of light years into uncharted space. The only survivor of a catastrophic starship blow-out, Delia manages to land her life-raft on the inhospitable, ice-bound world of Valinda, and is captured by a race of hostile aliens, the Skelt. What follows is a break-neck adventure as Delia escapes, fleeing through a phantasmagorical landscape.

As the long winter comes to an end and the short, blistering summer approaches, the Skelt will stop at nothing to obtain Delia’s technical knowledge – but what Delia wants is impossible: to leave Valinda and return to Earth.

www.solarisbooks.com