The Kingdom of Liars (Gollancz, £16.99) is Canadian author Nick Martell’s impressive and highly ambitious epic fantasy debut. While awaiting trial for regicide, con artist Michael Kingman tells the tense, convoluted story of how he found himself imprisoned and how, a decade before the novel opens, his father was executed for murdering the king’s son. The setting is the Hollow, a land where the monarchy is barely hanging on to power, rebellion is rife and civil war looms. Michael comes from a once-exalted line of royal advisers. He charts his own fall alongside his investigation into his father’s alleged crime, depicting a fractured society and a code of magic known as Fabrication – the misuse of which can result in devastating memory loss. Martell’s portrayal of his protagonist’s growth, from a cocksure chancer to a mature adult sobered by his discoveries, is just as impressive as the twisty plot. The Kingdom of Liars is the opening volume in a series.
Hao Jingfang’s story “Folding Beijing†won a 2016 Hugo award for best novelette. Her debut novel Vagabonds (Head of Zeus, £18.99) is a 640-page political dystopia, translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu. The year is 2201, and following a war of independence Mars and Earth are locked in an uneasy detente. Earth is an ultra-capitalist, dog-eat-dog society, Mars a socialist utopia where art flourishes without the constraint of market forces. Five years before the novel opens, 20 students were sent from Mars to Earth as part of a cultural exchange, and now they are returning. Dancer Luoying ponders the relative merits of the two societies: she must not only decide where her loyalties lie, but navigate a personal and political minefield. In a leisurely, discursive narrative Hao spins a fascinating and even-handed examination of two very different possible futures.
Ian Whates’s eighth solo novel, Dark Angels Rising (NewCon, £12.99), is a spirited space opera that combines all the required ingredients of the subgenre: epic space battles, futuristic weaponry, scheming armies and enigmatic aliens. The first two books of the trilogy introduced the ne’er-do-well crew of the starship The Ion Raider, and their discovery of the ancient superweaponry of an alien race known as the Elders. Ten years later, they have disbanded, only for an unknown foe to track down and murder them one by one. Captain Cornische returns to the helm to save his remaining crew, embarking on a quest to the pocket universe where the Elders have stashed a Pandora’s box of wondrous technology – unless a vile military cabal and evil aliens can get there first. Whates weaves backstories and action effectively as the novel builds to a rousing battle-scene climax.
Lady of Shadows (Jo Fletcher, £16.99) by Breanna Teintze is the welcome second instalment in the Empty Gods series. Teintze’s debut, Lord of Secrets, introduced us to Corcoran Gray, a grumpy but compassionate wizard on the run from the Mages’ Guild, and the woman who became his lover, the slave Brix of the Tirnaal people. Lady of Shadows hits the ground running, a year after the end of events recounted in book one, with Gray and Brix still sought by the Guild. When they trace Gray, he is forced on pain of death to track down the perpetrators of a curse which is killing members of the Guild. Gray and Brix embark on the quest, with much derring-do and seat-of-the-pants adventure. Teintze excels at building a fantasy world governed by an original system of magic, and thrills the reader with an enjoyable, breakneck plot.
Another dose of fantastical escapism is to be found in Kat Dunn’s captivating debut Dangerous Remedy (Zephyr eBook, £7.99), a madcap mashup described by the author as “Stranger Things in the French Revolution†that is part steampunk adventure, part historical thriller. It is 1794, and Camille leads a group of friends known as the Battalion of the Dead, committed to saving those they deem unjustly sentenced to the guillotine. The novel throws the reader into the thick of the action with the Battalion aboard an air balloon on a perilous mission to spring a prisoner from a Parisian jail. Camille saves the young woman, only to discover that she is wanted for her special powers by royalists and revolutionaries alike, and both parties will stop at nothing to capture her. What follows is an enthralling, fast-paced adventure with a cast of likable characters; Camille’s relationship with her lover Ada is particularly well drawn. There’s a neat denouement and the promise of sequels.
