Tyrant’s Blood – Fiona McIntosh
Book of the Month (July)
This month’s book of the month is Fiona McIntosh’s second instalment of the gripping epic, fantasy Valisar Trilogy, Tyrant’s Blood.
This is an absolute must-read! We can’t get enough of it here at Voyager, so make sure it makes the top of your reading list this summer. But remember to clear a space in your diary before you pick it up, once you’ve started we guarantee that you won’t be able to stop.
Latest and Upcoming Releases – 2010
July
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow
Eastern Standard Tribe – Cory Doctorow
Makers – Cory Doctorow
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town – Cory Doctorow
Unholy Magic – Stacia Kane
Tyrant’s Blood – Fiona McIntosh
August
The Demon King – Cinda Williams Chima
City of Ghosts – Stacia Kane
Galileo’s Dream – Kim Stanley Robinson
City of the Snakes – Darren Shan
September
At the Gates of Darkness – Raymond E. Feist
Daughter of the Empire – Raymond E. Feist
Mistress of the Empire – Raymond E. Feist
Servant of the Empire – Raymond E. Feist
The Tongues of Serpents – Naomi Novik
October
The Silver Mage – Katharine Kerr
Songs of the Dying Earth – Edited by George R. R. Martin
King’s Wrath – Fiona McIntosh
July
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow
£7.99 | Buy Now
Jules is a young man barely a century old. He’s lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies … and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.
Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now overseen by a network of ‘ad hocs’ who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.
But the ad hocs are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself.
Worse: it appears that this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It’s only his fourth death and revival after all.) Now it’s war.
Eastern Standard Tribe – Cory Doctorow
£7.99 | Buy Now
Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He’s doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth into the world.
Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications mega-corp, but Art’s real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.
Instant wireless communication puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn’t changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations. Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted – not happiness, not money, certainly not love.
Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain…
£7.99 | Buy Now
Perry and Lester invent things. All sorts of things. Seashell robots that make toast, Boogie Woogie Elmo dolls that drive cars. They also invent an entirely new economic system. ‘New Work’ is a New Deal for the technological era. Soon barefoot bankers are criss-crossing the nation, microinvesting in high-tech communal start-ups like Perry and Lester’s. Together they transform a country, and journalist Suzanne Church is there to document it.
But a new economic system requires a whole new belief system – and there are plenty of non-believers out there. The New Work bust puts the dot.com-bomb to shame and soon Perry and Lester are out of funds and out of business. Down but not out, they go back to what they do best – making stuff. But when a rogue Disney executive grows jealous of their once more soaring popularity and convinces the police that their amazing 3-D printers are being used to run off AK-47s, things get very dark very quickly…
This brilliantly entertaining and original novel from the visionary author of Little Brother fizzes with bold ideas about the future and how our lives will look as part of it. But at its heart are three characters, Perry, Lester and Suzanne, on an unforgettable journey that will bring them together only to break them apart as they each try to discover how to live meaningfully in an ever-changing world filled with both beauty and horror – where some things really are immutable…
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town – Cory Doctorow
£7.99 | Buy Now
Alan is a middle-aged entrepreneur who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in a bohemian neighbourhood of Toronto. This naturally brings him into contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings – wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off.
Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain, his mother a washing machine, and among his brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls.
Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick are on his doorstep – well on their way to starvation because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, whom Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned … bent on revenge.
Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles of hardware from parts scavenged from the city’s dumpsters.
But Alan’s past won’t leave him alone – and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and his friends.
£7.99 | Buy Now
Enemies don’t need to be alive to be deadly.
Being near-fatally poisoned by a con-artist psychic and then trapping a homicidal ghost is just another day on the job for Chess Putnam. Her magical and non-magical talents are used to expose those looking to profit from the world’s unpleasant little poltergeist problem, as well as banish the real undead.
But Chess has been extra busy these days, coping with a tiring new celebrity assignment on top of her own investigation: someone is murdering the prostitutes in Downside, and Chess is sure that it’s not the work of a ghost. But to prove it, she must hunt down and confront a maniac, and walk a careful line between the two men in her life just as they – along with their ruthless gang-land employers – are moving closer to a catastrophic showdown.
Someone is dealing in murder, sex, and the supernatural, and once again Chess finds herself right in the crossfire.
Tyrant’s Blood – Fiona McIntosh
£7.99 | Buy Now
After a decade of occupation, the Denova Empire is flourishing under Loethar’s rule as he urges the people of the Steppes to integrate with the West. But Loethar is bored with peace – and so is Leo, the usurped heir, who still lives in hiding, eager to stake his claim to the Valisar throne.
Freath continues his double life, secretly loyal to the Valisars but working as sage counsel to the Empire. But he risks all to contact the rebel, Kilt Faris, and finds his life may be forfeit.
A new evil is stirring… and only one person knows that the legendary Valisar Enchantment is rising. Soon the wars and destruction that formed an empire will seem a squabble by comparison to the darkness that threatens…
August
The Demon King – Cinda Williams Chima
£7.99 | Buy Now
Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch, and reformed thief Han Alister must rely on all his skills to provide for his mother and his sister.
While out hunting one day, Han and his Clan friend, Dancer, discover three young wizards using a magical amulet to set fire to the sacred mountain of Hanalea. Han wrestles it from them, but without realising that his heroism has put him and his family in great danger. For the young arsonist is Micah Bayar, son of the High Wizard, and the amulet a treasure with immense power; it once belonged to the Demon King, the legendary wizard who nearly destroyed the world a millennium ago. The Bayars will stop at nothing to get it back.
Meanwhile, Raisa ana’Marianna, Princess Heir of the Fells, has just returned to the city after spending three years with her father’s Clan in the mountains. She aspires to be like Hanalea, the legendary warrior-queen who vanquished the Demon King and saved the world, but her mother has other plans for her – plans that will put both the queendom and Raisa’s future in great danger. The Seven Realms will tremble when the adventures of Han and Raisa collide in this stunning new page-turner from bestselling author Cinda Williams Chima.
£7.99 | Buy Now
It’s a thin line between alive and undead.
Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess’s bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case.
Chess is under a binding spell that threatens death if she talks about the investigation, but the city’s most notorious crime boss – and Chess’s drug dealer – gets wind of her new assignment and insists on being kept informed. If that isn’t bad enough, a sinister street vendor appears to have information Chess needs. Only he’s not telling what he knows, or what it all has to do with the vast underground City of Eternity.
Now Chess will have to navigate killer wraiths and a lot of seriously dark magic – all while coping with some not-so-small issues of her own. And the only man she can trust to help her through it all has every reason to want her dead.
Galileo’s Dream – Kim Stanley Robinson
£8.99 | Buy Now
In Late Renaissance Italy the great scientist Galileo creates a powerful new telescope to explore the universe.
But one night a stranger presents a different kind of telescope for Galileo to peer through, and Galileo himself is not sure if he is in a dream, an enchantment, a vision, or something yet undefined.
Galileo will soon find himself straddling two worlds: the medieval and the modern. By day his life unfurls in the early seventeenth-century Italy, by night he is transported through dimensions of time and space no other man of his time could comprehend.
This sumptuous and suspenseful novel brings to us Galileo as we have always wanted to know him.
City of the Snakes – Darren Shan
£7.99 | Buy Now
For ten years Capac Raimi has ruled the City. Created by the first Cardinal to rule after him and continue his legacy, Capac cannot be killed.
But now Capac has disappeared without trace. His trusted lieutenant, Ford Tasso, suspects the mysterious villacs. Ancient and powerful, these Incan priests are the true masters of the City. Only one man might have the cunning to outwit such deadly adversaries – Al Jeery, who has taken on the guise of his father, the terrifying assassin Paucar Wami.
Al has no love for Capac, and no wish to get mixed up with the villacs. But then Ford promises to give him the one thing in the world he truly craves – the man who killed those he loved most, ruining his life and setting him on his current destructive path. Lured back into the twisted, nightmarish world of the Incan priests, Al will learn more about the City than he ever imagined, and be offered more power than he ever desired.
But in the City, everything comes at a cost…
September
At the Gates of Darkness – Raymond E. Feist
£12.99 | Buy Now
Recent events have devastated the Conclave of Shadows; the discovery of the Demon horde on the heels of the taredhel invasion of Midkemia, the threat of the star elves themselves, and the terrible personal cost paid by Pug and his family.
But grieving must wait. At a deserted fortress in the Valley of Lost Men, the Conclave’s agents witness horror beyond their imagination, orchestrated by a familiar enemy. But Belasco’s motives are as yet unclear. The Conclave must regroup and discover the true meaning behind the chaos seeded by the evil magician if they are ever to find a way to stop the destruction of Triagia before the demon horde even arrives.
Daughter of the Empire – Raymond E. Feist
£8.99 | Buy Now
A magnificent epic of heroic adventure and dynastic struggle: Enter the mysterious and exotic world of Kelewan…
Mara, the youngest child of the ancient and noble Acoma family, is about to take her pledge of servitude to the goddess Lashima when the ceremony is disrupted by news of her father and brother’s death in battle.
Despite her grief, as the only surviving member of her house Mara must now take up the mantle of Ruling Lady. But she soon discovers betrayal at the heart of her family’s loss, and the Acoma’s enemies have brought her house to the brink of utter destruction.
Mara, an inexperienced political player, must draw on all her wit, intelligence and cunning to navigate the ruthless Game of the Council, regain the honour of House Acoma and secure the future of her family. But with assassins waiting around every corner, it might take everything Mara has simply to survive.
Servant of the Empire – Raymond E. Feist
£8.99 | Buy Now
Nobody knows how to play the Game of the Council better than Mara of the Acoma. Through bloody political manoeuvring she has become a powerful force within the Empire; but surrounded by deadly rivals, Mara has to be the best simply to stay alive.
But Lady Mara must contend with battles on two fronts: in the hotbed of intrigue and treachery that is the court of Tsurani, and in her heart, where her affection for a barbarian slave from the enemy world of Midkemia lead her to question the principles by which she lives.
Servant of the Empire is the second in Feist and Wurt’s wonderful epic trilogy – one of the most successful fantasy collaborations of all time.
Mistress of the Empire – Raymond E. Feist
£8.99 | Buy Now
Welcome to the final play of the game. Now revered as Servant of the Empire, Mara of the Acoma is in more danger than ever before. Not only does she face threats from the brotherhood of assassins and the cunning spies of rival ruling houses, but she has attracted the attention of the awesome Assembly of Magicians, who sees her as a threat to their power.
But Lady Mara has not reached her position through luck or accident of fate. Surrounded on all sides by enemies determined to bring her down, Mara must draw on her deepest resources to secure her position as Mistress of the Empire once and for all.
Mistress of the Empire is the stunning final book in Feist and Wurt’s epic trilogy – one of the most successful fantasy collaborations of all time.
The Tongues of Serpents – Naomi Novik
£17.99 | Buy Now
Convicted of treason despite their heroic defence against Napoleon’s invasion of Britain, Temeraire and Laurence – stripped of rank and standing – have been transported to the prison colony at New South Wales. With them travel three dragon eggs intended to help establish a covert in the colony, and destined to be handed over to second-rate, undesirable officers willing to accept so remote an assignment – including one former acquaintance, Captain Rankin, whose cruelty once cost a dragon its life.
But instead of leaving behind the political entanglements of the war, Laurence and Temeraire sail into a hornet’s nest of fresh corruption. The young Australian colony has been thrown into turmoil after the overthrow of the military governor, one William Bligh – formerly Captain Bligh, late of HMS Bounty.
Eager to escape this political quagmire, Laurence and Temeraire take on a mission to pioneer a route through the forbidding Blue Mountains and into the interior of Australia. But when one of the dragon eggs is stolen from Temeraire, the surveying expedition becomes a desperate race to recover it before the dragonet hatches – a race that leads to a shocking discovery and a dangerous new obstacle in the global war between Britain and France.
October
The Silver Mage – Katharine Kerr
£7.99 | Buy Now
Spurred on by the priestesses of the false goddess Alshandra, the Horsekin hordes are massing on the northern border of Prince Dar’s holdings. Their leaders believe that the rich grasslands of the prince’s domain belong to them by divine right, no matter whom they must destroy to claim them.
But Dar has powerful allies on his side, including the dragon Arzosah, who has hated the Horsekin for hundreds of years. She will vow to take a revenge worse than anything the Horsekin and their priestesses could possibly foresee.
The prince’s most powerful ally, however, is the one the Horsekin refuse to understand: the deep magic of the dweomer, as wielded by the band of sorcerers sworn to protect him, and especially by the elven master of magic, Dallandra, the silver mage.
Songs of the Dying Earth – Edited by George R. R. Martin
£12.99 | Buy Now
A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. The sun is feeble and red. A million cities have fallen to dust. Here live a few thousand souls, dying, as the Earth dies beneath them. Just a few short decades remain to the long history of our world. At the last, science and magic are one, and there is evil on Earth, distilled by time … Earth is dying.
Half a century ago, Jack Vance created the world of the Dying Earth, and fantasy has never been the same. Now, for the first time, Jack has agreed to open this intriguing and darkly beautiful world to other fantasists, to play in as their very own.
The list of twenty-two contributors eager to honour Jack Vance by writing for this anthology includes Neil Gaiman, Tad Williams, Elizabeth Hand, Tanith Lee, Dan Simmons, Robert Silverberg, and George R.R. Martin himself.
The King’s Wrath – Fiona McIntosh
£14.99 | Buy Now
Loethar the Tyrant has established himself as the King of the Devona Set. No longer seen as a tyrant, his reforms and peace-making efforts have won over a section of society, especially since over the last 15 years, his people from the steppes have migrated and integrated into the Devona kingdoms.
Loethar no longer believes Prince Leo, the rightful heir to the throne, to be dead and hunts him and his outlaw allies; but another heir also exists – one the usurper should fear more than a prince on the run… and she has possession of the ancient Valisar enchantment.
Having learnt the truth of her parentage, her world and her family’s fate, she must decide whether to stay and face the King’s wrath, or escape back into the world she has hidden within for so many years.
