Gully Foyle

D.J. Butler’s Witchy Eye was one of last year’s best debuts, an imaginative, epic alternate history-cum-fantasy that spanned from Appalachian country to the heart of the United States to tell a story of flintlocks and wild American magic. Rock-solid worldbuilding aside, that book was an origin story, laying out the history of the family at its center, and Butler continues their saga in Witchy Winter. With the setup out of the way, his imagination is allowed to roam free across an unexplored frontier, fulfilling the promise of previous volume, and building up his alternate America into something truly expansive.

In a version of America warped by wild magics, in which the gods of most belief systems are tangibly real, Sarah Calhoun, the adopted daughter of famed war hero and Imperial Elector Andrew Calhoun, has attained her birthright and won the battle for control of the Serpent Mound. But while she holds the Heron King’s regalia, her journey to the Serpent Throne and control of Cahokia isn’t over: seven other candidates, all with their own claims to press, must be defeated or won over to her cause. She must also learn to master the Appalachian magic of her kin, navigate the dangerous political currents around the Bishop of New Orleans and Emperor Penn, and learn to manage the tremendous amount of power she now has at her fingertips.

Witchy Eye did its job outlining a world epic in epic, and Witchy Winter doubles down, further expanding the borders of the world and deepening the intricate politics of the struggle for the Serpent Throne. Early chapters detail the various other claimants, including a priestess and her sorcerous retinue, the tribespeople of the Anishnaabe, and numerous other movers and shakers. The varied factions and multiple viewpoints and numerous factions help color in the vast setting in a way Witchy Eye, with its strong focus on Sarah’s ascent to power, made difficult.

The characters are also stronger this time around. The cast is more inclusive, with the first chapter detailing a kinetic action sequence set around the birth of a young Anishnaabe child, and several chapters devoted to the power struggles among the clergy of New Orleans, who are given a much expanded role. Not that Sarah has come into her powers, Butler explores their true nature as well as their costs—at one point, Sarah threatens to devour someone’s soul, and seems to actually mean it. Sarah’s allies’ new duties as retainers of the Queen of Cahokia, and their various power struggles, add texture to the novel while keeping the narrative moving smoothly through an expansive page count. It’s interesting to get to know who all these people are.

Witchy Eye presented a fascinating world at a surface level. Witchy Winter is better, and richer, in every way. It’s a sequel that feels essential, expanding the world while diving further into the characters who made the first such an exhilarating read. It does everything a sequel is supposed to—including leaving us eager for more.

Witchy Winter is available now.

The post <i>Witchy Winter</i> Builds on the Vast, Expansive Promise of <i>Witchy Eye</i> appeared first on The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.

In Bash Bash Revolution, the new novel from Douglas Lain, a teenager is obsessed with gaming in ways that are both good and bad—the skills and experiences he gains are useful in real life, and help him to make social connections he might not otherwise have been able to. But he also uses games to numb himself, and avoid IRL complications that don’t go away when the controller’s batteries die. Science fiction has been dealing with virtual worlds since long before such things were real considerations, but the last couple of decades have seen games and virtual spaces begin to conquer the physical world.

These 10 books have complex and interesting protagonists, and explore the real advantages and alarming downsides of living in a world in which video games have become a way of life.

Bash Bash Revolution, by Douglas Lain
Lain’s latest begins with an outdated Nintendo game and ends with the technological singularity that we may or may not deserve. Matthew Munson is an unambitious kid from a broken home—mom’s barely getting by, and dad is flighty and frequently absent. He’s also working on a highly secretive government project looking to create a sentient artificial intelligence. The two try to reconnect over a game called Bash Bash Revolution, before Matthew learns that dad is more interested in his AI, named Bucky, than his son. The numbed new world that Bucky offers is as believably enticing as it is disturbing.

Only You Can Save Mankind, Terry Pratchett
Quirky, outlandish fantasy writer Pratchett took some time off for quirky, outlandish sci-fi with this, the first of his “Johnny Maxwell” trilogy. Much like the protagonist of Bash, Johnny has a difficult home life and becomes addicted to video games, with the Gulf War seeming no more real to the 12-year-old than the ScreeWee aliens of his favorite computer game. And then, one day, the aliens surrender. Which isn’t supposed to happen. Soon, Johnny finds himself inside the game, negotiating with the ScreeWee and helping them to find a way home. A little retro, sure, but graphics don’t matter much in a novel. This one inspired its own video game, a cheeky and un-winnable one called Journey to Alpha Centauri (in Real Time).

Warcross, by Marie Lu
Marie Lu (Legend) introduces 18-year-old Emika Chen and the immersive combat game of Warcross in her recent cyber-thriller. Emika, having been on her own for years, has a juvenile record and massive debts which she tries to mitigate by taking work as a bounty hunter. The game is massively popular—to the tune of millions of players who’ve made the game a way of life for a decade. Illegal betting on the game is a major industry, and people like Emika can find work in bringing gamblers to justice. Even that isn’t enough to keep Emi in ramen noodles, so she exploits a bug and hacks the opening game of the international Warcross Championship, accidentally becoming a part of the action and an overnight celebrity. Rather than arrest her, the game’s young creator gives her a job: hunt down a saboteur hiding on one of the world’s top Warcross teams. (Available as a Nook eBook, Diane Duane’s 2011 Omnitopia Dawn similarly involves a conspiracy to bring down an MMORPG—for noobs, that’s a massively multiplayer online role-playing game—with global reach and millions of players.)

Ack-Ack Macaque, by Gareth L. Powell
Come for the delightfully weird title, stay because Powell (Embers of War) has crafted a unique and engaging bit of sci-fi alt-history with impressive world-building. Lead by a foul-mouthed, cigar-smoking monkey fighter-pilot. Ack-Ack Macaque was the main character of a hugely popular Word War II-themed online game but, as the novel’s character soon realize, he wasn’t just a digital creation. The game’s masters fiddled with the mind of a real macaque and plugged him into the game to give their lead character a little something extra. It made for a huge hit, but Ack-Ack has escaped, and quickly becomes involved in a plot against the heir to the British throne in a steampunk near-future. Rather than being about the game, Powell’s novel is about a the world shaped by it. But we had to mention it, because monkey with a revolver.

Insignia, by S.J. Kincaid
Sometimes, it ain’t about the game. It’a about the player. Kincaid’s Insignia trilogy stars teenage gamer Tom Raines, a 14-year-old who’s not much of a physical specimen in reality—but in virtual reality, he’s a champ. For the Intrasolar Forces, that’s enough. In this future, the resources of the planet are gone, so war rages in the solar system for control for the riches of the broader solar system. His skills make him a hero, but the computer newly implanted in his brain makes him a virtual puppet to the military leadership. There’s a bit of Ender’s Game in this one’s DNA.

Otherworld, by Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller
Most of these books are ambivalent about games and gamer culture—presumably because “Games are cool!” is a bit limited as a thesis. Otherworld goes full-on Black Mirror, though, with the story of a limitless virtual world that lets you do all of the things you’d like to do IRL but don’t have the guts to. Otherworld has no laws, no rules, and no limits. So why would you ever leave? What happens when the lure of imaginary worlds becomes more than we’re able to reists? That’s the question at the heart of the book, and it’s one that touches upon some very current and growing concerns about our relationship technology.

Armada, by Ernest Cline
Ready Player One is a given on this list, so instead we went with Cline’s follow-up, which has a great deal in common with The Last Starfighter, a classic (if cheesy) ’80s movies that brought video game-sensibilities to the big screen. Like Ready Player One, Armada is also likely to become a film in the near future. It’s about angry teenager Zack Lightman, who has lived his life pining after his dad, a video game champ who went missing shortly after Zack’s birth. Zack’s life changes when he looks out of his classroom window one day and sees a UFO that very closely resembles the one from the game with which he’s obsessed. Soon, he’s contacted by the Earth Defense Alliance, who are recruiting soldiers to defend against an anticipated invasion by alien forces. Zack finds, however, that the motivations of the “invaders” might not be quite what he’s been told.

In Real Life, by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang
This graphic novel is about Anda, a huge fan of Coarsegold Online, a popular MMORPG. It’s her entire social sphere, and a place in which she can be her ideal self. A hero and a leader with friends from all over the world. Inspired to join an all-female guild, she’s soon approached with a business proposal: in exchange for IRL cash, she’ll use her skills to hunt and kill gold farmers, being players from developing countries who collect game currency and items to sell to players who are looking to get ahead quickly. It sounds great until she befriends Raymond, a Chinese teenager already crippled from years of factory work. The story brings up a variety of complex issues, not the least of which are the ways in which our virtual lives impact the real world, whether we realize it or not.

For the Win, by Cory Doctorow
Another Cory Doctorow book about gold farming, though this one is a prose novel with a dystopian bent. In a dark near-future, teenagers in the world’s poorest countries are made slaves to their computers, working tirelessly as gold farmers in electronic sweatshops, kept docile by exploitative contracts and threats of violence as they collect virtual treasure for wealthy players who don’t want to put in the work of building up their characters in a massively popular online game. Everything changes when a mystery woman with connections within and outside of the gaming world organizers some of the best teen gold farmers and sparks a revolution that will change the world, online and off. It’s a book that forces you to think about the who is paying the true costs of the gadgets and luxuries we take for granted in our everyday lives.

Otherland, by Tad Williams
Williams’ prognosticating ’90s sci-fi quartet is sprawling (four volumes, each flirting with 1,000 pages), but it earns the expansive page count with a story that both predicted the rise of immersive gaming and our always-connected world, and built a fascinating fantasy setting that works even without all the techno-trappings. In an undefined but not-too-distant future, immersive online gaming—closer to Second Life or the OASIS of Ready Player One than World of Warcraft—is omnipresent, and the real and virtual worlds have become irrevocably interwoven; people link up to the digital world via technology implants. But then children around the world begin falling into comas, a condition known as Tandagore Syndrome, that seems to be tied to events within the digital world that goes beyond simple failures of technology. A group of scientists begin investigating, and uncover a vast conspiracy that involves manipulation of the shared virtual world by the elite powers of the world—and soon, they find themselves trapped within the game, unable to log off. And as in The Matrix (which came out years after the first Otherland book), if you die in the game, you die in real life.

What books would you add to our list?

The post 10 Science Fiction Books for the Video Game Obsessed appeared first on The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.

Publish or Perish, by Phillipa Bornikova
This is the third installment of the fast, fun, insider-y Linnet Ellery urban fantasy series from Bornikova, a.k.a. Melinda Snodgrass (Wild Cards). Ellery is a hotshot young attorney from a New York vampire law firm (though it bears mentioning that she’s human). Her latest assignment is a personal one: her ex-boyfriend (an elf) is trapped in the fae realm, and freeing him will take the combined negotiating skills of Ellery and her vampire boss (who she’s also been developing a romantic interest in—though human/vampire relations are forbidden—and a huge problem for HR).

The Defiant Heir, by Melissa Caruso
Caruso’s second in the Swords and Fire Series (after The Tethered Mage) opens with the threat of war smothering the Venice-like Raverra. The Witch Lords of Vaskandar are preparing to invade, but first they must observe ancient law and call a gathering of the 17 lords to vote. Lady Amalia Cornaro sees Raverra’s only slim hope in this delay—and she and her tethered mage, Zaira, head into enemy territory to do whatever they must to ensure that the conclave of lords turns away from invasion—disobeying orders from Raverra’s ruling council and putting their lives in danger in a desperate bid to save the empire.

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Imaginarium, by Paul Kidby
Artist Paul Kidby was a friend and frequent collaborator of the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s, having provided the covers for the last 14 Discworld novels and assembled the compendium The Art of Discworld. This new hardcover volume collects his favorite pieces of Discworld art, including previously unreleased works as well as art only previously included in foreign and limited editions of the novels. You also find the complete cover paintings for all the books Kidby illustrated, sans text, the better to appreciate every oddball detail.

Time Was, by Ian McDonald 
During World War II, Tom and Ben meet amid the Blitz while working on a project to render British targets invisible to German instruments. Teamed in close quarters, they find themselves falling in love during a period in history when such relationships are dangerous. Then something goes wrong with the project, and Ben and Tom disappear. No bodies are ever found, and the pair are presumed dead. Solving the mystery of what happened to them will fall into the hands of a grizzled old collector of those rare objects, physical books, in a time a few decades hence; tracing odd clues left in handmade copies of a particular poetry book, the booksellers begins to discover the secrets of a romance unbound by time. This slender novella is a chance of pace from an an author known for his densely plotted future fables (River of Gods), but it loses none of its emotional power for a lack of additional pages.

Slayer Stats: The Complete Infographic Guide to All Things Buffy, by Steve O’Brien and Simon Guerrier
It has been more than 20 years since Buffy Summers slayed (slew?) her first vampire and changed television for the better—plenty of time for the expert statisticians to crunch the numbers and analyze the date. The result is this tongue-in-cheek guide to the series, filled with humorous infographics depicting everything from the Scooby Gang’s overlapping love triangles to a flowchart of vampire sirings.

The post This Week’s New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books: Witch Lords, Vampire Lawyers, and Lovers Lost in Time appeared first on The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.