New Releases 2/16/16

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Hardcovers

Lovecraft Country: A Novel by Matt Ruff

The critically acclaimed cult novelist makes visceral the terrors of life in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.

Chicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.

At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.

A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.

Toru: Wayfarer Returns by Stephanie R. Sorensen

Revolutionary young samurai with dirigibles take on Commodore Perry and his Black Ships in this alternate history steampunk technofantasy set in 1850s samurai-era Japan.

In Japan of 1852, the peace imposed by the Tokugawa Shoguns has lasted 250 years. Peace has turned to stagnation, however, as the commoners grow impoverished and their lords restless. Swords rust. Martial values decay. Foreign barbarians circle the island nation’s closed borders like vultures, growing ever more demanding.

Tōru, a shipwrecked young fisherman rescued by American traders and taken to America, defies the Shogun’s ban on returning to Japan, determined to save his homeland from foreign invasion. Can he rouse his countrymen in time? Or will the cruel Shogun carry out his vow to execute all who set foot in Japan after traveling abroad? Armed only with his will, a few books, dirigible plans and dangerous ideas, Tōru must transform the Emperor’s realm before the Black Ships come.

Tōru: Wayfarer Returns is the first book in the Sakura Steam Series, an alternate history of the tumultuous period from the opening of Japan in 1853 to the Meiji Restoration in 1868. This volume covers the year prior to the American Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan and follows the hero and his young allies as they lead Japan through a massively compressed industrial revolution, dramatically altering that pivotal moment in history in their favor.

While Tōru and his dirigibles are fictional, the story unfolds against the backdrop of the "real" Japan of that period, with historical figures and their political environment woven into the tale, staying true to their motivations and agendas even as the alternate history warps their actions, history and a few laws of physics. Underpinning the adventure plot is a young man's yearning for his father's approval and an honorable place in his world.

Readers who enjoy steampunk alternate histories more typically set in Victorian England or the American Wild West may enjoy this steampunk story made fresh by the Japanese samurai setting, as well as readers who enjoy historical fiction set in Japan.

Paperbacks

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there.

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

Casefile: ARKHAM by Josh Finney

What if Raymond Chandler wrote Lovecraft stories? Set in the mid-1940s, Casefile: ARKHAM follows Hank Flynn, a down on his luck private eye who is back from the war and now working the mean streets of the most cursed city on Earth Arkham, Massachusetts. And things only get worse for Flynn when a wealthy uptown socialite hires him to track down an artist by the name of Pickman. What begins as a simple missing persons case leads Flynn down a dark path of flesh eating ghouls, vengeful witches, and the notorious Innsmouth mafia.

Radiant State by Peter Higgins

Peter Higgins's superb and original creation, a perfect melding of fantasy, myth, SF and political thriller, reaches its extraordinary conclusion.

The Vlast stands two hundred feet tall, four thousand tons of steel ready to be flung upwards on the fire of atom bombs. Ready to take the dream of President-Commander of the New Vlast General, Osip Rizhin, beyond the bounds of this world.

But not everyone shares this vision. Vissarion Lom and Maroussia Shaumian have not reached the end of their story, and in Mirgorod a woman in a shabby dress carefully unwraps a sniper rifle. And all the while the Pollandore dreams its own dreams.

E-Books

Exordium of Tears by Andrew P. Weston

Fight or Die…

Victorious in a star-flung battle against the inhuman Horde, Earth’s fabled 9th Legion of Rome; the U.S. 5th Company’s 2nd Mounted Rifles; and a Special Forces anti-terrorist team settle on Arden, their adopted planet, to raise families and live in peace.

But soon, state secrets are revealed: The greatest of the inhuman Horde didn’t join the battle, but yet lurk among Arden’s outer colonies, posing a grave threat.

Humanity’s Ardenese defenders send a flotilla of ships to far Exordium, the world where the Horde outbreak began, with orders to reclaim the outer colonies…

Exordium . . . where the Horde awaits . . . where the cream of Arden’s fighting force must engage this adversary of unrivaled power…

As worlds are sundered, suns destroyed, and star systems obliterated, a universal conflict proves again that…

Death is only the beginning of the adventure.

To readers, authors and publishers...

Is your story going to be published in time for the next New Releases? Contact us at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.  We are looking for works of alternate history, counterfactual history, steampunk, historical fantasy, time travel or anything that warps history beyond our understanding.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

Book Review: The IX by Andrew P. Weston

I really wanted to enjoy The IX by Andrew P. Weston. It had a really cool concept. Humans on the verge of death are pulled from different eras of the past by a powerful alien entity to fight an army of seemingly endless murder machines, all the while having to overcome the cultural and language barriers to become an effective fighting force. Sounds like a fun action romp with a level of sophistication. Its in the execution, however, that the book lost me.

We learn that an alien race, called the Ardenese, which are described as really tall humanoids with large foreheards (sort of like the aliens from This Island Earth) are on the verge of extinction. Another alien race of energy beings who feed off the bio-electrical fields generated by other organic beings (sort of like the aliens from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), known as the Horde, are winning their war against the Ardenese, who are holed up in their last city. The Ardenese, however, have a plan. They will upload their minds into an incredibly advanced super-computer, called the Architect, that will scour space and time to discover an alien race that can fight for them until the Horde is defeated and they can repopulate their plant.

Of course, that race is humanity, and at first the Architect only pulls humans from our distant future, but their advanced energy weapons have no effect on the Horde. A lucky break happens, however, when it is discovered that the Horde are obliterated by contact with iron. Thus when the ninth wave of human draftees are brought in, they come from eras of time where iron is still used in their weapons. These include, the Ninth Legion of Rome from 120 AD, a US Calvary Regiment from 1860 and a special forces squad from the mid-21st century.

Even with the time travel, alternate history content is minimal or non-existent depending on how you perceive the history being presented by Weston. Let me explain: the characters from 1860 include a US Cavalry company and several Native Americans on their way to negotiate a peace treaty for Senator Lincoln with an alliance of the Cree, Lakota, Sioux and Apache. They are prevented from doing so after rogue members of the company lead them into a trap because there is grand conspiracy involving the aforementioned tribes and several southern states (due to Sam Houston's involvement) who want to overthrow the US government.

Where do I begin? First off, Lincoln was never a senator. Second, those tribes are scattered between Canada and Northern Mexico and all speak different languages, so the chances of them forming some alliance like the one described in the book is implausible. Plus, the Lakota are actually a sub-group of the Sioux, but the author makes it very clear throughout the book that they are a separate tribe. Third, Sam Houston as governor of Texas actually opposed his state's secession from the Union during the American Civil War so the idea of him being part of some coup attempt seems far-fetched. Finally, Weston seems to imply to real reason the Civil War began was because the Southerners and Great Plains Indians were just trying to overthrow a central government they didn't believe in anymore, which is a troublesome theory about that period of history for someone to have in my opinion.

Now this may be the alternate history, but there really is no clear point of divergence and they do come from the same timeline as the Ninth Legion. To be fair Weston did a better job of presenting the history of the Legion. There are some historians who believe they disappeared in modern-day Scotland, even if there is evidence that the whole or portions of the legion survived on the continent. Problems occur with his description of the Caledonians they were fighting before being taken to Arden. One tribe is called the Iceni, which is actually the name of tribe that inhabited modern-day Norfolk during the Roman occupation of England, and while my preliminary research does show they occasionally practiced cannibalism, the description in the book of groups of them stopping to feast on wounded Roman soldiers like zombies from The Walking Dead was just too silly to take seriously. They also referred to themselves as Caledonians, which is wrong since "Caledonia" was the name the Greeks/Romans gave to modern-day Scotland and the native inhabitants would have called themselves something else.

Besides the bad history, how was the rest of the book? Well, not good. The book is poorly written with too much tell and not enough show. There was also a lot of "As You Know, Bob" moments where one character explains to another character some aspect of the story that both should already know. This is done to provide important exposition to the reader, but it is also not how people normally talk to each other. In fact, most of the dialogue is stilted. This wouldn't be so bad if the book was heavier on the action, which Weston writes pretty well, but most of The IX is just talking about things that are just boring. Even the inner thoughts of the characters are uninteresting and, to be frank, it was hard to tell when they were doing that. Sometimes the inner monologues were in italics, as is traditional in most books, but other times they weren't in italics or highlighted in any way to differentiate them from the rest of the text.

The characters from the future are bland and indistinguishable from each other, despite many coming from time periods centuries apart. Even the characters from the past come off more like stereotypes instead of well researched characters, although they are amazingly smart and are somehow able to point out obvious things about the enemy that the future humans, who have been fighting them for much longer than the new arrivals. Also everyone seemed to have taken the fact that they will never see their homes or loved ones again fairly well and drop old animosities almost instantly so they can fight in a war they've never asked for. Ignoring the psychological impact of what the Ardenese did to the humans it dragged into their war was a grave omission in my opinion. Instead what we do get is overused tropes like ancient aliens and hand-waving issues such as language barriers thanks to magical technology.

To be completely honest, I didn't finish this book. I gave up on it after I was more than halfway done. What was the last straw for me was when I was forced to read a five page memo on how an iron ore mining operation was going. From the context of the book, the memo was being proofread by a character before he sent it to his superiors. I'm sorry, but that is just lame. I know background info is both important and difficult to express to readers in an entertaining way, but their are ways to do it. Take a “Hot Night at the Hopping Toad" by SM Stirling. Although not my favorite story in The Change, it still presented what life was like in a post-apocalyptic college town through the eyes of two likable and interesting characters who were catching up with each other over dinner and drinks at a local bar. Then, just to keep things interesting, there is bar fight, someone dies and a murderer needs to be uncovered. Stirling added conflict to make his story interesting and I never saw the conflict in The IX. The Horde never seemed like a real threat and from what I did read, I never even saw them kill a single human. Without real conflict, it is hard to have a good story.

Despite what I said above, I'm once again the lone voice of dissent in a sea of praise. The IX has a ton of good reviews on both Amazon and Goodreads that I just don't understand. Maybe the book picks up in the second half, but if a book can't hold my attention after 300 pages, I don't see any reason to continue with it. I will admit that when there is action happening the book can be enjoyable and Weston certainly praises the work of soldiers in this novel, so if you like that then go ahead and pick up a copy. Otherwise, I can't recommend The IX. I can, recommend, The Misplaced Legion and its sequels by Harry Turtledove, which has similar themes to The IX and is better written.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

Preview: The IX by Andrew P. Weston

O goodie! I just got my first book to read as a Sidewise Award for Alternate History judge. Its called The IX by Andrew P. Weston and here is the description from Amazon:

Soldiers from varying eras and vastly different backgrounds, including the IX Legion of Rome, are snatched away from Earth at the moment of their passing, and transported to the far side of the galaxy. Thinking they have been granted a reprieve, their relief turns to horror when they discover they face a stark ultimatum:

Fight or die.

Admittedly that doesn't read much like an alternate history. It sort of reminds me of The Lost Regiment, where other people and cultures are transported to an alien world and have to fight to survive. Nevertheless, I will certainly check this book out since it's history is just weird enough for my taste. While you are waiting for my review, you can check out excerpts of The IX (here and here) over at Amazing Stories.

One last thing: if you are a publisher or author whose alternate history book has been or will be published in 2015, please submit your book to the Sidewise Awards by emailing Steven Silver at shsilver at sfsite dot com.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.