SF AND FANTASY
THE COURT OF MIRACLES by Kester Grant (Harper Voyager £12.99, 464pp)
THE COURT OF MIRACLES
by Kester Grant
(Harper Voyager £12.99, 464pp)
It may be Paris, but gay it ain’t. The revolution has failed, the aristocrats flounce safely in their grandes maisons while the poor must flounder in the merde.
In this twisty, turny and fiercely-told tale of revenge and redemption, the underworld has organised itself into guilds and follows an inverted code of honour.
Enter Nina, a cat burglar with claws, whose life is turned upside down when her sister is sold into prostitution.
It’s hard not to love a girl who can negotiate with thief lords, burgle the Dauphin’s bedroom and organise a jailbreak, but what sets this brilliant debut apart is her sense of passionate outrage and honour.
THE CITY OF A THOUSAND FACES by Walker Dryden (Orion £16.99, 560 pp)
THE CITY OF A THOUSAND FACES
by Walker Dryden
(Orion £16.99, 560 pp)
As a radio series, this epic was as widescreen as the spoken word can get. As a book, it repeats the trick.
Tumanbay, a Baghdad-y, desert megapolis, is stinking rich, deliciously decadent, terrifically teeming and undeniably unfair with its slave markets, arranged marriages and executions galore.
But there’s insurrection on the edge of the empire, a secret cult within the city walls and stirrings in a very literal underworld.
Linking multiple plot strands together is a pair of mysterious, blue-eyed slaves, a spymaster, a wayward prince and a curiously sympathetic slave-trader. Together they create a complex, gorgeous and compelling tapestry of love, death, trust and betrayal.
THE GIRL AND THE STARS by Mark Lawrence (Harper Voyager £14.99, 480pp)
THE GIRL AND THE STARS
by Mark Lawrence
(Harper Voyager £14.99, 480pp)
Yaz’s tribe, the Ictha, live in the most northerly north of a frozen planet. They never give up and do whatever it takes to survive.
But — spoiler alert — when Yaz’s brother falls foul of the priesthood and is ritually chucked into a pit of doom, she does what plucky girls do: jumps in after him. Only she enters a perilous underworld where a battle is raging between earlier survivors of the drop and children infected with evil spirits.
In this cave-world where she must survive giant cannibals, killer robots and tribal power struggles, Yaz discovers she has powers that mark her out as unique — and as a target for her numerous enemies.