We’re finally going to have an official cover reveal soon of both of Tu’s spring titles—Awakening by Karen Sandler (the second book in the Tankborn trilogy) and Hammer of Witches by Shana Mlawski, who is a debut author. I’m so excited about both of them! We’ve gotten some great blurbs in from some really awesome authors, too, which I’ll share here when I link to the cover reveal for Hammer of Witches.
More on that soon! But here’s a little more about the books, to whet your appetite:
Awakening by Karen Sandler—sequel to Tankborn
EDIT: See the cover reveal here!
Once a Chadi sector GEN girl terrified of her first Assignment, Kayla is now a member of the Kinship, a secret organization of GENs, lowborns, and trueborns. Kayla travels on Kinship business, collecting information to further the cause of GEN freedom.
Despite Kayla’s relative freedom, she is still a slave to the trueborn ruling class. She rarely sees trueborn Devak, and any relationship between them is still strictly forbidden.
Kayla longs to be truly free, but other priorities have gotten in the way. A paradoxically deadly new virus has swept through GEN sectors—a disease only GENs catch. And GEN warrens and warehouses are being bombed, with only a scrawled clue: F.H.E. Freedom, Humanity, Equality.
With the virus and the bombings decimating the GEN community, freedom and love are put on the back burner as Kayla and her friends find a way to stop the killing . . . before it’s too late.
Hammer of Witches by Shana Mlawski
Baltasar Infante, a bookmaker’s apprentice living in 1492 Spain, can weasel out of any problem with a good story. But when he awakes one night to find a monster straight out of the stories peering at him through his window, he’s in trouble that even he can’t talk his way out of. Soon Baltasar is captured by a mysterious arm of the Spanish Inquisition, the Malleus Maleficarum, that demands he reveal the whereabouts of Amir al-Katib, a legendary Moorish sorcerer who can bring myths and the creatures within them to life. Baltasar doesn’t know where the man is—or that he himself has the power to summon genies and golems.
Baltasar must escape, find al-Katib, and defeat a dreadful power that may destroy the world. As Baltasar’s journey takes him into uncharted lands on Columbus’s voyage westward, he learns that stories are more powerful than he once believed them to be—and much more dangerous.
I’m currently splitting my time between two favorite authors’ newest books: James Dashner’s The Death Cure and Tamora Pierce’s Mastiff. I’m a HUGE Tamora Pierce fan. As she often says when she introduces herself at conventions, she writes about girls who kick butt. You can see a really interesting progression of feminist thought from second wave to third wave in her work, too—the Song of the Lioness quartet about Alanna, published in the 1980s, are very much “girls are ‘as good as’ boys,” with something to prove, and then you can see how the idea of “girl power” has changed over the years all the way down to today, in the Beka Cooper books, in which Beka has nothing to prove: she is who she is, because duh, she kicks butt because she can and should be able to defend herself and those who have no power or voice. (She’s a medieval cop who can talk to ghosts and Hunts with a scent hound. I love it!) The Beka Cooper books are really interesting to me because they’re actually set at a time in the history of Tortall before Alanna, and you can see how the beginnings of the belief in the Goddess as the Gentle Mother influences Alanna’s circumstances later when she’s in such a sexist situation that no one believes women should be lady knights, despite there being many storied lady knights in the past.
And of course The Death Cure is the last in James Dashner’s Maze Runner trilogy. Even though I worked with James on the first book years ago before it ended up selling to Delacourte (curses! But I’m glad it found a good home), I could never have predicted where the next two books would end up. It’s good, guys. I’m not quite finished reading yet, but it’s action packed and if you haven’t started with The Maze Runner you should catch up to me so we can talk.