Just a quick note that my Dominion of the Fallen story “Court of Birth, Court of Strength” is now up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

In the ruins of a Gothic Paris, a city devastated in the wake of a magical war, a young and sheltered Fallen angel goes to an older one for help in finding a missing child.

The leader of House Hawthorn’s Court of Birth lived in a part of the House that Samariel had never been to: a wing of dusty, disused corridors where the wainscoting had rotted away and the wallpaper’s elegant asphodels were obscured by elongated smudges of grey fungus. The door was small and crooked. Samariel would have thought it the entrance to a garret, but it opened into a wide, airy space with barely a trace of mould or spells gone awry. A makeshift antechamber held two Louis XV armchairs with plump, curved mahogany legs, and behind it was the shape of a four-poster bed that had seen better days, its silk canopy patched so many times the patterns on it had all but disappeared under the seams of repairs.

 

Read online!

(for anyone who’s read the books: this happens before The House of Shattered Wings, and it’s the Asmodeus/Samariel courtship story!)

Pleased as punch that both The House of Binding Thorns and “Children of Thorns, Children of Water” are on the Locus Recommended Reading List, alongside a bunch of really stellar stuff.

And a reminder you can read “Children of Thorns, Children of Water” for free at Uncanny Magazine!

Meanwhile, I’ll go back to the grind of working on this book °_°

-My esssay “Pushing Back Against the Wall” is up, over at Lightspeed Magazine’s kickstarter for funding their special issue of “POC Destroy SF!” (edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Kristine Ong Muslim).

I am told I shouldn’t speak of this, because it makes me angry and unpleasant and unattractive, and is that what I really want to be, as an author?

But I have to speak up, lest I choke.
Read more.

-A Fantastical Librarian reviews The House of Shattered Wings

I loved The House of Shattered Wings. I found it immersive, delicious, and full of beautiful visuals. Definitely one I recommend.

-James Nicoll reviews Harbinger of the Storm (with new spiffy cover!)

Acatl’s problem is working out which of the dozens of competing schemes is causing the current crisis.

(I love this quote. It’s like my idea of court plotting in a nutshell :p)

And tonight I’m off to Margot Zhang’s bao class, aka finally mastering the art of little fluffy buns (thanks to the H and his Xmas present of a cookery class!)

So you can now buy The House of Shattered Wings both in the US and the UK–I thought it was high time to round up a few of the things that have been going on with the novel, just in case you’re feeling indecisive (or if you want to know more!).

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A roundup of where I’ve been on the web so far (I think I’ve got most of them? Haven’t been keeping very good track…):
-The Forum at BBC World Service: Magic
–My Favorite Bit at Mary Robinette Kowal’s website (Morningstar, in case you had doubts ^^)
–Big Idea piece at John Scalzi’s blog
-I talk on the Coode Street Podcast with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K Wolfe about the novel: Jonathan Strahan calls it “powerful and engaging”.
–An intimidation of Shrimp: Cooking the Books podcast with Fran Wilde and Zen Cho on weaponised food, and food and worldbuilding
–Midnight in Karachi podcast with Mahvesh Murad
–Six Books at Nerds of a Feather
-On the Gollancz blog: Eight inspirations for the Novel (CS Friedman’s Coldfire trilogy!)
-At Scifinow: Merging Fantasy and SF in a ruined Paris
-At Intellectus Speculativus: Diversity and Gender Roles in The House of Shattered Wings
-At Geekmom: my favourite manga and anime
-At welovethisbook.com: how Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo inspired the novel
–Interview with Michelle Hebert
–Commented excerpt at Reader Dad
–Commented excerpt at Civilian Reader
–Commented excerpt at Geek Syndicate

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A few reviews around the net (not exhaustive, sorry, I couldn’t keep track of everything!):
–Publishers Weekly (starred review):

Gripping (…) De Bodard aptly mixes moral conflicts and the desperate need to survive in a fantastical spy thriller that reads like a hybrid of le Carré and Milton, all tinged with the melancholy of golden ages lost.

–Jessie Potts at Romantic Times (RT Top Pick for August):

Will grab readers and force them to pay attention to the amazing writing and the phenomenal characters (…) It’s a whirlwind, it’s heartbreaking and it’s one of the best fantasy novels of 2015.

–Library Journal (starred review):

A fascinating Paris of decay and cruelty. ­Phillippe is a marvel of a character, unreliable as a narrator but compelling in his flaws and his deep well of homesickness.

–Gary K. Wolfe, Chicago Tribune:

Especially haunting(…) convey(s) a visceral sense of immediacy (…) a surprising but compelling murder mystery, which plays out according to the supernatural terms de Bodard has laid out so evocatively.

–Paul Weimer at SF Signal:

A dark and wondrous fantasy (…) every setting and location is invoked in vivid detail, and a very dark world is brought to life.

–NPR review by Tasha Robinson:

Grimly prosaic (…) wrapped up in intrigue and politics (…) comes closer to the blunt, grounded violence of Game Of Thrones than the high gothic fantasy it outwardly resembles (…) a grim story with high-flown conventions, but by finding so much ugliness even in supernatural beauty, de Bodard makes both seem more compelling, and more concrete.

–Jonathan Hatfull at Scifinow:

Fascinating, moving and hugely readable.

–Niall Alexander (originally at Tor.com, reprinted on his blog):

The year’s best urban fantasy by far (…) takes a whole hoard of over-familiar fantasy tropes and turns them, evidently effortlessly, on their collective head (…) There’s an intelligence—and, yes, an elegance—to The House of Shattered Wings that is as rare and precious as angel essence.

–D Franklin at Intellectus Speculativus:

Aliette de Bodard has written an absolute masterpiece whose sequel cannot come soon enough.

–Dario Ciriello at his blog:

One of the most unusual and absorbing books I’ve read in years (…) a vivid sense of remembered splendour and grandeur (…) a powerful novel that sinks deep into the reader’s psyche, taking you into a world so rich and characters so compelling that they linger for months after turning the last page. Don’t miss it.

–Bookshelf Butterfly:

Not for the faint hearted but is a literary feat of imagination that will astound readers.

–R.A. Kennedy at his blog:

a novel that is not easy to put down (…) has has some incredible moments that will leave you wanting more (…) a thrilling, gripping read, that will leave you wanting another hit of angel essence.

–Glen Mehn:

Haunting and sticks in the mind.

The book is also an Amazon Best Book of the Month in Science Fiction/Fantasy.

Still undecided? You can sample a bit before making up your mind.
Read Chapter One!
Read excerpt from Chapter Three!
Read excerpt from Chapter Four!

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Briefly emerging from my winter sleep, aka “full-time care of the snakelet while holding a day job and writing a novel/novella ™”, to point out a couple of places I’ve been this week:
-Roundtable on fantastical creatures at The Book Smugglers, with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Shveta Thakrar, Octavia Cade, Marie Brennan, Whiti Hereaka, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, E.C. Myers, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Bogi Takács, Joyce Chng and me: part 1, part 2. I talk dragons (rồng) and turtles (rủa) in myths!
-My Beneath Ceaseless Skies Aztec steampunk story “Memories in Bronze, Feathers and Blood” is re-released as part of the Audio Vault, with a new introduction by me on the genesis and worldbuilding of the story: listen here.
-Still at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the new issue, available at Weightless Books and Amazon, contains my colonial Indochina fantasy “The Moon over Red Trees”, as well as fiction by Richard Parks, K.J Parker (OMG I’m sharing a TOC with K.J. Parker!), and Gwendolyn Clare

Another of my January project has gone live at Tor.com: a roundtable on The Food of the Future, with Ann Leckie, Elizabeth Bear, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, and Fran Wilde. Check it out here.

Thanks to everyone who took part–it was a lot of fun, and especially many many thanks to Fran Wilde for masterminding it and sending me pointed reminders about fixing and submitting it in what has been a rather overwhelming month (well, OK. Lately all months have been overwhelming).

-The awesome Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and her sister interview Benjanun Sriduankaew:

I think of short stories as presenting a question, even if it’s something as simple as ‘how will the characters get what they want?’  It’s my hope that readers will be engaged by that question even if the story isn’t presenting a direct answer – so that’s what I hope they take away: a question. But I also hope to excite a sense of wonder and a sympathetic interest, when possible.

Read more here (and fully concur with the reminder that Benjanun’s eligible for a well-deserved Campbell Award for Best New Writer next year at Loncon3!)

-Damien G Walter very kindly names me as one of 20 most promising young novelists in this Guardian article. The company is kind of… impressive, to say the least.

-Over at The Shake, Zucchini Bikini reviews On a Red Station, Drifting::

All in all, I highly recommend this book, both for itself and for what is represents – a different way of writing hard sci fi, a way that includes and magnifies stories and pasts that haven’t been represented well in this genre before.

-Calvin N. Ho on “The Stigma of Immigrant Languages” (a phenomenon I would hazard is not limited to the US).

Of the selfish variety…

-Ian Mond reviews the Nebula-nominated novellas, which includes On a Red Station, Drifting

More then just being an insight into a culture and tradition that I know bugger all about, Red Station is written with a delicate intensity. It’s not an easy read, because the novella doesn’t provide us with a set of sympathetic characters that we can cheer on. Rather, through some gorgeous writing and the complexity of the world building, each character earns our respect. And that makes the ending all the more powerful.

–MJ Starling on On a Red Station, Drifting

(…) a great, harsh, messy, human book that deserves every vote it gets.

-Strange Horizons (Luc Reid) interviews Ken Liu

Many of my stories deal with the invisible bounds imposed on us by the legacy of history: colonialism, war, mass killings, power imbalances between different parts of the world and between different populations sharing the same space. These bounds infuse everything we experience and affect the fates of nations, peoples, families, and individuals. History is not just vast armies clashing on dark plains at night, but lived through by real men and women related to us. It is deeply personal.

In the West, I have detected a tendency to dismiss or minimize the effects of history on the present, as if history can be made irrelevant by a simple act of individual will. Such views, it seems to me, are signs of a perspective colored by the very privileges conferred on those who have been dealt a lucky hand by history.

-Sophia McDougall on Twenty-One tips to make your book better for new writers

-Glen Mehn reviews On a Red Station, Drifting

this novella would stand out in any crowded field: Complicated, layered, internal and external conflict work, here, and de Bodard delivers. As usual. Not that I’m jealous.