Some favourites from the past year:
Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert McFarlane is technically non-fiction, but it delves into a
variety of underground realms across millions of years. Fascinating and
inspiring stuff.
The Future Starts Here: Adventures in
the 21st Century, by the always-fascinating
John Higgs, is also technically non-fiction, but it kicks off by asking why our
fiction has stopped imagining the near future as anything other than a
catastrophe, and then proceeds to explore ways to imagine a better tomorrow.
Another benefit of being published: a flood
of free books from fellow authors in the Orbit stable. The Hod King (Josiah
Bancroft) for its stunning prose and characterisation, the
artistry and lyricism of The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix Harrow)
and the world-building of The Bone Ships (RJ Barker) was my
particular picks.
And of the books I actually had to pay for,
I’ll also mention Rebecca Kuang’s Poppy War, Peter McClean’s Priest
of Bones and Tim Clare’s vertiginous portal fantasy The Ice House.
Looking Ahead To 2020
My second Black Iron Legacy book, The
Shadow Saint, will be out in early 2020, and I’m in the middle of writing
the still-untitled third book in the not-a-trilogy series. The Shadow Saint involves
war, election meddling, crazed tyrannical gods and dying empires, so it nearly
counts as topical. I’ll also have some short fiction coming out from Black
Library, and hope to get a non-Black Iron Legacy book finished, too.
With my tabletop gaming hat on, 2020 should
see the release of The Borellus Connection (spies vs the Cthulhu Mythos
in the 1960s in the Delta Green setting), Dragons of the Pyre (a
fantasy campaign for the 13th Age game) and Errantries of
the King (Gondor adventures for The One Ring).
Oh, and maybe Moria,
if the publishing gods smile upon me.
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