Sci-fi and fantasy round-up: Watch out for a weird time-travelling mother and a half-human, half-mosquito anti-heroineOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nBlackly comic, Pagans blends satirical alt-future history into an unconventional police procedural, to striking effect.<\/p>\n
Ishmael A Soledad\u2019s Diathesis (Temple Dark Books, \u00a320.99) is an ambitious attempt to use \u201chard\u201d science to frame Project Ismud, aka \u201chumanity\u2019s first mission to the stars\u201d. The ensemble cast of characters includes a Chilean bioelectrical neuroscientist working on the neuro-electrical suspension that will replace the conventional cryogenic hibernation of astronauts, a Japanese creator of \u201cnon-biologic intelligence\u201d, and a genetically engineered human crew. <\/p>\n
The first book in a proposed hexalogy, Diathesis effectively functions as a launchpad for the series, setting in train a number of fascinating themes that parallel our contemporary concerns. <\/p>\n
A radical shift in setting and storytelling from last year\u2019s space-bound Floating Hotel, Grace Curtis\u2019s Idolfire (Hodderscape, \u00a320) opens with the aspiring warrior Kirby setting out from the dying community of Wall\u2019s End, determined to restore the goddess Iona to her rightful place and thus revitalise her people\u2019s hopes (Idolfire, we\u2019re told, is \u201cpure faith set alight\u201d). <\/p>\n
Simultaneously, Ayela, the thwarted heir to the grand old city of Ash, embarks on a quest to establish her credentials as a future ruler by returning to Ash with a unique token of her worth. Gradually, their respective quests find them converging on the ancient metropolis of Nivela, a city-state that once perfected \u201cthe art of prising miracles from plundered gods\u201d. <\/p>\n
Curtis\u2019s world-building is deftly done as Ayela and Kirby wander, Odysseus-like, from one strange new quasi-medieval country to another, their initial bickering and mutual incomprehension gradually giving way to deeper, more tender feelings, but it\u2019s her characters \u2013 funny, smart and authentic \u2013 that are this novel\u2019s real treasure. <\/p>\n
A Bafta-winning and Oscar-nominated writer, director, illustrator and animator, Mikey Please publishes The Expanded Earth (Corsair, \u00a322), which opens with Giles, out for a quiet ramble in rural England with his aged father, feeling something of a seismic shudder beneath his feet: \u201cThen the sky brightened, and with little to no ceremony, the entire human race shrank to one-tenth of its previous height.\u201d <\/p>\n
The catastrophe \u201cbecame known as \u2018The Descent \u2013 the day we were sent scrabbling from our thrones down to the bottom of the food chain”. Meanwhile, Professor Elizabeth Goodwin is putting the final touches to an experiment that will allow her to \u201cspeak to God\u201d \u2013 Elizabeth, as the reader may already suspect, very likely had something to do with the human race\u2019s extraordinary plight. <\/p>\n
Please has a lot of fun with his incredibly shrinking species, and largely because \u201cit seemed that the same thing but bigger was not the same thing at all\u201d. Joining forces with fellow survivors, battling with dogs, polecats and the exhausting business of navigating a world designed for giants, Giles sets out on an epic journey to be reunited with his estranged daughters, hopeful that the newly miniaturised world order might result in his previous failings as a father being overlooked, and that \u201cwhat mattered now was what you could build\u201d. <\/p>\n
By turns comic and horrific, The Expanded Earth is a wonderfully sustained celebration of human ingenuity. <\/p>\n
Declan Burke is an author and journalist. His current novel is The Lammisters (No Alibis Press). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial Intelligence as the planet\u2019s saviour is the unexpected premise behind Lucy Lapinska\u2019s Some Body Like Me (Gollancz,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88,24512,24511],"class_list":{"0":"post-28828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fantasy-books","11":"tag-sci-fi-books"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}