Reviews - Zeno Agency Ltd.

Reviews Round-Up #3… Ian Tregillis

Posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2013

Ian Tregillis, whom we are delighted to represent in the UK and in translation on behalf of Kay McAuley at Aurous Inc. sees the second novel in his superb MILKWEED series, published this month by Orbit. Already availabe in the US from Tor, THE COLDEST WAR has already been receiving rave reviews from all corners of the bibliophile internet and was a title that rode consistantly high in many of the 2012 Year’s Best lists. The MILKWEED books have been described as ‘addictive… enthralling’ (IcebergInk) and as a ‘cracking read’ (AltHist Fiction). The third and final book in the trilogy, NECESSARY EVIL will be published simultaneously in the UK and the US in April. The series has already sold in Spain (DeBosillo) and Poland (Mag) with other territories currently being negotiated.

Fantasy Faction gave the novel 5/5 stars, saying ‘It has so many jaw-dropping moments, so many clever twists and an ending that leaves you hanging desperately for the final part but also ties up the current events. Tregillis is a master storyteller on top of his game… The pace is relentless as it hurtles towards the most epic conclusion… There’ve been some amazing books this year but Tregillis has the top two places in my ‘Best Of’ with BITTER SEEDS and THE COLDEST WAR. It’s going to be a long cruel wait until the final part of the Milkweed Triptych but I have no doubt Tregillis will blow my mind once more.‘

Over at BoingBoing Cory Doctorow was equally full of praise for THE COLDEST WAR: ‘With all the flair he showed in his debut novel, Tregillis continues the tale, bringing to it that same marvellous plotting, immersive sense of place, and above all, wonderful characters… Tregillis is a major new talent in the field, and this is some of the best — and most exciting — alternate history I’ve read. Bravo.‘

And Bookworm Blues were gushing in their praise for the novel, declaring in a 5/5 review that ‘Tregillis not only matched the quality of BITTER SEEDS, but THE COLDEST WAR left it in the dust. Tregillis has obviously grown and developed as a writer, and this brilliant installment in this trilogy proves it.’

If you’d like to see what all the fuss is about Tor.com have an excerpt of THE COLDEST WAR available online. And over on the Orbit site, there’s a fascinating discussion between Ian Tregillis and genre favourite and fellow Orbit author Charlie Stross. Also, fans of the series will be interested in the excellent article about “The Origin of the Götterelektron“.

Happy Publication Day… The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

Posted on Monday, February 11th, 2013

Today Peter V. Brett’s highly anticipated third novel, THE DAYLIGHT WAR (Voyager), finally hits bookstores. It is this latest installment in Brett’s incredibly popular and internationally best-selling Demon Cycle fantasy series, he continues the epic tale of humanity’s last stand against an army of demons that rise each night to prey on mankind. A dead cert to please fans of the series, here are what early reviews have had to say about THE DAYLIGHT WAR:

Fixed on Fantasy – ‘Brett’s prose and flow remains virtually flawless, providing for a smooth read… The world that Brett has created is rich with detail and innovation and I am itching with anticipation to find out how humans will fare against their enemies from the core!’

Speculative Book Review has described THE DAYLIGHT WAR as ‘the best in the series so far… The Demon Cycle is building up to something even bigger and I for one am holding my breath to see where Brett takes us next in the forthcoming novel… Highly Recommended.’

Jet Black Ink has been blown away by the novel, and was particularly effusive with praise: ‘After the phenomenal success of both THE WARDED MAN and THE DESERT SPEAR, I was tentative about THE DAYLIGHT WAR; surely it couldn’t get much better? Well, I was wrong… The supporting cast come to life like never before in this installment… With the introduction of new characters to further flesh out Brett’s already strong world, the foundations of the series grow even stronger and the world crystallizes on a whole new level, becoming all the more real… In the end, this is probably the best of the whole series. This will be a strong contender for one of the best books of the year, even this early on. Utterly gripping and brilliant.’

Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore’s Patrick had this to say: ‘In the world of The Demon Cycle, humankind use wards to keep the demons at bay. In our world, Brett weaves words to bring that world and the characters within it to life. And live they most certainly do. I just love this series and will suffer along with the rest of you until Brett delivers books four and five of the Cycle. Honest word.’

Meanwhile, the Arched Doorway gushed: ‘I can say with complete confidence that Brett has outdone himself… With his breath-taking descriptions, epic battle scenes…, the powers that shape the world, and of course, keeping with the theme of the series, Brett tells yet another amazing coming of age story, this time of Jardir’s wife, Inevera. THE DAYLIGHT WAR… is a fast-paced, action-packed and exhilaratingly detailed novel that will leave readers breathless and in eager anticipation for more.’

Writing for Chapters/Indigo in Canada, Jessica wrote, ‘The ending is shocking, with a sudden cliffhanger that will have your cursing the fact that the next book isn’t out yet. If you’ve liked Brett’s previous books, this is a superb follow-up. If you haven’t read Peter Brett and like well written fantasy, I urge you to give him a try.’

SFX has also recently posted this short interview with Peat and be sure to check out Tor.com’s excerpt from the book.

But wait! There’s more: Peter V Brett will be in the UK at the end of February! Here is the schedule:

25/2: Peter will be signing books at Waterstone’s in Manchester, at 7:00pm. (Tickets for the event are £3.)

26/2: Peter will be signing books at Waterstone’s in Nottingham, at noon.

26/2: Peter will be signing & talking about his books at Forbidden Planet Megastore, on Shaftesbury Avenue at 6:00pm. (More information can be found here.)

27/2: Peter will be signing books at Waterstone’s in Milton Keynes, at noon.

27/2: Peter will be signing & talking about his books at Waterstone’s in Birmingham, at 7:30pm. (Book tickets here.)

28/2: Peter will be signing & talking about his books at Topping & Company in Bath, at 7:30pm.

1/3: Peter will be attending the SciFi Weekender

Do scroll down (or if you’re feeling lazy, just click this link) to check read the cover copy for THE DAYLIGHT WAY and also check out the very cool book trailer created by HarperCollins Voyager.

Zeno Agency represents Peter V. Brett in the UK and British Commonwealth on behalf of our colleagues at the JABberwocky Literary Agency in New York.

New Deal For Tim Powers…

Posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2013

We’re delighted to announce that Ravi Mirchandani, Editor-in-Chief at Atlantic Books has acquired UK / British Commonwealth rights to a new Tim Powers novel, currently entiteld DEPTH OF FIELD. Details are scant on the novel itself, but the word is that it will be a contemporary Californian tale and will, as the title suggest, focus on the movie industry in some way. Likewise, a publication date is yet to be finalised, but it is likely the novel won’t appear before the end of 2015. Definitely something to look forward to then!

Atlantic’s Corvus imprint has now published five Powers titles, beginning with supernatural spy story and World Fantasy award winner DECLARE. They followed this with Powers’ famous pirate novel ON STRANGER TIDES, now forever linked with the Disney Juggernaut that is the Pirates of the Carribean franchise, and towards the end of last year, they published author’s most recent novel, HIDE ME A MONG THE GRAVES, a historical fantasy about the Rosettis and also it’s precursor, THE STRESS OF HER REGARD, a take on the Romantic poets and their vampyrric muse. Most recently Corvus released his 2006 novel THREE DAYS TO NEVER, previously unpublished in the UK.

Look out for the paperback edition of Powers’s HIDE ME AMONG THE GRAVES later this year. The Independent, which describes Powers as ‘one of dark fantasy’s major eccentrics‘, opines that the author has ‘not mellowed or grown more ordinary with age‘ and goes on to describe HIDE ME AMONG THE GRAVES as ‘one of his best books‘. Furthermore, the review praises Corvus’s decision to publish him. The paper recommends the novel on the basis of its ingenuity and conceptual wit, describing Powers as ‘an intelligent, emotionally complex writer with a taste for elegantly conceived nightmare.’ Meanwhile, SFX described the novel as ‘Dickens as directed by David Lynch… clever…fun… and rewarding.’

BoingBoing big-wig Cory Doctorow was mightily impressed with Powers’s approach to the supernatural – ‘Powers’s treatment of superstition works so well, I think, because he deals with it without apology. There’s never a sense that superstition is just a kind of alternate physics, with its own rules that are different from the ones we’re accustomed to. The supernatural world of Tim Powers has an internal logic, but it’s the logic of dreams and the id, not the logic of the scientific method. Powers’s work engages with something prerational that is buried deep, deep in our brains, and that won’t be bullied into submission by mere reason.‘ And to celebrate the re-issue, the Book Smugglers ran a fascinating and insightful interview with Powers.

In other related news, over on the Library of America website Tim Powers has written a wonderful appreciation of the late Algis Budrys’s classic novel WHO? Zeno is delighted to handle the Budrys estate and is proud to have made a large number of his works available in ebook via the Gollancz SF Gateway programme. His famous 1960 novel ROGUE MOON is also available in print in the SF Masterworks. We were delighted to be approached by the Library of America on behalf of editor Gary K. Wolfe, who wished to include WHO? in his AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION FIVE CLASSIC NOVELS 1956-1956 collected box set – which is a gorgeous production worth of the works contained therein.

Of WHO?, Powers writes ‘…in the context of a science fictional future world, Budrys presents a picture of Cold War politics and espionage that is surprisingly insightful for an American writer of the time – but in many ways Budrys was never precisely an American writer. He was born in East Prussia, and his father – on whom he based the Soviet Colonel Anastas Azarin in WHO? – was a Lithuanian diplomat. It’s an affectionate portrait. Budrys has said, ‘A lot of my life when I was a small child was spent in cars, or trains, talking to strangers, speaking a variety of languages, never settling down anywhere…‘ The full piece is available online here.

Rothko’s Red Reading…

Posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Sue Hubbard will be reading from her recent short story collection Rothko’s Red on March 10th. The event takes place in the hospitality suite of the Hackney Empire and begins at 7.00pm. Entry is £5.00. The event is organised by “Fiction Writers in the Visual Arts”, you can get further details by calling 07967 161 291.

Here’s what The New Statesman had to say about Sue’s collection, published last October by Salt…

‘Each story in this, Hubbard’s first collection of short fiction is nominally centred around art. But what truly links the pieces herein is the themes of longing, loss and melancholy, and a sense that not even an intimate knowledge of the beautiful and the sublime can protect one from the daily tragedies of life.

While several of Hubbard’s protagonists ultimately find redemption, it is always at a cost to themselves; the academic who gets away with cheating on his wife, but not without being fleeced by his mistress; the widow who realises that she is content alone, but only after a disappointing sexual encounter with a man she meets on the internet; the middle-aged divorcee who has an affair with an immigrant you enough to be her son and who she regards with distant amusement.

With Hubbard’s background in art criticism and poetry, it is not surprising that her writing is painterly and vivid. She lingers on colours and textures, edges and scents: Mummy grew tomatoes, red gems, that what she called them… I remember that special smell when she watered them in the early evening after a day of sun.”

The collection is quiet, almost to the point of defiance, but in its understated, delicate descriptions of the mundane, Rothko’s Red has an acute power.‘

McDonald’s Cyberabad Days on Boing Boing…

Posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009

Boing Boing – one of the finest, most popular and in my opinion, influential Internet sites around today posted a feature by Cory Doctorow on Ian McDonald and his recently published collection Cyberabad Days…

“Ian McDonald is one of science fiction’s finest working writers, and his latest short story collection Cyberabad Days, is the kind of book that showcases exactly what science fiction is for. ”

Read the full article here.

Cobley’s Seeds of Earth a four star novel!

Posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

The new issue of the very shiny Sci-Fi Now (no#25 – available via subscription here at at your local W H Smiths!) carries a fabulous review of Mike Cobley‘s equally shiny new Space Opera SEEDS OF EARTH, published by Orbit.

‘In this first installment of the Humanity’s Fire saga, Michael Cobley has really nailed his colours to the mast. The story is huge, complex and moves between its varied cast with assured purpose…a tightly plotted, action packed epic that leaves you wanting more.‘

Freda Warrington Update…

Posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009

It’s not due out from Tor for some months, but Freda Warrington‘s forthcoming novel Elfland has received a fabulous review from Charles de Lint in Fantasy & Science Fiction.

As well as grading the book as ‘Highly Recommended’, de Lint praises Freda’s novel to the rafters, saying it is ‘…a real page-turner and a very magical book…‘ and that ‘…even the most jaded fantasy reader will quickly fall under the spell of her characters and the warm, intimate voice Warrington uses to tell us their stories‘. Read the full review here.

In other news Immanion Press are publishing an omnibus of two of Freda’s Blackbird titles – A Blackbird in Amber Twilight is scheduled for release in March – more info on Freda’s Immanion titles can be found here.

Freda reports that she will be attending this years Eastercon. She’ll be one of a number of Zeno clients who will be attending – and both John’s will be there too. More on this anon.

More on ‘Hackney’ and author Iain Sinclair…

Posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Reviews are starting to come in for Iain Sinclair’s new book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire and we’ll be posting news of them here as they come in. For starters, here’s a four star write-up from today’s London Metro paper.

Check our previous post for details of specific Hackney related events that are coming up and don’t forget to listen to BBC Radio 4 next week, when Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire will be being featured as Book of the Week.

The Observer carried a wonderful interview with author Iain Sinclair on February 8th , 2009. ‘The brilliant chronicler of uncharted, often unloved, parts of Britain has stayed close to home for his latest epic – a bittersweet love letter to the London borough of Hackney. He takes Rachel Cooke for a stroll round his patch – no ordinary walk, as the visionary author beautifully evokes the area’s rich history while reflecting on his own memories of the urban landscape.‘ The piece is available here online.

And if all this coverage is wetting your appetite for the book (and how can it not?) the publisher Hamish Hamilton has made an except of the book’s opening chapter available online. Click this link for the pdf.

Sue Hubbard Reviewed in The Independent

Posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009

Here a link to Nicholas Royle’s January review in The Independent of Sue Hubbard‘s début short story collection, Rothko’s Red, published by Salt Publishing last September.

“[Sue Hubbard] fashions an arresting opening in which Adam and Maggie gaze at a large magenta Rothko that prompts him to utter a paean to her genitals. But Adam is just the first in a long line of disappointing men blundering naively or selfishly through Hubbard’s stories. Inability to commit, unreliability, unfaithfulness – just some of the character faults her protagonists encounter in male partners.

Other recurring motifs are mildewed books and broken frames, silvery stretch marks, women washing under their breasts and their armpits, doing up ruins in Italy….” Read more of this review here.

Seeds of Earth Review…

Posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

There’s a review of Mike Cobley‘s forthcoming novel, Seeds of Earth just gone up on the Concept Sci-fi Ezine site. The book is due out in March 2009 from Orbit Books.

‘…incredibly well thought out, with a comprehensive social and political system that is totally believable and incredibly detailed. [Cobley]’s clearly paid a lot of attention to backstory and really should be congratulated for the amount of effort he’s put in to this...’

Black Blood in Publisher’s Weekly

Posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009

There’s a really nice review in the latest edition of Publisher’s Weekly of John Meaney‘s new novel Black Blood due for released in the US in late February from Bantam Spectra (and already published in the UK by Gollancz under the title Dark Blood)…

‘Meaney’s ambitious sequel to 2008’s Bone Song makes a successful and welcome shift from ambience and world-building to character and plot development. The gloomy city of Tristopolis is powered by necrofusion, energy produced from incinerating the physical and spiritual remains of the dead. Donal Riordan, a recently murdered Tristopolis police lieutenant now a zombie, is tasked with exposing a powerful cabal of conspirators known as the Black Circle while also trying to track down those responsible for the death of his lover, Laura. As a movement to strip the undead of human rights gains in popularity, the heroic Riordan suddenly finds himself a prime target for a fearful public. The politics and police procedure mix well with a virtual deluge of macabre imagery and symbolism to create a fast-moving and satisfying noir gothic fantasy.’