Critically-acclaimed author Aliette de Bodard is due to attend the North London Literary Festival next week, March 24th, where she will take part in a special event sponsored by the Science Fiction Foundation. Specifically, at 5:30pm, she will be discussing speculative fiction with fellow author Stephanie Saulter, and Farah Mendlesohn (who will chair the discussion).

Aliette is the author of the Obsidian & Blood trilogy, published by Angry Robot Books; multiple award-winning and nominated short stories and novellas; and also the highly anticipated upcoming new novel HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS (the first in a planned duology). Rights for the latter were recently sold to Gollancz in the UK and Roc Books in the US – both are due to publish in August 2015. Here’s the synopsis from Aliette’s website:

A superb murder mystery, on an epic scale, set against the fall out – literally – of a war in Heaven.

Paris has survived the Great Magicians War – just. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens continue to live, love, fight and survive in their war-torn city, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over the once grand capital.

House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires’ salvation. They may be the architects of its last, irreversible fall…