Books Received, August 31 to September 6
7 Sep, 2024
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Blacklight Born by Alexander Darwin (December 2024)
The final book in an action-packed science fiction trilogy set on a far-future world where the fate of nations is determined by single combat: “that rare book that fully satisfies me as an action fan.” (Fonda Lee, author of Jade City)
The Grievar War has engulfed the Empire of Kiroth and Silas the Slayer has given voice to his warrior kin, igniting a revolution within a people once bound by a thousand years of servitude.
Cego is released into a war-torn world where the lines between shadow and light are blurred. He must decide which path to follow: one of his brother’s righteous rebellion or the one that leads to the family he’s finally found.
Once famed knight, Murray Pearson, leads a group of Lyceum students on an adventure across Kiroth to follow the path of combat mastery. But Murray seeks something more on this long road. Redemption.
In this explosive conclusion to the Combat Codes Saga, the truth will be revealed and one final question must be answered as they step back into the Circle:
What is the cost of losing the fight?
Rebel Blade by Davinia Evans (December 2024)
From one of the most exciting new voices in fantasy comes the satisfying conclusion to Davinia Evans’s wickedly entertaining debut trilogy full of monsters, mayhem, dangerous society ladies, and a dragon who holds the fate of the most famous alchemist of all in her claws.
Siyon Velo has given magic back to the Mundane. But with it, monsters of myth have awoken to cause chaos in Bezim and – of course – everyone’s blaming him. Hunted high and low, Siyon struggles against the rising tide of mystery, magic and mayhem threatening the city that’s turned its back on him.
From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America by Kimberly A. Hamlin (September 2014)
From Eve to Evolution provides the first full-length study of American women’s responses to evolutionary theory and illuminates the role science played in the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. Kimberly A. Hamlin reveals how a number of nineteenth-century women, raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, embraced Darwinian evolution — especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man — as an alternative to the creation story in Genesis.
Hamlin chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women’s rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Eliza Burt Gamble, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that women should control reproduction. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition, Hamlin shows, in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger.
Much scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing what Darwin and other male evolutionists had to say about women, but very little has been written regarding what women themselves had to say about evolution. From Eve to Evolution adds much-needed female voices to the vast literature on Darwin in America.
Sanctum of the Soul by Kel Kade (February 2025)
The epic conclusion to the genre-bending series, Shroud of Prophecy (Fate of the Fallen and Destiny of the Dead) from New York Times bestselling author, Kel Kade.
The chosen one is dead, the powerful have abandoned their subjects, and Death has come for them all.
Aaslo, the reluctant new Chosen One, and Teza, a failed magus healer, lead a small group of broken people who continue to hold back the tide of a war between the gods. They gather what forces they can scrape together for a final battle. Their band of unlikely warriors’ grit and bravery in the face of staggering odds, however, has strengthened all of them as they come into their power and their destiny.
Aaslo stands at a crossroad where he must embrace all of what he has become even in the face of losing the war, his friends, and his world.
Locus, September 2024 published by Locus Publications (September 2024)
he Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field
The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen (October 2024)
John Sackville will soon be dead. Shadows writhe in the corners of his cell as he mourns the death of his secret lover and as the gnawing hunger inside him grows impossible to ignore.
He must write his last testament before it is too late.
The story he tells will take us to the darkest part of the human soul. It is a tale of otherworldly creatures, ancient cults, and a terrifying journey from the stone circles of Scotland to the icy peaks of Tibet.
It is a tale that will take us to the end of the world.
A Dragon of Black Glass by James Rollins (February 2025)
The third book in the New York Times bestselling Moonfall series from thriller-master James Rollins, A Dragon of Black Glass is a tale of relentless adventure and the struggle for survival in a harsh world that hangs by a thread.
With the apocalyptic threat of moonfall looming ever closer, Nyx and her allies must venture into the eternally sunblasted lands to search for an ancient weapon buried untold millennia ago. All the while, enemies close upon her flanks, and a greater danger lurks ahead. For beneath a desert turned to glass, hidden from the scorching heat, life thrives — both wondrous and monstrous. But a more fearsome menace lies even deeper, where an ancient army has been seeded to protect a secret from any who dare seek it out.
Yet, can Nyx truly trust those at her side? Can she trust herself? For while her gift of bridle-song grows ever stronger, so does the danger of losing herself to a dark madness. Worst yet, the same afflicts Bashaliia, her winged and bonded brother.
Elsewhere, a looming war explodes across the Crown, forging new alliances and greater enmities, as lands around the globe are drawn into fiery conflict. Prince Kanthe — now consort to the newly crowned Empress of the Southern Klashe — must accept a mantle that poorly suits him: to become a traitor to his own people. In that role, he quickly recognizes a hard truth. To save the world, he must destroy all that he once loved.
Beyond such struggles, a new cunning peril smolders at the heart of a kingdom. Hidden in the Shrivenkeep of the Iflelen, an ancient bronze weapon has been awoken. Fed by blood, fueled by hatred, it has only one purpose: to end all life on Urth.
But in this goal, will Nyx prove to be its ally or foe?
Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye by Alex White (December 2024)
A ragtag band of musicians is all that stands in the way between an army of giant mechas and humanity’s total destruction in the second book of this big-hearted, technicolor space opera trilogy by one of the most exciting voices in science fiction, Alex White.
Ultra-glam enby pop star Ardent Violet thought they could catch a break and enjoy some time with their new boyfriend August Kitko after defeating the giant mechas hellbent on humanity’s destruction. However, Ardent didn’t count on their mecha allies summoning a host of extraterrestrials to defend Earth.
Between the diplomatic entanglements of the newly-arrived alien Coalition, and a mysterious all-powerful AI establishing a base within their solar system, there’s no rest for the wicked.
When August makes a discovery that could turn the tide of the war, Ardent Violet finds themself back in the spotlight for an encore!