WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 55Review_FICTION
artful writing and calculated pacing keep
the pages turning. This is an impressive,
horror-tinged trip back in time. Agent:
Stephen Barbara, Inkwell Management. (Mar.)
★ Forced Perspectives
Tim Powers. Baen, $25 (384p) ISBN 978-1-
9821-2440-3
Federal agents Sebastian Vickery and
Ingrid Castine return in Powers’s frenetic
urban fantasy that playfully blends
Egyptian mythology, alternate Los Angeles
history, and modern technology. After
sealing off the rift between the world and a
labyrinthine underworld in Alternate Routes,
Vickery and Castine have both developed
the ability to see echoes of the past. Tech
genius Simon Harlowe is obsessed with
creating an egregore, an all-encompassing
entity of minds working as one, and sees
Vickery and Castine’s new power as a neces-
sary ingredient. As Harlowe and his team
hound the agents, hoping to use them as
“interface message processors” in his group
mind, Vickery and Castine see ghosts of
the city’s past, allowing Powers to weave
in film history, long-forgotten Egyptian
myth that was buried with the set of The
Ten Commandments, a 1960s cult, and other
eccentricities. A cast of unusual side charac-
ters—among them Harlowe’s adopted
twin daughters, Lexi and Amber, who are
by turns humorous and disturbing—add
color and complexity. This labyrinthine tale
of the bizarre and fantastic will grip urban
fantasy enthusiasts until the end. (Mar.)
Stonefish
Scott R. Jones. Word Horde, $16.99 trade
paper (328p) ISBN 978-1-939905-56-7
Jones’s debut novel (after the story
collection Shout Kill Revel Repeat) treads
well-worn paths, invoking cosmic horror
and the time-honored science fiction
concept of reality as computer simulation,
but does a credible job in updating them
to reflect the climate crisis. Journalist Den
Secord’s investigation into proliferating
pockets of unreality puts him on the trail
of missing tech titan Gregor Makarios as
he follows enigmatic clues in Sasquatch
sightings. Navigating a near-future British
Columbia scorched by global warming,
Den encounters both Gregor and Bigfoot,
neither of whom are what he expected.
Gregor guards the last remnants of a team
of 17 artificial intelligences that pushed
beyond their supposed computational
limits into the next level of reality, the
occupants of which have now come to visit.
Den’s character arc as he reels from these
revelations is overshadowed by the novel’s
all-too-topical setting, and many readers
will grow frustrated with the focus on one
man’s existential angst as the greater horror
of a human-destroyed environment looms
in the background. With this deeply
philosophical novel, Jones rails against
the structural unfairness of the universe,
offering no comforts, only ugly choices.
Readers will find plenty to hold their
attention, but long for a glimmer of hope
in the darkness. (Mar.)★ That We May Live:
Speculative Chinese Fiction
Dorothy Tse et al. Two Lines, $16.95 trade
paper (112p) ISBN 978-1-949641-00-4
This remarkable anthology of Chinese
speculative fiction offers seven tales of
societal responsibility and individual
freedom. In “A Counterfeit Life” by Chen
Si’an, translated by Canaan Morse, a man
becomes the leader of a subtle labor revolu-
tion. Two stories by Enoch Tam, both
translated by Jeremy Tiang, dive deep into
evocative settings: in “The Mushroom
Houses Proliferated in District M” a town
plants giant mushrooms for shelter, while
“Auntie Han’s Modern Life” revolves
around a shopkeeper in a strange, changing
district. Gender and self-determination lie
at the core of both “Sour Meat” by Dorothy
Tse, translated by Natascha Bruce, and
“Flourishing Beasts” by Yan Ge, translated
by Jeremy Tiang. In Zhu Hui’s “Lip
Service,”
translated by
Michael Day,
a charismatic
aging news
anchor plots to
keep her job,
and in “The
Elephant,” by
Chan Chi Wa,
translated by Audrey Heijns, the myste-
rious disappearance of an elephant throws a
town into chaos, leading to a thorough
exploration of authority and trust. By turns
cryptic and revealing, phantasmagorical
and straightforward, these tales balance
reality and fantasy on the edge of a knife.
This provocative sampler of Chinese fictionis both challenging and rewarding. (Mar.)Vulcan’s Forge
Robert Mitchell Evans. Flame Tree, $24.95
(288p) ISBN 978-1-78758-399-3
Evans’s ambitious but unfocused debut
novel (after his collection Horseshoes & Hand
Grenades: Tales of Terror and Technology) is a
sci-fi thriller set in a dystopian, puritanical
society built by the only known survivors
on a postapocalyptic Earth. Jason Kessler is
a quietly frustrated citizen of Nocturnia
who works as a screener for salvaged 20th-
century American movies to ensure their
morals are fit for public viewing. He
becomes obsessed with Pamela Guest, a
theatergoer with ties to the criminal under-
world, and the pair begin an illicit affair,
but the longer they continue, the more
Jason feels trapped by Nocturnia’s restric-
tions and his and Pamela’s lies. Their only
way out seems to be the mysterious Forge,
an artificial intelligence with a deep reach
through all areas of Nocturnia society. Jason
is positioned as an underdog simmering
with rebellious impulses, but readers’
goodwill toward him is undermined as his
increasing desperation to break free of
Nocturnia leads him to make rash and
illogical choices. Similarly, the promising
beginning introduces many intriguing
ideas, but the novel’s frenetic pacing wings
from one concept to the next, taking away
from the power of each. This adventure is
too jam-packed for its own good. (Mar)Ravencaller
David Dalglish. Orbit, $16.99 trade paper
(624p) ISBN 978-0-316-41669-6
Dalglish broadens the scope of his
Keepers series with this impressive, no-
holds-barred high fantasy. The city of
Londheim is in turmoil following the
events of Soulkeeper as the goddess-wor-
shipping humans struggle to adjust to
dragon-sired monsters, creatures they
believed to be blasphemous myth, awak-
ening from 800 years of sleep. Militant
dragon-sired factions launch attacks to
reclaim their former city, and fearful,
ignorant humans respond with violence
toward all monsters, leaving little hope
for those who seek peaceful coexistence,
among them good-hearted warrior priest
Devin; fierce former sex slave Jacaranda;
onyx fairy Tesmarie; and adorable firekin
Puffy. When an especially violent dragon-