Seek the Traitor’s Son is available now
Seek the Traitor’s Son by Veronica Roth (Tor £22, 432pp)
Two hostile civilisations exist in uneasy stasis on an Earth-like planet.
The Cedre are a tech-savvy minority; the Talusar, the violent majority. But when a seer prophesies that the fight is going to come down to two women, things become personal.
On one side, there’s Elegy Ahn, a soldier with greatness thrust upon her; on the other, the vicious Rava Vidar. In between, the hapless Theren, both blessed and cursed by beauty, muscles and an ability to sense the Truth.
With huge emotional range, vivid characters and great world-building, this is a proper epic of love and hate, treachery and loyalty. Part One of a trilogy. Bring it on!
Sarafina by Philip Fracassi (Black Crow Books £10.99, 354pp)
In Fracassi’s latest novel, horror does not erupt into normal life; rather it represents a continuation of its miseries.
Three American brothers, born into 19th-century hardscrabble, escape from the civil war only to encounter an evil far more elemental than mere human violence.
Starving, injured and on the run, they find refuge in a rural paradise of fruit trees and meadows, all overseen by the beautiful and seductive Sarafina. And while you’re screaming, ‘Get out now!’, you’ll understand exactly why they stay.
A deft and brilliant blend of myth, fantasy and good old-fashioned horror, this is like forbidden fruit: take one bite and you’re hooked.
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light is available now from the Mail Bookshop
If We Cannot Go At The Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop (Maclehose Press £14.99, 192pp)
Already a celebrated bestseller in her native Korea, these stories make a welcome introduction to the brilliant imagination and limpid storytelling of Choyeop.
Every technically inspired spring-off point is used to explore the human condition with clarity, charity and ironic wit.
In the title story, a marooned scientist explains how her brilliant work has effectively put galaxies between her and her family. In another, when a high-tech archive of deceased Minds loses a file, a bereaved daughter must come to terms with the bleak realities of her mother’s actual life.
Meanwhile, a lost-in-space encounter turns into a beautiful meditation on otherness, communication and reality itself.
Pure sci-fi magic.
