The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

This year N.K. Jemisin became the first person ever to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in a row for her Broken Earth novels, and I cannot think of a more deserving series. This trilogy, which begins with 2015’s The Fifth Season, is a powerhouse of speculative fiction with amazing world-building and a storyline that is both intricately-plotted and immense in scope.

In The Fifth Season, readers are introduced to Essun, a woman on a mission to track down her ex-husband who has murdered their son and run off with their young daughter. Her plight is complicated by a “fifth season,” a major climate catastrophe that causes increased hardship and violence as cities crumble and ash fills the sky. Essun is an orogene, someone who can shape and control the earth, but has spent much of her life pretending to be normal, in hiding from those who would enslave or kill her because of her race. Now she will need to call upon her powers to protect herself on her difficult journey. Along the way, she comes into contact with a cast of characters who will help and hinder her along the way.

As Essun’s story progresses through the three books, readers come to know her painful back story as well as her present where she truly comes into her power, not just as an orogene, but as a mother and a person willing to fight for the future of the planet.

Jemisin is an amazingly powerful storyteller, adept at detailed world-building and a plot that weaves effortlessly through past, present, and future. Her characters are fully-realized, complex, and dealing with issues of identity, racism, oppression, and coming to terms with the fact that one person’s actions can truly destroy or save the world.  

This is a great series for fans of Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, or anyone looking for an immersive tale with unforgettable characters.

-Portia Kapraun

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

It’s 1859 and world-traveling botanical expert Merrick Tremayne believes his days of adventure are over after a leg injury. He has resigned himself to a life of solitude on his family’s deteriorating Cornwall estate with no company but his unhappy brother. When an old friend shows up to convince him to set off for Peru in search of cinchona tree cuttings for the East India Company, Merrick is initially resistant. With much needling from his friend and his brother threatening sending him to an asylum, Merrick relents and joins the expedition. Peru has a monopoly on the cinchona trees, the only source of quinine, and has begun charging exorbitant prices for the anti-malaria drug. The East India Company believes the Tremayne family’s ties to a remote village will allow him to sneak into the forest and smuggle out the cuttings under the guise of searching for frost-resistant coffee plants. Upon arriving in the village, Merrick discovers that the Peruvian mountains hide more than just the cure for malaria. There are exploding trees, a border of salt that is said to be fatal if crossed, moving statues, and a priest with a strange illness. When the quinine runners catch on to Merrick’s plan, he and the priest cross the salt border and enter the unknown forest hoping to make it out the other side alive.

This is Pulley’s second book, and has some loose ties to her debut, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, though each can be read as a stand-alone novel. A gifted storyteller, Pulley manages to make the fantastic aspects of her stories seem just as plausible as the mundane and shows the reader that true magic is found in love, trust, and enduring friendship. The Bedlam Stacks will be released in August 2017, but you can put your name on the holds list today!

- Reviewed by Portia

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

I will admit that I knew nothing about this book but the title when I picked it up. I assume that I will love any book about books and libraries, and I am rarely disappointed. That being said, The Invisible Library was an especially fun ride for me because the librarians were not just book lovers, but undercover book stealing spies!

Irene works for The Library, a repository that exists outside of time and space where Librarians work to collect and store all works of fiction written in the many alternate worlds of the multiverse. Irene and her new assistant, Kai, are sent to a world to retrieve an original manuscript written by the brothers Grimm. Unfortunately for them, this particular world has become infected by “chaos” making it that much more dangerous and unpredictable. Add in a rogue colleague, a nefarious fairy, giant mechanical insects, and a master villain intent on destroying the Library, and you’ve got an action packed adventure like none other. Fans of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series will enjoy the quick banter, peculiar worlds and entertaining plots, though The Invisible Library underlines its quirkiness with a sense of foreboding.

It’s hard to believe that this is Cogman’s first novel. The characters are well-rounded, the settings written with such detail that I felt like I was there, and the plot was engaging and suspenseful. What’s not surprising is that this book made a number of “Best of” lists for 2016.

-Portia Kapraun

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher

Jim Butcher is, to many, the author who defines the world of Urban Fantasy novels. His Butcher Files series features Harry Dresden, a private investigator in Chicago who also happens to be an incredibly powerful wizard. One of the things I love most about this series is Butcher’s ability to weave the magical world of wizards, vampires, ghosts, and more within the very real setting of modern-day Chicago. I love imagining all of the magic happening just out of sight while the rest of us are living our daily lives.

Butcher’s new Steampunk series, Cinder Spires, is a vast departure from the world we know, but does not sacrifice Butcher’s mastery of characters or plot in order to create this new world where the earth’s surface has been made uninhabitable and people live above the clouds in vast cities built within tall stone spires. In this fanciful place, travel is done by airship (literally ships that fly), and everything from the ships to teapots to weapons are powered by magical crystals. With so much to explain about how things work, the first installment of the series, The Aeronaut’s Windlass, has a fairly long, slow introduction before the action picks up. Luckily, once the story really gets started (about 200 pages in), it is action-packed until the very end.

When Spire Albion is unexpectedly attacked by a rival spire, the Spirearch (similar to a British monarch) sends a rag-tag group off to search for spies within his armies. Leading the group is Privateer Francis Grimm, a disgraced military man with a heart of gold. Joining him on his ship are members of the Spirearch’s personal guard, a couple of strange yet powerful etherealists (this world’s wizards), and a talking cat. Along the way, this group uncovers a conspiracy so deep it goes all the way down to the earth’s toxic and frightening surface. After delving so deep into this world, it will be hard to leave it behind until the next installment in the series comes out (hopefully soon!).

While Butcher has long been the King of Urban Fantasy, he has proven with The Aeronaut’s Windlass that he is not a one-genre pony. This is a fantastic book for fans of fantasy of any kind as well as anyone who enjoys a great adventure story. 

- Portia Kapraun

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

In the first line of Seveneves, the moon explodes without warning. At first, scientists and lay people alike are astounded and amazed by the seven large chunks of moon hanging in the sky. Dr. Dubois Harris, a popular scientist frequently found explaining science to the masses on television news, even gave them cutesy nicknames based on their size and shape. It soon becomes apparent, though, that the moon is just the beginning; soon the Earth will be destroyed by the “Hard Rain,” a meteorite bombardment that will last for millennia and wipe out all life on the planet. World leaders and scientists devise to send as many people into orbit in arklets that will congregate around the International Space Station, keeping the human race alive for the next 5,000 years.

Stephenson divides his epic tale of speculative fiction into 3 parts: before the hard rain, the first few years of life in space, and 5,000 years later when the Earth is once again habitable. Even full of technical space jargon, the 861 page tome never feels bogged down due to the depth and breadth of the story and a cast of memorable and fascinating characters, from the original residents of the International Space Station to a power-hungry American president to the human race as imagined in 5000+ years.

Neal Stephenson is a fascinating author whose books span a wide variety of topics such as cryptography (Cryptonomicon) and massive multi-player online role playing games (Reamde), and the amount of research and detail he is able to weave into compelling storylines is truly amazing.