Jennifer Jackson – Literary Agent

Publishers Weekly on Fathom

A decidedly dark departure from Priest’s Eden Moore saga (Four and Twenty Blackbirds, etc.), this stand-alone novel is equal parts horror, contemporary fantasy and apocalyptic thriller. During a summer vacation to her aunt’s coastal Florida home, innocent teen Nia sees her cousin Bernice commit a brutal murder and then get dragged into the ocean by a monstrous water witch. Nia becomes inadvertently entangled in a conflict between primordial creatures that endangers the very existence of humankind. Entombed in stone for countless years, Nia eventually emerges from her cocoon transformed, only to realize that an old god is close to awakening and destroying the world. Priest’s haunting lyricism and graceful narrative are complemented by the solemn, cynical thematic undercurrents with a tangible gravity and depth. This is arguably her most ambitious—and accomplished—work to date.

As reported on Publishers Marketplace:

Fiction: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Laura Anne Gilman’s DRAGONVIRUS, a collection of related stories, to Deborah Layne of Wheatland Press.

Former USAF officer Reeve channels her flight experience into this crisp military SF debut. Major Ariane Kedros is a jaded N-space pilot who left the Armed Forces of the Consortium of Autonomous Worlds under the shadow of war crimes committed against the Terran Expansion League. Given a new identity to protect her from TEL retribution, she wanders around uncharted areas of space with her friend Matt Journey, seeking unusual artifacts and taking on occasional intelligence gigs for AFCAW. When several of her former crewmates are killed, Ariane is sent on a new undercover assignment that brings back haunting memories and puts her in considerable danger. Reeve drives the story at a breakneck pace, providing a fine mix of derring-do, honor and courage, and the familial bickering and affection of a close-knit crew.

Buy Peacekeeper: A Major Ariane Kedros Novel today.

For All the Windwracked Stars (Tor, November)

Bear creates a world with an astonishing depth of mythology in a tale that begins with Ragnarok. Though Muire was the least of her sisters, she is the only one who survived the battle between the Light and the Tarnished. One of the sisters’ steeds also survived, in part because of the last miracle of the Light. Two thousand years later, it is nearly the end of the world again. This time, Muire stands to fight to the end. In the last city remaining on a dying planet, her enemies are old friends, one of whom was there the last time the world ended. The Technomancer, ruler of Eiledon, has gotten her power from a most unfortunate source, and the swords of Muire’s lost siblings are reappearing, as are their spirits. In an epic battle for the survival of life, Muire must overcome her conviction that she is the least of the Valkyries and transform into someone who can take on ancient powers. Bear’s world building echoes the best of Zelazny and pulls the reader into the story and the history until it’s over. Muire is, despite a certain difficulty in the beginning, one of Bear’s more interesting and likable characters, and the mythology Bear deploys promises further satisfying stories based in it.