Jennifer Jackson – Literary Agent

The Aeronaut’s Windlass (Cinder Spires 1) by Jim Butcher debuts at #5 on the October 18th New York Times hardcover list, #7 on the ebook list, and #6 on the print & ebook combined list!

It also debuts at #7 on USA Today‘s bestseller list!

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

“To read The Traitor Baru Cormorant is to sink inexorably into a book that should not be anywhere near as absorbing as it is ­ to realize that the white-knuckled grip with which you hold it was provoked by several consecutive pages of loans, taxes and commodity trading. It seems impossible that the economics of a fantasy world should be so viscerally riveting, but they are, and it’s incredible: You think you’re on solid ground right up until you feel that ground closing around your throat.

And Baru Cormorant as a character is magnificent. I found it impossible not to root for her even amid horrors of her making, to grieve with her and for her at various points, to clench my fists in her defense and in desperate need for her to stay whole. There is so much to admire and so much to mourn throughout the building tragedy of this novel.

This is not a happy book. It is not an uplifting book. But it is a crucial, necessary book ­ a book that looks unflinchingly into the self-replicating virus of empire, asks the hardest questions, and dares to answer them.” — NPR.org

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

“Narrated by a young woman seeking revenge, Seth Dickinson’s first novel, “The Traitor Baru Cormorant,” is a fascinating tale of political intrigue and national unrest. Baru Cormorant is just a girl when the Empire of Masks conquers her island. The new rulers create roads and better sanitation, but their strong-fisted policies erode the country’s economy and punish the people cruelly if they don’t adhere to a rigid code of sexual conduct. Baru decides that the only way to fight such oppression is to infiltrate the government. But just how brutal will she have to become to undermine an empire? Dickinson moves the plot steadily along as he explores issues of sexual oppression and colonial power.” — Washington Post

The Aeronaut’s Windlass (Cinder Spires 1) by Jim Butcher

“Jim Butcher long ago proved that he had what it takes to write long, complex, but wildly readable series. The Aeronaut’s Windlass is the start of a new one of wider scope and more detail, and reads like more of an adventure than a lot of the stories classed with it in the category of Steampunk. It is also a new and interesting spin on the genre that takes all the trappings of Steampunk–­goggles, copper as the metal of choice, airships–­and has them make sense in a new context, so they are not just props and settings like they are in a lot of Steampunk tales, but vital to the story. And he doesn’t stop there. What Butcher has done, essentially, is take the visual trappings of Steampunk and make a whole other world that is rather Victorian, but not bound to actual Earth history. It makes sense in ways that a strict reliance on history and science wouldn’t allow, opening up all kinds of new story options that Aeronaut’s Windlass doesn’t hesitate to run with. The story is about the start of a war based on complicated social and trade alliances and grudges, and is handled in such a way that those potentially dry facts are never a drag on the momentum or the clarity of the text. Aeronaut’s Windlass is a complete story, with a clear end, and yet it also effectively sets up for so much more action, adventure, and worldbuilding. It’s exciting to think what future books could bring.” — New York Journal of Books

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

“Be she traitor or patriot by the end of the book—to who might be the more pertinent question—Baru Cormorant must be the most memorable character fantasy fiction will feature in 2015. Happily, the narrative Dickinson designs around her is every inch as rich and convincing. His debut is paced like a race—excepting some slight slowdown in advance of a surprisingly action-packed last act—and never less than poetically put.

All told, The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a devastating debut—and doubly so due to a twist in the tale I’ll be damned if Dickinson doesn’t nail. A financial fantasy reminiscent of nothing so as The Folding Knife, it’s filling, chilling and thoroughly thrilling.” — Tor.com