Assassin and ex-courtesan Green has saved a city and birthed a god (in 2009’s Green). Now she wants to move on—but she’s hunted by enemies from her past, the city council is mired in a power struggle and can’t provide much aid, and something is stalking goddesses, including the one Green serves. Lake deftly weaves complicated, stubborn characters into a plot that reaches the grandest and most personal scales without ever straining credulity. Green’s basically solitary nature, expressed in extensive internal monologue, is balanced by her feelings of tenderness, responsibility, and exasperation toward her fellow humans, the catlike Pardines, and the gods. Her pragmatic acceptance of killing is likewise mitigated by her refusal to trivialize death and her emotional reactions to pregnancy’s effects on her body, self-control, and expectations. This complex, lonesome, haunting novel will appeal to fans of Valente, Monette, and Miéville. –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Lake writes extraordinary short stories, with note-perfect world building as strong as that in his novels. This collection, which focuses on more recent work, opens with “The Sky That Wraps the World Around, Past the Blue and into the Black,” in which the narrator paints ancient shards end-of-the-universe blue. “Achilles, Sulking in His Buick” is a delightful street-racing interpretation of the Trojan War’s key events. There are two new stories as well: “Coming for Green,” which tells of an agent of the Lily Goddess sent to retrieve Green, and “To This Their Late Escape,” which is part of Lake’s satisfying take on space opera. There are also a number of stories set in what Lake calls the Portland wizards arc, including the first one, “The Number of the Bus,” which focuses on a wizard whose power comes from a city bus. Lake covers quite a bit of ground, from the mythic to the futuristic, and does it all with a strong take on the human element and genuinely fantastic tales. –Booklist

Lake’s sixth collection offers 25 tales written since 2007′s The River Knows Its Own. The collection is bookended by popular favorites: the haunting “The American Dead” and “The Sky That Wraps the World Round, past the Blue and into the Black,” a moody meditation on mistakes and the end of the universe. One of Lake’s strengths is his ability to channel classic writers and styles, such as the heroic fantasy of Robert E. Howard in “The Leopard’s Paw,” Cordwainer Smith in the baroque “The Man with One Bright Eye,” pulp SF in “Lehr, Rex,” and space opera adventure in “To Raise a Mutiny Betwixt Yourselves.” Fans of Lake’s novels will especially appreciate the tie-ins to Green, Mainspring, and Trial of Flowers, while the diversity of settings and styles makes this a nice introduction to Lake’s stylish craftsmanship. –Publishers Weekly

Political conflicts and philosophical arguments find closure at last in this splendidly baroque whirl of geomancy and Victorian clockwork. Young Paolina Barthes, the gear-minded prodigy who became a target for the empire-building ambitions of rival governments in 2009′s Escapement, is on the run, heading south over the Wall that God built to divide the hemispheres and keep the Earth’s gear turning through the heavens. As spies and ancient secret societies scramble to find her, Paolina struggles to learn how to control her world-shaking abilities, while her heart pulls her toward Boaz, a golemlike man of brass. Lake wields big themes—magic and religion versus science, free will, colonialism, and a bit of romance—with surprising elegance, and readers will enjoy cherishing the characters and pondering the concepts of this “clockpunk” world. –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Jay Lake’s Madness of Flowers, the sequel to 2006′s Trial of Flowers, is by far Lake’s best novel yet, a sustained accomplishment that would appear to signal a major advance in this talented and prolific author’s career….

Lake demonstrates impressive control as he juggles the action in Port Defiance, the far north, and the City Imperishable, deftly drawing his plot lines and his characters slowly back together, as a mysterious threat, the Eater of Forests, moves from enigmatic rumor to horrific reality. But what makes the novel memorable is the depth of characterization, the myriad relationships between the characters and the tangled roots of the emotions that bind them for good or ill.

–Paul Witcover, Locus Magazine (January 2010)

Readers unfamiliar with 2006′s Trial of Flowers will be baffled by this sequel; those who have read the former are likely to be both delighted and flabbergasted by the latter. The City Imperishable is the decadent relic of a magical empire in which human and numinal forces struggled until the Old Gods were almost forgotten—but this familiar-sounding background doesn’t set up a predictable heroic fantasy yarn. The city’s diverse inhabitants, including demigods and manmade dwarves, are subject to violent physical and moral transformations, and Lake’s lushly energetic writing pulls readers through startling developments. Major concerns this time include bloody political intrigue, a blockade by corsairs and an expedition to the North that may lead to the city’s rebirth or its doom. The result is exuberantly odd, melodramatically ironic and dangerously wonderful. –Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Lake (Escapement) makes a shift from steampunk to lush fantasy filled with exotic locales and exquisite descriptions. Sold as a child, raised and educated as a courtesan and secretly trained as an assassin, strong-willed Green retains her unyielding sense of independence, leading her to make drastic, unwise choices. Often used as a pawn and occasionally betrayed, she perseveres in trying to gain a measure of control over her life and a place to call home. Her goals become harder to reach when she’s caught up in the machinations of immortals and power games of meddling gods. Despite an occasionally episodic feel and some rocky pacing that suggests it might have worked better split over several installments, the story is nicely powered by strong mythic undertones and a fresh take on the relationship between gods and mortals. –Publishers Weekly

C.E. Murphy’s The Queen’s Bastard (The Inheritors’ Cycle, Book 1) is at #1 on the trade list.

And Jay Lake ties for the #9 spot on the mass market list with the paperback edition of Mainspring.

Congratulations to everyone!

Congratulations to Jay Lake for his book, Mainspring – a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial, for best science fiction novel of the year (this is not the same as the Campbell-not-a-Hugo award at Worldcon).

You are both keeping some might fine company!