Publishers Weekly - March 7, 2016

The Emperor’s Railroad

Guy Haley. Tor.com, $12.99 trade paper (178p) ISBN 978-0-7653-8984-8

Haley ( The Rise of the Horned Rat) introduces the postapocalyptic Dreaming Cities series with this short but gripping tale of desperate feudal societies, angels and zombies, and a knight and a dragon.

After a Virginia village is destroyed by the undead, 12-year-old Abney and his twice-widowed mother set off for Ohio, hoping to live with a cousin. But the route is dangerous: ruined roads pass through dense woodlands that hide bandits, wild animals, and zombies, while settlements are full of suspicious folks and scoundrels. Their odds of surviving improve when they team up with the scruffy knight Quinn, but nothing is certain. Haley tells the story through the voice of elderly Abney recalling his youth. He gives tantalizing hints about the tarnished world, knights like Quinn, and the powers they serve; it’s clear that Haley has big plans for this intriguing setting. Haley serves up equal helpings of horror, fantasy adventure, and SF in this stark, intriguing story of a ruined Earth where the remaining humans are determined to survive. (Apr.)

Superhero Universe:
Tesseracts 19

Edited by Claude Lalumière and Mark Shainblum. Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy,

$15.95 trade paper (200p) ISBN 978-1-77053-

087-4

This particular installment of the
long-running Canadian SF and fantasy
anthology series is a mixed bag of 25 super-
hero stories. The best entry, P.E. Bolivar’s
“The Rise and Fall of Captain Stupendous,”
combines irony with black humor as a
journalist who was kidnapped by a super-
villain and rescued by the Canadian Super
League explains
how she ended
up in prison.

Occasional
forced humor
mars Corey
Redekop’s oth-
erwise excellent
“SÜPER,” in
which Canada’s
finest medical
minds are
corralled to work in a superhuman
sanatorium founded by a deranged
seven-limbed scientist. Also of note are
the wryly clever ending in Luke Murphy’s
“Lost and Found” and the reimagined
Golem of Prague in Bevan Thomas’s
“Spirit in the Clay.” Least successful
are John Bell’s overly serious poem, “In
the Kirby Krackle”; Sacha A. Howells’s
“Black Falcon Saves City, World,” a
clumsy story about a wannabe superhero;
and the uninteresting superhuman
therapy group depicted in Kim Goldberg’s
“Bluefields Reharmony Nest.” But the
strongest works will remind readers why
superhero stories remain popular and
fascinating. (Apr.)

The Specimen

Pete Kahle. CreateSpace, $17.99 trade paper (510p) ISBN 978-1-4952-3000-4

In Kahle’s hefty, unimaginative debut, ancient aliens have spent millennia controlling and merging with humans, taking over the identities of those they possess. Developing a diverse cast of characters, Kahle creates disparate narrative threads that chart the aliens’ gradual takeover of society. This could be a sharp and inventive tale of alien invasion, but Kahle relies heavily on clichés to move his plot forward. A history of the aliens is told at the expense of memorable characterization. Fans of horror will recognize elements borrowed from Alien and the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the story is the elimination of the complexities of real-world history. For instance, Kahle remarks that the Holocaust would not have been so horrendous had alien involvement not been a factor. This trivialization of one of the world’s worst atrocities—and of the human capacity for evil—is in extremely poor taste. Kahle’s work adds little to the genre. (BookLife)

Romance/Erotica

Everywhere and Every Way

Jennifer Probst. S&S/Gallery, $16 trade paper (384p) ISBN 978-1-5011-3124-0

Probst (Searching for You) creates her own
spin on HGTV’s Property Brothers with
her sensuous contemporary, the first of
three romances about three feuding
brothers who inherit their father’s luxury
contracting business. Caleb Pierce has
long been estranged from younger
brothers Tristan and Dalton. But when
their father dies, he throws the brothers
for a loop with the terms of his will: they
must work together for a full year and
show a profit in order to inherit. In walks
Morgan Raines, a home designer working
with an A-list celebrity couple—and
she’ll stop at nothing to get the Pierce
brothers to build that dream house. Sparks
fly between Morgan and Caleb after he
agrees to do the job, and resentment soon
turns to grudging admiration, then deep
lust. But it’s not clear whether Morgan
and Caleb can successfully mix business
with pleasure. Probst tugs at the heart-
strings with feisty Morgan, strong and
silent Caleb, and an array of appealing
supporting characters. Readers will root
for Caleb and Morgan’s quest for happily
ever after and will eagerly await the next in
the series. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon
Literary. (June)