Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, and Other Speculative Fiction
By Julia Bergen
In Dune: The Heir of Caladan, the climactic novel in the Caladan trilogy by New York Times bestselling authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, we step into the shoes of Paul Atreides. A not yet a man in years, he is about to enter a world he could never have imagined.
Take the quiz and find out: Do you stand for House Atreides or fly your flag for House Harkonnen?
We recently hosted Olivie Blake, superstar author of the smash-hit Atlas series (currently encompassed by The Atlas Six and sequel The Atlas Paradox), at our office and were so excited to meet her in person! We took the opportunity to ask her some Very Important questions we’ve been wondering about for quite a while. As expected, her answers were thoroughly delightful : )
Check ’em out!
We are in the midst of winter, and the holidays loom on the horizon, offering portents of fun times to come and the social obligation of procuring gifts for the loved ones in your life! Don’t worry. We’re here to give you book recommendations to help you take care of the second part, so you can get right to the holiday snacking and relaxing!
Take the quiz. Discover your perfect bookly gift.
by a cat
A favorite part of working at Tor is roughly once a month, we’ll put out a goofy little social media quiz, which is both fun and can also make one feel like they are losing one’s mind in the writing of, because let’s face it: the wilder these things are, the better they perform.
ANYWAY, Halloween rocks, because instead of one fun thematic quiz, we have three, and that’s pretty epic 😎
ANYWAY^2, we’re compiling them all into one feature for your scary season pleasure 🎃
Enjoy!
It’s very important that you read the book that matches your candy taste because this quiz is backed by the coldest hardest candy science, but perhaps more importantly, if you know what happened to the Hubba Bubba Max Sour Double Rasberry flavor, please share with the class. Some of us are both desperate and disparate. For the love of God, Monstresor!
This one was very fun (and slightly time-consuming) to make! Can you crack the code to steal the Liber Noctem from the haunted library? If you find yourself fumbling over the locked display, utterly flummoxed, then perhaps you should conduct a more thorough investigation of the premises.
Ever wonder how you’ll die? It’s a morbid thought, but kinda legendary that we can defy the infinity of death with fun jokes about books! Take this quiz to receive your very own major character death and a hot book rec!
Books. Candy. Two great, ultimately non-specific, tastes that go great together!
To help with that specificity, the us literary / confectionary researchers at Tor have developed a quick quiz to discern the fine points within your taste for treats, and recommend a piece of fine fiction.
Take the quiz. You deserve a little treat : )
by a cat
What’s a skeleton’s favorite snack? Spare ribs! What’s a perfect book to read this Halloween? Book of Night by #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black.
Truly, it’s a book to die for 😈
So, we made a quiz that’ll tell you how you would die in a fantasy novel! And we’ll give you a book recommendation tailored to each death. It’s totally fun and safe, we promise!
When we say “Mysterious, thrilling, and delectably scandalous,” you know we’re talking about The Atlas Six, Olivie Blake’s sensational debut about the Alexandrian Society, a cloistered archive cataloging all the world’s secrets and magic.
Unlike the Alexandrian Society, we’re all about sharing knowledge here, which is why The Atlas Six is now available in trade paperback!
Anyway, with the help of some research and spare science equipment that the Society was kind enough to donate, we at Tor Books have put together a little experiment to help YOU determine which character from The Atlas Six would have your back if YOU were tapped as a potential inductee.
Check it out and share your results!
Looking for new tunes? How about new tunes AND a new book?
Superstar author Olivie Blake has put together the vibiest playlist of all time to pair with The Atlas Paradox, sequel to dark academia sensation / BookTok sensation / general sensation The Atlas Six.
Check it out!
By Olivie Blake
People often ask me whether I need music to write, which is a complicated question to answer. While I tend to find lyrics distracting (I’m much more inclined to make homonymic errors if music is playing whilst in the process of creation), I’m a big believer in curating a type of meditative dreamscape that necessarily precedes any productive writing period. Neil Gaiman famously emphasizes the necessity of daydreaming for creation, and I fully agree. For me, music is essential for crafting what can only be properly called a vibe.
While The Atlas Six Playlist is a lot of what I consider the soundtrack to one big cinematic fist-fight (in my head, that’s what the book is, although most of the aggression plays out in the form of sexual, ethical, or actual tension) the playlist for its sequel, The Atlas Paradox, is a little bit different. The book itself is different—as our view of the world outside the Alexandrian Society expands, so does our understanding of the characters and their respective stakes.
Traditionally I write by mood, meaning that one song can represent a variety of relationships with overlapping themes. As a result, I’ve split the playlist into a four part symphony of desire, betrayal, love, and revenge, based on the common motifs that reveal themselves throughout the Atlas series.
This is the tension portion of the playlist. Lust, ambition, desire… maybe a little self-sabotage. Some pain for the palate to pair with an old world vintage, a newfound hatred, or a masochistic craving for an old flame.
Till Now – Banks
I am not a woman, I’m a god – Halsey
Kult (feat. Jasiah) – Steve Aoki & grandson
Bitter (with Kito) – FLETCHER
Hate Myself – Bryce Fox
One Way Or Another – Until the Ribbon Breaks
Novocaine – Dream Chief
Here is where we keep the irony and the anger, the bitterness of personal and institutional betrayal. The world, not unlike the Society manor house, is a troublesome place, and one without much logic to the pain it inflicts. On some level or another, these songs know it.
Aristocrats – Raleigh Ritchie
Scream! – Judah and the Lion
Monster – STARSET
The Devil is Human – AURORA
ley lines – Flor
take it back – JAWNY & Beck
Where Do We Go From Here? – Misterwives
Hometown – twenty one pilots
Every playlist needs a little softness. These are the love songs, which range from toxic to desperate to true. These are meant to reflect the glimpses of intimacy woven inescapably throughout the book, some of which yield more sweetness than others.
Don’t Fade – Vance Joy
Girls Make Me Want to Die – The Aces
Aura – Cuco
Archetype – Omar Apollo
Bittersweet (feat. Dashboard Confessional) – Sam Tinnesz
Cold Heart – The Kooks
Pretty – Astrid S & Dagny
Little Freak – Harry Styles
Wretched – Bartees Strange
Magic – Coldplay
And finally, to close out the listening experience, a sense that rage can always be rekindled and put to good use when it comes to revenge. This is where we put the productive anger, the righteous suffering, and the sense that this is not the end. (And truly, it isn’t… but as for what book 3 holds? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. XOXO, Olivie.)
sadder badder cooler – Tove Lo
Revolution – Bishop Briggs
Set in Stone – Brandyn Burnette
Wake Up – Young the Giant
Red Sun – Big Wild
Same Team – Alice Merton
We Did It!!! – grandson
Burn Me Down – Sophie Simmons
OLIVIE BLAKE is the pseudonym of Alexene Farol Follmuth, a lover and writer of stories. She has penned several indie SFF projects, including the webtoon Clara and the Devil with illustrator Little Chmura and the BookTok-viral Atlas series. As Alexene, she has written a young adult rom-com, My Mechanical Romance. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, new baby, and rescue pit bull.
A Letter to New Apprentices of the Grent Royal Glassworks
Prepared by Thessa Foleer
Godglass—ubiquitous and essential, it is a common sorcerous bauble created by engineers and used throughout the world to enhance the native skills of the bearer. Forgeglass for the strength of soldiers and teamsters; witglass for the minds of politicians and strategists; dazeglass for the lost; cureglass for the wounded; museglass for the artist. Its uses are infinite, and its production turns the wheels of the modern world.
As those engineers, or siliceers as we are commonly known, that production is our responsibility. Here at the Grent Royal Glasswork we create the very best godglass demanded in every corner of the globe. As you begin as an apprentice and travel the long road to master you will come to have an intimate understanding of godglass, from its history, to the chemical composition of individual pieces, to their affect on the human body, to the economic impact through production and trade.
Accompanying this letter you will find a copy of my very first silic guide, drawn over my first few months as an apprentice to help me remember some of the basics—common silic sigils, formulas, and finished pieces. I encourage you to copy it, expand upon it, and even to draw your own guides for personal use or circulation. What we do is both a science and an art, and the field is widened through practice, hard work, experimentation, and collaboration.
I will oversee your apprenticeship beneath the expert gaze of the great Master Kastora. Not all of you will succeed. For those that do, I look forward to one day calling you my colleagues.
Thessa Foleer
Journeyman
The Grent Royal Glassworks
Ready to read New York Times bestseller Book of Night by Holly Black and talk about it with all your friends?
“A delicious, dark, adrenaline rush of a book. I’m already dying to see Charlie Hall’s next con.” – New York Times bestselling author, Alix E. Harrow
#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black makes her stunning adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of betrayals, secret societies, and a dissolute thief of shadows, in the vein of Neil Gaiman and Erin Morgenstern.
Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make.
She’s spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie Hall.
Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but getting out isn’t easy. Bartending at a dive, she’s still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that Charlie’s shadowless, and possibly soulless, boyfriend has been hiding things from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends into a maelstrom of murder and lies.
Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world—all trying to steal a secret that will give them vast and terrible power.
Get your book club discussion started with our reading group guide below!
Book of Night_Reading Group Guide PRINT