The Walter Whites of Fantasy

October 14, 2020May 1, 2024Rachel Taylor

Some fantasy protagonists aren’t in the hero business, they’re in the EMPIRE business.

AMC’s Breaking Bad set the gold standard for protagonist turned antagonist with Walter White, the dopey science teacher turned criminal mastermind slash violent drug lord (which I’m pretty sure is what his business card said, or would say, if criminal masterminds slash violent drug lords had business cards).

But the fantasy genre has plenty of Walter Whites as well. Though they may not run a meth lab out of the back of an RV, they’ve betrayed just as many of their closest friends, and caused just as many explosions. Here’s a run-down of some of our favorites, who either turned from good/neutral to evil throughout a book series, or villains who were revealed to have gone through such a transformation before the main story started (Walter Whites of their own narratives).

As you can imagine, this post will have some mild spoilers, but we’ve done our best to keep them as light as possible. Unlike these characters’ misdeeds.

By Julia Bergen

Baru Cormorant, from The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Baru starts out even more innocent than Walter White did, and though the series isn’t finished yet, she’s well on her way to becoming even more brutal. The series begins with Baru as a happy child who has faced little adversity, living in a picturesque sea-side village with her mother and two fathers. When an empire shows up, kills one of her fathers, and starts a harsh rule that outlaws the most important parts of Bau’s life, she vows to rise up within the empire’s ranks and bring them down from within. What sets Baru apart from most fantasy characters with this same goal is that she is forced to do some truly awful things and changes as a person because of them. By the time this series is over, it seems likely she will have no problem busting out the ricin poison.

Daenerys Targaryen, from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

To be fair, I’m basing this from the TV series since the book series hasn’t finished Daenery’s story, but even in the books you can start to see Martin setting Daenerys up to go full Walter White. Getting what you want by fire and blood doesn’t generally end in a tea party. Daenerys starts out as a teenage girl living in exile, married off for political reasons, who just wants to live a safe, happy life. Throughout the events of the books, we see her come into her own power, first becoming the leader of a Dothraki army, then queen of the city of Meereen. Along the way she executes many, often using her dragons, and though her victims generally deserve it, it’s easy to see how burning people alive when necessary could get out of hand fast. If Daenerys thought letting someone choke on their own vomit would be for the greater good, she would totally do it.

Holland Vosijk, from the Shades of Magic series by V. E. Schwab

Oh, Holland. He’s had such a hard life. He starts out as the main antagonist of A Darker Shade of Magic, but throughout the trilogy we learn so much more about his backstory, and how his actions were not always within his control. As the series goes on, details of Holland’s life before his ill-fated meeting with the Dane siblings reveal that he used to be optimistic and kind-hearted, even on the cruel streets of White London. He does get something of a redemption, but that just makes him even more like Walter White (if you accept that the last few episodes weren’t a dream). Still, he does a lot of genuinely evil things, and happily lets other people die if it means getting what he wants.

The Lord Ruler, from the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson

When we meet The Lord Ruler he’s in his final Walter White mega-evil phase. He’s a brutal king, using harsh punishments to prop up the noble houses and keep everyone else destitute. However, throughout the series it turns out that some of the things The Lord Ruler had done had actually been part of a much larger conflict between forces older than history. And he hadn’t always been a vicious dictator. At the beginning, he had wanted to save the world, but that came at a price he couldn’t imagine. The Lord Ruler may have actually been more vicious than Walter White, though part of that was supernatural forces upping his evil quotient.

The King in Red, from The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone

The King in Red definitely paints a more evil image than Walter White – it’s hard to imagine something more menacing than a skeleton in a red cloak, especially one with the ability to create a dragon fueled by the souls of his debtors, even if Bryan Cranston did master the evil glare. The King in Red wasn’t always a heartless overlord, though. The books heavily imply that once he was just a powerful craftsman in loving relationship. It wasn’t until the gods killed his boyfriend that he became obsessed with destroying them, and then once that was basically fully accomplished, ruling in their place. The King in Red would definitely agree that he’s in the empire business.

Excerpts / What's New

Excerpt: The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

June 25, 2020March 20, 2024Rachel Taylor2 Comments

Seth Dickinson’s epic fantasy series which began with the “literally breathtaking” (NPR) The Traitor Baru Cormorant, returns with the third book, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant.

But the Cancrioth’s weapon cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent. If it escapes quarantine, the ancient hemorrhagic plague called the Kettling will kill hundreds of millions…not just in Falcrest, but all across the world. History will end in a black bloodstain.

Is that justice? Is this really what Tain Hu hoped for when she sacrificed herself?

Baru’s enemies close in from all sides. Baru’s own mind teeters on the edge of madness or shattering revelation. Now she must choose between genocidal revenge and a far more difficult path—a conspiracy of judges, kings, spies and immortals, puppeteering the world’s riches and two great wars in a gambit for the ultimate prize.

If Baru had absolute power over the Imperial Republic, she could force Falcrest to abandon its colonies and make right its crimes.

Please enjoy this free excerpt of The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, on sale 8/11.

1

“Baru. Wake up.”

She wakes up but she does not know when or where. Is she on Eternal, drugged by the shadow ambassador? No, there’s no black water licking at her ankles. She cannot be in the interrogation pit.

Is she on Kyprananoke, after the red lagoon and the grove of killed children? No. She cannot smell the crab meat on Tain Shir’s fire.

Perhaps she is on Helbride, dreaming of Tain Hu, while honey trickles through her eye socket and meningitis burns up her brain. Or napping in a hammock outside her parents’ house by the River Rubiyya, as the sounds of the bazaar she invented fill the morning air.

Shouldn’t she be good at this by now? How many times has she awakened from some wound or illness, ready to revise her accounts of what she’s lost? This, of all skills, she should have mastered.

She takes a breath, pours it out again. Fear flowing away like wash water. You will never wake up to anything worse than Sieroch. You will never wake up to anything better than Tain Hu’s arms.

Then she sets to work.

The air smells of harsh soap and salt. So she is in a hygiene clinic, near the sea. There’s a hint of perfume, too, a man’s citrus-bitter bergamot. The man who woke her.

She lays down her own name as a cornerstone.

“Baru,” she says. “I’m Baru.”

And it is only a little bit a lie.

“Oh, thank virtue,” the man breathes.

All her faculties snap into defensive array, like a phalanx locking shields for the fight. She knows this man. He is critical. The most critical. She doesn’t trust him and he must continue to trust her.

“Baru,” the man says, anxiously, “can you understand me?”

She tries to open her eyes, and cannot. Either they are swollen shut, or covered over, or gone. “Yes,” she says, “I can understand you, Mister Farrier.”

“What do you remember?”

She remembers that this man is Cairdine Farrier, her patron and her target. He found her as a child, in the markets of Taranoke, while his Imperial Republic of Falcrest (slowly, subtly, ingeniously) devoured her home. In his own way he devoured her, too. He gave her the Iriad school and a proper Falcrest education. He gave her inoculations when the pox came. He gave her algebra, astronomy, geometric proofs and maps of the world, everything she had ever dreamt of knowing. And all he took from her, all he ever asked, was her mother, and her fathers, and her people, and her lover, and her soul.

“Mister Farrier,” she says, “you’d sent me away . . . to find something old.”

Oh, something ancient. Something he needs to win his war. He has cultivated her as his weapon; he has introduced her into the circle of cryptarchs who rule the Imperial Republic of Falcrest in secret. She has learned about his lifelong battle, a struggle of dissections and insinuations and cold talk over warm brandy, against the eugenicist Cosgrad Torrinde, who believes that her people are fit only for farming, fishing, and pleasure.

And at last she has discovered the fulcrum, the place where it all comes to crisis.

Farrier has a deadline.

His struggle will end this year, in the disposition of the Oriati problem: a final test of his methods against Cosgrad’s Torrinde. One man or the other will provide the technique that will allow the Imperial Republic of Falcrest, the Masquerade, to conquer and digest Oriati Mbo, the greatest and oldest civilization in the world.

In preparation for the endgame, Farrier sent her to recover a certain piece of information, the flint to start the fire. He did not know that piece of flint was a man, Abdumasi Abd, who had summoned the oldest power in the world to aid his revenge on Falcrest.

“What’s been done to me?” she croaks. “Where are we, Mister Farrier?”

Gloved hands stroke her temples. She smells the edge of his mint-fresh breath, respectfully averted. He is always proper with her. “You’ve been hurt. But you’re safe now. In Falcrest. With me.”

She tries on a frown, the impatience of a tested schoolgirl. “Who hurt me?”

“My enemy’s agent, Baru. Do you remember Xate Yawa?”

“Yes. I remember her.” Just as she is Farrier’s protégé, Yawa is the protégé of the enemy, Cosgrad Torrinde. As old and careful as she is young and reckless. And bound, each of them, to the shattered land of Aurdwynn: she by love of a dead woman, and Yawa by love of a hostage twin.

Maybe a better woman could have found common ground with Yawa.

Not Baru. Baru could never have made an alliance with Yawa, and Farrier knows it.

“Do you remember the man she served?” Farrier whispers.

“Cosgrad Torrinde. Hesychast. The eugenicist.” The man who would pure-breed the world. “We had to stop him, Mister Farrier.”

She smells salt again, and this time, because of the hitch in his breath, she knows that Cairdine Farrier is weeping. Is he weeping for her? She must be certain.

“Yes, Baru. The moment’s come, the Reckoning of Ways. The Oriati problem will be resolved. One of us will gain control over the other forever, and so over the future of the Republic. He has what he needs to win, and if he does . . . you know what it means.”

“Slavery,” she whispers. “The human race bred like dogs.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you crying, Mister Farrier?”

“Because they hurt you, Baru.”

“I failed you. I didn’t bring you what you need.. ”

“No, Baru, no, no, you did brilliantly.” And she hears that traitor hitch of compassion in his breath, spoor of his hidden weakness: she finds herself salivating, because she wants so badly to get a claw into that hidden wound and tear it bloody.

He goes on, unaware, trying to soothe her with the power at his command. “Have you ever known an evil man, Baru? A criminal, a wife-beater, an incompetent or a drunk, who sits behind his desk every day, guilty in all eyes but legally untouchable? Everyone knows what he’s done but no one can prove it, no one can act. His reputation simmers but never boils. Have you ever known a man like that?”

“Yes,” she says, forcing herself not to smile, even a little, at the secret joke.

“Imagine that man is an entire nation. A confederation of nations with a knot of cancer in their old hearts. A thousand years they’ve waited for their reckoning. And I sent you, Baru, you”—his hand touches her shoulder, clasps gently—“to find that one ultimate secret which will turn the Oriati on each other. I knew what the secret must be. I just needed proof.

“There are clerks and presses all over this city waiting to tell the world what you’ve found. Little criers on street corners, rhetorics on their podiums, Tahari gamblers putting odds, Suettaring investors with wet pens waiting to write their advice columns, what to buy and what to sell. There are message rockets in their tubes, ships straining at their anchors, diplomatic bags ready for the sealed letter. All of it’s ready for you, Baru. I’ve made it all ready.” She hears the wet flicker of his lashes. “I let you sleep as long as I could, because the doctors said it would help you recover. But the time’s come. I can’t wait anymore. I have to know, please.”

He leans closer. His whisper trembles under the strain of all his hopes. “Did you find them?”

She creases her forehead in thought. It is deliberate bait, and it fishes out of Farrier a murmur of fear. He isn’t afraid that she failed. Isla Cauteria will have seen to that. Hundreds of people must have witnessed golden Eternal.

He’s afraid that she doesn’t remember the necessary details.

“The Cancrioth,” she says. “You sent me to find the Cancrioth ”

The Oriati are a nation of two hundred million neighbors. They bicker, gossip, tear down each others’ fences, suffer disaster and pandemic and sometimes, even, war. But the thousand-year glue which holds the Oriati Mbo together is unshakable belief in the intrinsic and inalienable humanity of your neighbor, an ethics they call trim. She has stopped trying to force it into logical terms: it is a morality that cannot be separated from the community that practices it, cannot be exploited or manipulated or even defined by one person alone. Giving without hope of getting, in the hope of getting without needing to ask. You can attain good trim and everyone will know it’s yours. But you cannot ask how to get good trim, or even claim to have it.

The Oriati Mbo, the House of Trim, is a nation of nations spanning half the known world.

There is only one thing which could destroy trim and break the Mbo, so that Falcrest can settle the porcelain of the Masquerade over their black brows. So that Farrier can put Oriati children in Falcrest schools, put Oriati families to work on land owned by Falcrest, siphon Oriati lumber and gold and ideas away to Falcrest’s ships and treasuries and universities. There is only one thing which can destroy the Oriati Mbo.

The destroyer has a name.

“The Cancrioth. Yes. I met their leaders. There was an evil woman with a triangle cut from her skull, and a good man with a stalk for an eye, and a woman with . . . something in her womb they traveled on a golden ship. I met them, Mister Farrier.”

Farrier groans in relief. “Yes! You understand what this means?”

She tells it to him exactly as he taught it to her. “The Oriati are afraid of us. They cannot understand how tiny Falcrest has challenged the vast Mbo. Some of them feel the Federal Princes and their faith in trim have failed.

“When we reveal the Cancrioth, alive and powerful after a thousand years in hiding, those doubters will look to the cancer cultists for protection against us. They will abandon trim. There will be a civil war, then. A hundred million against a hundred million. A democlysm: death like no dying the world has ever seen. And once the old ways are torn down, once the Princes are overthrown and the mbo is shattered you can get inside whatever’s left. Digest them, make them Falcrest’s possession. The whole Ashen Sea would be united under the Masquerade. And you would at last defeat Cosgrad Torrinde and his future of eugenics.”

“Yes, Baru”—he is exultant, his prodigy at work, understanding everything just the way he wants—“yes, yes, you remember!”

“I’m your savant,” she says, slowly, as if she’s just recollecting it herself. “Of course I remember. What happened to me, Mister Farrier? What makes you so afraid that I’d forget? I haven’t been…”

She tries to raise her left hand to her face, and finds herself tied up in a straitjacket.

“Damaged?” she asks, softly.

“Never mind that. Never you worry, it’s all going to be all right, I promise, I do. Oh, Baru, you wonderful woman, you marvel”—he pauses to get his breath—“just tell me, please, if you can, if it’s not too hard, did you bring home proof of the Cancrioth?”

“Of course I did.”

“Yes!” He leans closer. “Is the information of quality?”

“I found an eyewitness who contacted the Cancrioth, obtained their money and weapons, and used that support to launch an armed attack on a province of our Imperial Republic.” The witness is Abdumasi Abd; although, if you believe what some believe, he is more than one man, he is all the other souls that grow in the flesh of his spinal cord. “I brought him to Falcrest.”

“Oh virtue,” he says, “oh, kings, Baru.” He has to get his breath. What she has done is not like finding an eyewitness to prove a crime. She has found the criminal and all his conspirators, and obtained from them a signed promise to commit more crime, and walked out of their headquarters untouched. It is probably the greatest coup one of Farrier’s agents has ever achieved. Or she has grown very full of herself.

“What did you see?” So close, he cannot pretend patience. She tips her head forward as if responding unconsciously to his energy; his voice shifts as he pulls away. “What did you see on their ship, Baru?”

“I remember ”

Kimbune. Kimbune asking her questions, while the water rose around her down in Tubercule.

“I remember a voice,” she says.

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Lists / New Releases / What's New

Every Tor Book Coming This Summer

June 3, 2020May 6, 2024Rachel Taylor

It’s almost time for summer weather and that means…SUMMER BOOKS! Due to COVID-19, we shuffled some of our on sale dates around, so check here for the most up to date list of when you can get your hands on some of the most highly anticipated books of the season:

June 16

The Unconquered City by K. A. Doore

Seven years have passed since the Siege—a time when the hungry dead had risen—but the memories still haunt Illi Basbowen. Though she was trained to be an elite assassin, now the Basbowen clan act as Ghadid’s militia force protecting the resurrected city against a growing tide of monstrous guul that travel across the dunes. Illi’s worst fears are confirmed when General Barca arrives, bearing news that her fledgling nation, Hathage, also faces this mounting danger. How much can she sacrifice to protect everything she knows from devastation?

Glorious by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

Audacious astronauts encounter bizarre, sometimes deadly life forms, and strange, exotic, cosmic phenomena, including miniature black holes, dense fields of interstellar plasma, powerful gravity-emitters, and spectacularly massive space-based, alien-built labyrinths. Tasked with exploring this brave, new, highly dangerous world, they must also deal with their own personal triumphs and conflicts.

June 23

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

In an alternate 1880s London, angels inhabit every public building, and vampires and werewolves walk the streets with human beings in a well-regulated truce. A fantastic utopia, except for a few things: Angels can Fall, and that Fall is like a nuclear bomb in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. And human beings remain human, with all their kindness and greed and passions and murderous intent. Jack the Ripper stalks the streets of this London too. But this London has an Angel. The Angel of the Crows.

June 30

Interlibrary Loan by Gene Wolfe

E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person, his personality an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human. As such, Smithe can be loaned to other branches. Which he is. Along with two fellow reclones, a cookbook and romance writer, they are shipped to Polly’s Cove, where Smithe meets a little girl who wants to save her mother, a father who is dead but perhaps not. And another E.A. Smithe… who definitely is.

July 7

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

Princess Sun has finally come of age. Growing up in the shadow of her mother, Eirene, has been no easy task. The legendary queen-marshal did what everyone thought impossible: expel the invaders and build Chaonia into a magnificent republic, one to be respected—and feared. But the cutthroat ambassador corps and conniving noble houses have never ceased to scheme—and they have plans that need Sun to be removed as heir, or better yet, dead.

Or What You Will by Jo Walton

He has been too many things to count. He has been a dragon with a boy on his back. He has been a scholar, a warrior, a lover, and a thief. He has been dream and dreamer. He has been a god. But “he” is in fact nothing more than a spark of idea, a character in the mind of Sylvia Harrison, 73, award-winning author of thirty novels over forty years. But Sylvia won’t live forever, any more than any human does. And he’s trapped inside her cave of bone, her hollow of skull. When she dies, so will he.

Little Brother & Homeland by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow’s two New York Times-bestselling novels of youthful rebellion against the torture-and-surveillance state – now available in a softcover omnibus

July 14

In the Kingdom of All Tomorrows by Stephen R. Lawhead

Conor mac Ardan is now clan chief of the Darini. Tara’s Hill has become a haven and refuge for all those who were made homeless by the barbarian Scálda. A large fleet of the Scálda’s Black Ships has now arrived and Conor joins Eirlandia’s lords to defeat the monsters. He finds treachery in their midst…and a betrayal that is blood deep. And so begins a final battle to win the soul of a nation.

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowl

Elma York is on her way to Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those pioneer settlers, using her considerable flight and political skills to keep the program on track. But she is less happy that her husband, the Governor of Kansas, is considering a run for President.

July 21

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything—not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams. Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it’s too late—is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice?

The Sin in the Steel by Ryan Van Loan

Buc and Eld are the first private detectives in a world where pirates roam the seas, mages speak to each other across oceans, mechanical devices change the tide of battle, and earthly wealth is concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. It’s been weeks since ships last returned to the magnificent city of Servenza with bounty from the Shattered Coast. Disaster threatens not just the city’s trading companies but the empire itself. When Buc and Eld are hired to investigate, Buc swiftly discovers that the trade routes have become the domain of a sharp-eyed pirate queen who sinks all who defy her.

Quantum Shadows by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

On a world called Heaven, the ten major religions of mankind each have its own land governed by a capital city and ruled by a Hegemon. That Hegemon may be a god, or a prophet of a god. Smaller religions have their own towns or villages of belief. Corvyn, known as the Shadow of the Raven, contains the collective memory of humanity’s Falls from Grace. With this knowledge comes enormous power. When unknown power burns a mysterious black image into the holy place of each House of the Decalivre, Corvyn must discover what entity could possibly have that much power. The stakes are nothing less than another Fall, and if he doesn’t stop it, mankind will not rise from the ashes.

Uranus by Ben Bova

Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites ”the tired, the sick, the poor“ of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world. The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, even hunting human prey.

I Come With Knives by S. A. Hunt

Robin – now armed with new knowledge about mysterious demon terrorizing her around town, the support of her friends, and the assistance of her old witch-hunter mentor – plots to confront the Lazenbury coven and destroy them once and for all. Robin must handle new threats on top of the menace from the Lazenbury coven, but a secret about Robin’s past may throw all of her plans into jeopardy.

July 28

Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha

Nina is an information broker with a mission—she and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to save the hopeless in a crumbling America. Knox is the bitter, battle-weary captain of the Silver Devils. His squad of supersoldiers went AWOL to avoid slaughtering innocents, and now he’s fighting to survive. They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…Or they could do the impossible: team up.

The Baron of Magister Valley by Steven Brust

The salacious claims that The Baron of Magister Valley bears any resemblance to a certain nearly fictional narrative about an infamous count are unfounded (we do not dabble in tall tales. The occasional moderately stretched? Yes. But never tall). Our tale is that of a nobleman who is betrayed by those he trusted, and subsequently imprisoned. After centuries of confinement, he contrives to escape and prepares to avenge himself against his betrayers. A mirror image of The Count of Monte Cristo, vitrolic naysayers still grouse? Well, that is nearly and utterly false.

Automatic Reload by Ferrett Steinmetz

Meet Mat, a tortured mercenary who has become the perfect shot, and Silvia, and idealistic woman genetically engineered to murder you to death. Together they run for the shadiest corporation in the world… and realize their messed-up brain chemistry cannot overpower their very real chemistry.

August 4

The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus

In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family. On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come. Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead. We think we know how this story ends. We. Are. Wrong.

Space Station Down by Ben Bova and Doug Beason

When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: his visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters all the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS—and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world’s financial system.

Sorcery of a Queen by Brian Naslund

Driven from her kingdom, the would-be queen now seeks haven in the land of her mother, but Ashlyn will not stop until justice has been done. Determined to unlock the secret of powers long thought impossible, Ashlyn bends her will and intelligence to mastering the one thing people always accused her of, sorcery. Meanwhile, having learned the truth of his mutation, Bershad is a man on borrowed time. Never knowing when his healing powers will drive him to a self-destruction, he is determined to see Ashlyn restored to her throne and the creatures they both love safe.

A Chorus of Fire by Brian D. Anderson

A shadow has moved across Lamoria. Whispers of the coming conflict are growing louder; the enemy becoming bolder. Belkar’s reach has extended far into the heart of Ralmarstad and war now seems inevitable. Mariyah, clinging to the hope of one day being reunited with Lem, struggles to attain the power she will need to make the world safe again.Lem continues his descent into darkness, serving a man he does not trust in the name of a faith which is not his own. Only Shemi keeps his heart from succumbing to despair, along with the knowledge that he has finally found Mariyah. But Lem is convinced she is being held against her will, and is determined to free her, regardless the cost.

August 11

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

The Last Uncharted Sky by Curtis Craddock

Isabelle and Jean-Claude undertake an airship expedition to recover a fabled treasure and claim a hitherto undiscovered craton for l’Empire Celeste. But Isabelle, as a result from a previous attack that tried to subsume her body and soul, suffers from increasingly disturbing and disruptive hallucinations. Disasters are compounded when the ship is sabotaged by an enemy agent, and Jean-Claude is separated from the expedition.

By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The fact is they don’t know sh*t.

Arthur? An over-promoted gangster. Merlin? An eldritch parasite. Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer. Britain? A clogged sewer that Rome abandoned just as soon as it could.

The Shadow Commission by David Mack

November 1963. Cade and Anja have lived in hiding for a decade, training new mages. Then the assassination of President Kennedy trigger a series of murders whose victims are all magicians—with Cade, Anja, and their allies as its prime targets. Their only hope of survival: learning how to fight back against the sinister cabal known as the Shadow Commission.

The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe

A young man in his teens is transported from our world to a magical realm consisting of seven levels of reality. Transformed by magic into a grown man of heroic proportions, he takes the name Sir Able of the High Heart and sets out on a quest to find the sword that has been promised to him, the blade that will help him fulfill his ambition to become a true hero—a true knight. Inside, however, Sir Able remains a boy, and he must grow in every sense to survive what lies ahead…

August 25

The Memory of Souls by Jenn Lyons

Now that Relos Var’s plans have been revealed and demons are free to rampage across the empire, the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies—and the end of the world—is closer than ever. To buy time for humanity, Kihrin needs to convince the king of the Manol vané to perform an ancient ritual which will strip the entire race of their immortality, but it’s a ritual which certain vané will do anything to prevent. Including assassinating the messengers.

Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne

Terminally ill salvage pilot Ash Jackson lost everything in the war with the alien Vai, but she’ll be damned if she loses her future. Her plan: to buy, beg, or lie her way out of corporate indenture and find a cure. When her crew salvages a genocidal weapon from a ravaged starship above a dead colony, Ash uncovers a conspiracy of corporate intrigue and betrayal that threatens to turn her into a living weapon.

New Releases / What's New

Every Tor Book Coming This Spring

March 3, 2020May 3, 2024admin1 Comment

We’re poking out our heads from our winter hibernation to yell about TOR SPRING BOOKS! We are more than ready for the weather to get warm so we can drag this big ol’ stack of books outside. Here’s EVERYTHING coming from Tor this spring:

March 24

The Poet King by Ilana C. Meyer

After a surprising upheaval, the nation of Tamryllin has a new ruler: Elissan Diar, who proclaims himself the first Poet King. Meanwhile, a civil war rages in a distant land, and former Court Poet Lin Amaristoth gathers allies old and new to return to Tamryllin in time to stop the coronation. For the Poet King’s ascension is connected with a darker, more sinister prophecy which threatens to unleash a battle out of legend unless Lin and her friends can stop it.

A Broken Queen by Sarah Kozloff

Barely surviving her ordeal in Oromondo and scarred by its Fire Spirit, Cerulia is taken to a recovery house in Wyeland to heal from the trauma. In a ward with others who are all bound to serve each other, she discovers that not all scars are visible, and dying can be done with grace and acceptance. While she would like to stay in this place of healing, will she ever be able to the peace she has found to re-take the throne?

April 7

The Glass Magician by Caroline Stevermer

Thalia Cutler doesn’t have prolific family connections. What she does know is stage magic and she dazzles audiences with an act that takes your breath away. That is, until one night when a trick goes horribly awry. In surviving she discovers that she can shapeshift, and has the potential to take her place among the rich and powerful. But first, she’ll have to learn to control that power…before the real monsters descend to feast.

April 14

Queen by Timothy Zahn

Nicole Hammond is a Sibyl, a special human that has the ability to communicate with a strange alien ship called the Fyrantha. However, Nicole and all other sentient creatures are caught up in a war for control between two competing factions. Now, the street-kid turned rebel leader has a plan that would restore freedom to all who have been shanghaied by the strange ship.

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

Emperox Grayland II has finally wrested control of her empire from those who oppose her and who deny the reality of the empirical collapse. But “control” is a slippery thing, and even as Grayland strives to save as many of her people form impoverished isolation, the forces opposing her rule will make a final, desperate push to topple her from her throne and power, by any means necessary. Grayland and her thinning list of allies must use every tool at their disposal to save themselves, and all of humanity. And yet it may not be enough. Will Grayland become the savior of her civilization . . . or the last emperox to wear the crown?

April 21

You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce

Cassandra Tipp has left behind no body—just her massive fortune, and one final manuscript. Then again, there are enough bodies in her past.

Cassandra Tipp will tell you a story—but it will come with a terrible price. What really happened, out there in the woods—and who has Cassie been protecting all along? Read on, if you dare…

The Cerulean Queen by Sarah Kozloff

The true queen of Weirandale has returned. Cerulia has done the impossible and regained the throne. However, she’s inherited a council of traitors, a realm in chaos, and a war with Oromondo. Now a master of her Gift, to return order to her kingdom she will use all she has learned—humility, leadership, compassion, selflessness, and the necessity of ruthlessness.

April 28

Critical Point by S. L. Huang

Math-genius mercenary Cas Russell has stopped a shadow organization from brainwashing the world and discovered her past was deliberately erased and her superhuman abilities deliberately created. And that’s just the start: when a demolitions expert targets Cas and her friends, and the hidden conspiracy behind Cas’s past starts to reappear, the past, present, and future collide in a race to save one of her dearest friends.

May 12

Deal with the Devil by Claire Eddy

They’re on a deadly collision course, and the passion that flares between them only makes it more dangerous. They could burn down the world, destroying each other in the process…Or they could do the impossible: team up.

May 19

I Come With Knives by S. A. Hunt

A dangerous serial killer only known as The Serpent is abducting and killing Blackfield residents. An elusive order of magicians known as the Dogs of Odysseus also show up with Robin in their sights. Robin must handle these new threats on top of the menace from the Lazenbury coven, but a secret about Robin’s past may throw all of her plans into jeopardy.

Uranus by Ben Bova

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic, and illegal, methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus‘s ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control.

May 26

Automatic Reload by Ferrett Steinmetz

In the near-future, automation is king, and Mat is the top mercenary working the black market. He’s your solider’s solider, with military-grade weapons instead of arms…and a haunted past that keeps him awake at night. On a mission that promises the biggest score of his life, he discovers that the top secret shipment he’s been sent to guard is not a package, but a person: Silvia, genetically-altered to be the deadliest woman on the planet—her only weakness is her panic disorder.

June 2

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson

June 9

The Living Dead by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus

A pair of medical examiners find themselves battling a dead man who won’t stay dead. In a Midwestern trailer park, a Black teenage girl and a Muslim immigrant battle newly-risen friends and family. On a US aircraft carrier, living sailors hide from dead ones while a fanatic makes a new religion out of death. At a cable news station, a surviving anchor keeps broadcasting while his undead colleagues try to devour him. In DC, an autistic federal employee charts the outbreak, preserving data for a future that may never come. Everywhere, people are targeted by both the living and the dead.

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

The hunt is over. After fifteen years of lies and sacrifice, Baru Cormorant has the power to destroy the Imperial Republic of Falcrest that she pretends to serve. The secret society called the Cancrioth is real, and Baru is among them. But the Cancrioth’s weapon cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent. If it escapes quarantine, the ancient hemorrhagic plague called the Kettling will kill hundreds of millions…not just in Falcrest, but all across the world. History will end in a black bloodstain.

The Shadow Commission by David Mack

June 16

By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The fact is they don’t know sh*t.

Arthur? An over-promoted gangster.
Merlin? An eldritch parasite.
Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer.
Britain? A clogged sewer that Rome abandoned just as soon as it could.

Glorious by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

The Unconquered City by K. A. Doore

Seven years have passed since the Siege—a time when the hungry dead had risen—but the memories still haunt Illi Basbowen. Illi’s worst fears are confirmed when General Barca arrives, bearing news that her fledgling nation, Hathage, also faces this mounting danger. In her search for the source of the guul, the general exposes a catastrophic secret hidden on the outskirts of Ghadid. Illi must travel to Hathage and confront her inner demons in order to defeat a greater one—but how much can she sacrifice to protect everything she knows from devastation?