The fine folks at THE CURIOUS SFF READER are giving away DRIFTWOOD by Marie Brennan.

I enjoyed DRIFTWOOD so much that I definitely want to share the love and give you the opportunity to win a copy of this book. The publisher will give out:

1 physical copy (U.S. only)
1 eBook copy in the format of your choice (open internationally!)

To enter the giveaway, you just have to comment under this post, include where I can reach you (Twitter handle or email address) and if you are applying for the U.S. or international giveaway. I will pick a winner at random on August 20th and privately reach out to the winners! For the U.S. giveaway, you have to be comfortable with giving me your address that I will send out to the publisher.

They also reviewed the novel.

I didn’t expect to love DRIFTWOOD as much as I did, I knew nothing about it before picking it up except that it was written by the author of the well-known Memoirs of Lady Trent, a series that I haven’t read. However, after reading the first few pages, my curiosity quickly morphed into enthusiasm. Brennan’s writing style is engaging and managed to pull me into the chaotic world of Driftwood in a couple of paragraphs. I read this book twice and, each time, in less than a day. I first read it in May and I wanted to refresh my memory before writing this review by reading it again more slowly but… I couldn’t stop turning the pages! Guess I’ll have to read it a third time.

Highly recommended to any fantasy lovers!

BETWIXT THE SHEETS felt much the same.

DRIFTWOOD by Marie Brennan is one of those rare stories you don’t quite see coming. I don’t mean in the sense that the twists of the tale itself are unpredictable, though at times.. that too is true, but rather in the way that it is so much bigger, so much more impactful and moving than one might ever suspect.

[…]

Actually, this is easily one of my favorite reads this year and I had no idea it would be. I thought it a quaint sounding story with an interesting premise, but my hopes could not have readied me for what it really was.. an absolutely stellar tale.. and I desperately hope there will be more.

ELITIST BOOK REVIEWS enjoys the book.

DRIFTWOOD is a collection of these stories and how Last made life more livable in Driftwood. How he helps people come to grips with post-apocalypse–and preserve some of their culture and dignity in the process. They are stories of a strange place that no one quite understands. Of a mixture of people who were never meant to be neighbors. And they are stories of coping with loss.

Marie Brennan never disappoints.

WORDS LIKE STARS continues the praise.

The entire structure of Driftwood and its workings is not only well drafted and detailed, but I felt the sadness, hopelessness and sorrow that so many of these people feel at the fact that places eventually come to their end, and so do the people that belonged to them. It puts one in the place of Last while reading, thinking of what it must be like to exist as he has—to see so many that he cared for lost and gone, but remain, eventually alone and needing to start again.

Brennan participated in an REDDIT AMA for r/fantasy. As a bonus, she provided a link to a photo of hers along with her answer to each question!

vorpalcheeseknife

Do you see Driftwood as part of a series? And, if so, do you see it as a series of short stories or will there be Driftwood novels?

MarieBrennanAuthor Marie Brennan

In a sense Driftwood has always been a series, because it started out as short stories, which then got linked together into the book. I doubt I’ll ever write a full-blown novel there, in part because I feel like that’s antithetical to the setting: Driftwood is a place of fragments, not coherent wholes, and a novel is a big coherent whole. But I may very well write more short stories, plus I have a half-baked notion for a novella in the setting, so there may indeed be more in the future, even if it isn’t a conventional novel.

Photo: the old waterfront in Gdańsk, Poland: https://www.swantower.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Gdansk-Zuraw-night-1-1024×726.jpg