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January 10, 2023

Excitement builds for Mia Tsai’s lovely BITTER MEDICINE

Rick Klaw blog bitter medicine, book riot, books of brilliance, buzzfeed, its koo reviews, k. w. colyard, kelly gallucci, margaret kingsbury, mia tsai, missing volume

Though some two months until its March 14 release (the book, both physical and digital, is currently available directly from Tachyon and other select outlets), Mia Tsai’s debut novel BITTER MEDICINE garnering all sorts of attention including a review by Missing Volume and inclusion on a variety of new and highly 2023 anticipated book lists such as 19 New Fantasy And Science Fiction Books You’ve Got To Read by Buzzfeed‘s Margaret Kingsdbury and 12 Sff & Horror Debuts to Watch for in 2023 by K. W. Colyard for Book Riot. The Most Anticipated Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2023 at Books of Brilliance, 32 Highly-Anticipated Books Hitting Shelves in 2023, selected by Kelly Gallucci for We Are Bookish, and 20 for 23: My Anticipated Reads for 2023 at Its Koo Reviews all list the book with no comment.

cover for Bitter Medicine by Mia Tasi — Cover art by Jia-Ling Pan
Design by Elizabeth Story

I really liked this book, the setting felt fresh and didn’t bog itself down with tons of worldbuilding. Just enough to get the story told and leave lots of room for more tales in this setting with either these characters or new people.
Missing Volume

It’s a lovely, absorbing read with wonderful characters, a perfect romance, and an action-packed plot.
Buzzfeed

Elle knows her younger brother will kill her if he finds her. That’s why she’s working an entry-level job with a temp agency; she can’t risk putting all of her magical powers on display for him to find. It’s not all bad — she gets to help a cute half-elf named Luc carry out some truly dangerous operations. When Luc’s next target turns out to be Elle’s younger brother, Elle sees a chance at the kind of happiness she can only dream of. But can she really choose Luc over the rest of her family?
Book Riot

June 15, 2022

Excitement abounds for Sam J. Miller’s debut collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN with interviews, reviews, a book trailer & more

Rick Klaw blog Ancillary Review of Books, andrew liptak, arley song, BC Clark, boys beasts & men, buzzfeed, clarkesworld, delphic reviews, disciples of boltax, gary k wolfe, interview, just geeking by, Locus, margaret kingsbury, Melody Bowles, Neil Czeszejko, review, sam j miller, the british fantasy society, trailer, transfer orbit

The release of Sam J. Miller’s debut collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN launched with a flurry of activity, all positive. Though the book is already sold out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop (more copies on their way), copies should be available from your local bookstore and as always directly from Tachyon.

Cover of BOYS, BEASTS, & MEN, a collection by Sam J. Miller. — Cover by Jennifer O’Toole
Design by Elizabeth Story

**Andrew Liptak, in his Transfer Orbit newsletter, not only reviewed the book and interviewed Miller but also offered the first look at the book trailer!**

It’s a superb roundup of a prolific author’s short stories: tales that deal with complicated, messy lives of people trying to make their way through life, faced with uncertain and dangerous worlds.
Transfer Orbit

Collections are always interesting to read from short fiction authors, because of the curation involved. What was the determination that you made for each story to be placed here?

I was fortunate to be able to be very picky here, because these actually represent less than half of my published stories!

Ultimately I wanted to include the stories that got the best response from readers – including ones that got award recognition or were anthologized – but I also wanted to be able to tell a broader story about masculinity and monstrosity and patriarchy, which are obviously super important themes in my work, and these seemed like the best stories with which to tell that story.
Transfer Orbit

A whole host of reviews appeared for the collection including contributions from Margaret Kingsbury in “20 Amazing New Science Fiction And Fantasy Beach Reads“ (BuzzFeed), **Gary K. Wolfe at Locus, Melody Bowles from The British Fantasy Society, BC Clark at Ancillary Review of Books, Neil Czeszejko at Delphic Reviews, Just Geeking By, and Disciples of Boltax.**

All 14 of these brilliant, character-driven short stories are perfectly crafted, subtly altering reality using SFF elements while managing to fully explore the repercussions of doing so with the conciseness a short story requires.
20 Amazing New Science Fiction And Fantasy Beach Reads (BuzzFeed)

Miller is clearly one of the generation of writers thoroughly comfortable with genre hopping (or genre-ignoring, or genre-pillaging), and BOYS, BEASTS & MEN is no exception to that. . . . Given the pain and joy that Miller can so vividly evoke, it’s both an admonition and a celebration.
Locus

Overall, I enjoyed the wide variety of stories in BOYS, BEASTS & MEN. Not every story was a hit for me, but they were certainly all memorable. If you like your fantasy and sci-fi with realistic grit to ground it, pick this one up.
The British Fantasy Society

Sam J. Miller’s stories collected in BOYS, BEASTS & MEN are fire in about the same way a blast furnace is. They are full of evolving, disintegrating, and re-assembling identities, a funhouse hall of molten mirrors. These stories burn away façades to reveal true histories full of fierce magic. Histories queer as all hell’s furies unleashed. Histories often uncontrollable by those who bend the course of the story. An able craftsman, Miller harnesses the powers of the twin underground rivers of loneliness and desire to channel the rage and hope of his characters. And through that craft, Miller brings tales of justice regained and character reframed
Ancillary Review of Books

BOYS, BEASTS & MEN is a phenomenal short story collection that brings to mind a pack of wolves, with each story pulsing to its own heartbeat, straining at the leash that affixes it to the whole with bestial vigor.
Delphic Reviews

To be honest, the entire anthology is mesmerising. Miller’s writing is witty and hard-hitting, drawing out stories from angles that most people don’t tend to see.
Just Geeking By

The stories in this collection run the gamut from scary to angry to sad to kind but they all have a raw humanity that I loved. I recommend this book highly and hope to read more from Mr. Miller in the future.
Disciples of Boltax

**Arley Song for Clarkesworld interviewed Miller.**

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about this book?

That the incredible Amal El-Mohtar wrote the introduction! And it’s amazing! Seriously made me choke up when I read it. In 2014, when my short story “We Are the Cloud” (included in the collection) was published in Lightspeed, it got some super homophobic reviews, which suuuuuuuuucked—any LGBTQIA+ SFF writer can tell you that queering the genre means coming up against a whole lot of really vicious trolls—and Amal wrote the most beautiful review/defense of the story; that’s how I knew she’d be the perfect person to do the introduction.
Clarkesworld

May 3, 2022

Be among the first to experience the cover to Jane Yolen’s THE SCARLET CIRCUS by signing up for the BuzzFeed Books newsletter!

Rick Klaw blog, Events buzzfeed, buzzfeed books, cover reveal, Jane Yolen, the scarlet circus

All will be revealed on Sunday, May 8, ONLY in the BuzzFeed Books newsletter. Sign up now.

September 3, 2020

Join R. B. Lemberg, author of the lyrical and complex THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES, for their REDDIT AMA

Rick Klaw blog, Events buzzfeed, chain reaction, dante's wardrobe, j. a. jablonski, jo ladziski, jo writes fantasy, r. b. lemberg, r/books, r/fantasy, reddit, review, the four profound weaves 0

R. B. Lemberg discusses their acclaimed debut THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES in a REDDIT AMA at r/books on Friday, September 4 at 2PM CST.

BUZZFEED includes the book among 7 New Books Coming Out This Week You Should Definitely Read.

THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES by R.B. Lemberg is a lyrical and complex fantasy novella featuring two elderly trans characters. Uiziya is trying to learn the four profound weaves. She’s mastered three out of the four and lacks the bone cloth. In order to learn how to weave the bone cloth, she needs to go to her aunt Benesret, who is an outcast in the desert who is weaving bone cloth for the evil Ruler of Iyar’s assassins. A nameless man referred to as nen-sasaïr recently changed into a man and is trying to learn about his identity in his heavily gender-stratified culture. He’s also trying to lay some of his past demons to rest. Their two quests both lead them to confront the evil Ruler of Iyar.
— Margaret Kingsbury

CHAIN INTERACTION agrees.

Overall this book surprised me with how much I enjoyed it and how powerful my feelings were by the end of the story, it’s emotional for sure and also hopeful and beautiful and tragic and all other emotions that it should not be possible to pack into a small package like this.

Jo Ladzinski on their blog JO WRITES FANTASY also enjoys it.

A delightful debut about identity, art, and friendship.

Cover by Elizabeth Story based on initial concepts by Francesca Myman

J. A. Jablonski for DANTE’S WARDROBE appreciates the soul-bearing THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES.

I am in the end, I guess one might say, a creature of the work, of deep storytelling, and of imagination. In Lemberg’s novella, I find all three. They craft their writing. There is cadence to the sentences, the narrative flow, and the plot itself. They know how language works to deepen the culture surrounding people and their doings. Character names sound real. The words used to describe artifacts, cultural behavior, the sociology of the different peoples all ring true. With regard to the journey that is imagination, Lemberg bends their mind (and heart too, one senses) into that gap between and emerges with the wings of the redwing hawk. This tale seems to have been torn from their soul.

At REDDIT r/Fantasy, leftoverbrine praises the novella.

The writing is beautiful, pacing very different from your standard fantasy. I loved getting to know the characters, their journey venturing into a world with bird gods, flying carpets and mountains of bones is so unusual. It takes a slow, thoughtful course, pondering the conflict between change and stability, the cruelty that rigid stability can wreak on the individual.

August 25, 2015

Four Tachyon authors earn a place among The 51 Best Fantasy Series Ever Written

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alexander nanitchkov, brandon sanderson, brayan's gold, buzzfeed, demon cycle, elizabeth story, elric, fantasy, hollow world, list, Michael J. Sullivan, michael moorcock, mistborn, novel, peter v brett, riyria revelations, science fiction, stormlight archive, the emperor's soul, the great bazaar, the great bazaar & brayan's gold, the very best of michael moorcock

The braintrust over at BUZZFEED created a list of The 51 Best Fantasy Series Ever Written. Four Tachyon authors and their series garnered notice.

Brandon Sanderson

#2 The Stormlight Archive

Another series that only has two books so far, so now’s the time to get involved. The one issue is that they’re BIG books, so the two The Stormlight Archives feel more like four books. Luckily, they’re incredible, so you’ll tear through them. RIYL: really big swords, sorcery, and massive battle sequences.

#12 Mistborn

The heart of this series is in the intricate and cleverly deployed system of magic that powers it. Allomancers have different abilities tied to different metals, and there is a real thrill in watching the characters learn and master their craft and combine forces as they attempt to overthrow a corrupt and oppressive regime.

Tachyon published the Hugo award-winning novella THE EMPEROR’S SOUL.

Peter V. Brett

#10 Demon Cycle

A “hero’s journey” told through several protagonists and settings. As its name implies, the Demon Cycle exists in a complex and fascinating world where humans and demons are forced to live at constant odds with one another, and explores what happens when humans finally take a stand.

THE GREAT BAZAAR & BRAYAN’S GOLD, a pair of novellas set in the Demon Cycle universe, came out earlier this year.

Michael Moorcock

#33 The Elric Saga

Elric VIII, the 428th Sorcerer Emperor of Melniboné, is a weak and frail introvert. But his sword, Stormbringer, is anything but. It brings Elric the strength he needs to survive, at a cost: It feeds on the souls of its prey. Michael Moorcock’s subversion of what he saw as the tired tropes of fantasy established by Tolkien and others make for a powerful read that is, to this day, a seminal influence on the genre.

THE VERY BEST OF MICHAEL MOORCOCK begins with the Elric story “A Portrait in Ivory.”

Michael J. Sullivan

#37 The Riyria Revelations

The Riyria Revelations follows two unlikely heroes across three novels written as one long ongoing tale, rather than as a series of sequels. The heroes are accused of regicide in the opening pages, and they spend the rest of the books in over their heads as they try to clear their names. Unfortunately, they have their hands full, because they’re going to need to solve the mystery of the king’s death and battle against evil wizards all at the same time.

Sullivan’s first science fiction novel, the time travel adventure HOLLOW WORLD, came out last year.

For the complete list, visit BUZZFEED.

For more info about THE EMPEROR’S SOUL, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Alexander Nanitchkov

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about THE GREAT BAZAAR & BRAYAN’S GOLD, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more information about THE VERY BEST OF MICHAEL MOORCOCK, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

For information on HOLLOW WORLD, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Michael J. Sullivan

June 4, 2015

SLOW BULLETS is a best June book to read

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alastair reynolds, andrew liptak, buzzfeed, elizabeth bernstein, elizabeth story, ken newquist, nerd much?, novella, nuketown, review, science fiction, slow bullets, Thomas Canty

At BUZZFEED, Andrew Liptak includes Alastair Reynolds’ SLOW BULLETS among his 27 Speculative Fiction And Related Books To Read This June.

This short novel from one of the masters of modern space opera is a really intriguing story about the size of space and how things change with time.

Liptak was not alone in his recommendation. Over at NERD MUCH?, Elizabeth Bernstein placed SLOW BULLETS on her 10 Best New Sci-fi Books To Read In June.

Alastair Reynolds is an astrophysicist-turned-author who is hardly new to the science fiction scene (having written the Revelation Space series). We are sure that this novella, titled Slow Bullets, won’t disappoint. And, we can always get behind a female protagonist, which is not altogether common in sci-fi.

Ken Newquist of NUKETOWN included SLOW BULLETS on his Summer 2015 Reading List.

The author of Revelation Space and House of Suns has a new novel involving a galaxy-wide war. The novel revolves around a character named Scur as she awakens aboard a prison transport ship and finds herself in a battle in which bullets have memories embedded in them. I have no idea what that means, but I’m intrigued.

For more about SLOW BULLETS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Design by Elizabeth Story.

May 4, 2015

HANNU RAJANIEMI: COLLECTED FICTION is a must buy

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized andrew liptak, buzzfeed, collection, elizabeth story, hannu rajaniemi, hannu rajaniemi: collected fiction, lius lasahido, preview, review, science fiction, short stories

On BUZZFEED, Andrew Liptak includes HANNU RAJANIEMI: COLLECTED FICTION among his 30 Science Fiction, Fantasy And Horror Books To Pick Up In May 2015.

Why you should buy it: Rajaniemi has been hailed as a major figure in hard science fiction, and particularly for his Jean le Flambeur series. This new collection of his short fiction is a must-buy for us.

Check out the rest of Liptak’s selections at BUZZFEED.

For more info on HANNU RAJANIEMI: COLLECTED FICTION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Lius Lasahido

Design by Elizabeth Story

February 9, 2015

Excitement surrounds the release of THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized andrew liptak, barnes & noble, black wolves, buzzfeed, elizabeth story, fantasy, funagram, io9, julie dillon, kate elliott, kirkus, Publishers Weekly, SF Signal, short stories, the very best of kate elliott

Several outlets selected THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT as one of their top upcoming science fiction/fantasy books.

Among The Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2015 according to Publishers Weekly:

Elliott’s delightful first collection contains standalone works, essays, and pieces set in the worlds of her major fantasy series, where existing settings lend depth, complexity, and intrigue. This collection serves beautifully both as an introduction to Elliott and as a treat for fans who want more of her marvels.

Barnes & Noble Bookseller’s Picks for February:

Elliott is known for her expansive fantasies, from the seven-book Crown of Stars series to the recently completed Spiritwalker trilogy, but this collection proves she’s equally adept at writing short fiction. Collecting stories set in worlds both familiar (including the settings of the Spiritwalker books and her Jaran quartet) and new, as well as non-fiction essays about writing, it makes an excellent introduction to the work of one of epic fantasy’s most reliably fantastic writers.

The February Science Fiction And Fantasy Books You Can’t Afford To Miss according to Io9:

The author of Court of Fives, Crown of Stars and Crossroads finally gets a retrospective of her short fiction, featuring a lot of young female protagonists who have to find themselves in order to find salvation from the schemes of their elders.

31 Science Fiction, Fantasy And Horror Novels To Read In February! from Andrew Liptak at BuzzFeed:

Why you should buy it: Elliott is known for her fantastic stories, and now, it looks like a lot of her short fiction is being collected into one outstanding volume.

SF Signal not only mentioned THE VERY BEST but also Kate Elliott’s forthcoming novel Black Wolves:

For readers who are chomping at the bit to read The Very Best of Kate Elliott (released this coming Tuesday) and still can’t get enough (looks at Paul)…you better pace yourself. There’s another Kate Elliott book on the horizon. Before the year is up, you’ll be able to read Black Wolves, her new epic fantasy series.

Kirkus included THE VERY BEST, without comment, on both the 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror Books to Look Forward to in 2015 (Part 1) and The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Reads for February.

For more on THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Julie Dillon.

Design by Elizabeth Story.

April 1, 2014

HOLLOW WORLD is a book that you need to read

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized andrew liptak, buzzfeed, hollow world, list, Michael J. Sullivan, science fiction

Over at BuzzFeed, Andrew Liptak included Michael J. Sullivan’s Hollow World among his list of 33 SF/F Books Coming Out In April 2014 That You Need To Read.

What it’s about: Ellis Rogers is a seemingly ordinary man who is about to embark on an extraordinary journey. All his life he has played it safe and done the right thing. But when he is faced with a terminal illness, Ellis is willing to take an insane gamble. He’s secretly built a time machine in his garage, and if it works, he’ll face a utopian world that challenges his understanding of what it means to be human, what it takes to love, and what the cost of paradise really might be.

Ellis could find more than a cure for his disease; he might find what everyone has been searching for since time has begun — but only if he can survive the Hollow World.

Why you should buy it: Sullivan’s done a number of epic fantasy novels recently, and this novel looks to be a bit of a change for him, with an interesting character set to travel to some interesting places.

For Liptak’s entire list, visit BuzzFeed.

For information on Hollow World, visit the Tachyon page.

Tachyon Publications

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