Flyaway

February 1, 2020

In Queen of Storms, the second in the "Firemane Saga," Hatushaly and young wife Hava restore the fire-blackened Three Stars in trade-rich Beran's Hill, but they aren't the cheerful innkeepers they appear to be (100,000-copy first printing). A young woman in small-town Queensland, Australia, undertakes a gothic journey after hearing from her long-gone brother, thus launching Hugo- and World Fantasy-nominated illustrator Jennings's buzzing debut novel, Flyaway. In The Relentless Moon, sequel to Kowal's Hugo, Locus, and Nebula-Award winning The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky, the moon is being colonized even as a meteor strike brings climate crisis to Earth. Originally scheduled for October 2019, Malerman's Malorie reveals what happens to the title character eight years after events in Bird Box, basis of the Netflix mega-hit. The perennial best-selling Modesitt's Quantum Shadows is set in a place called Heaven, where humankind's major religions each have their own land and places of worship are being scarily marked with inscrutable black images. With his stories already nominated for Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy honors, debut novelist Rosenbaum (The Ant King and Other Stories) returns with The Unraveling, which dreams up a far-future, distant-galaxy, rigidly structured society where individuals have multiple bodies and staid-gendered Fift and bail-gendered bioengineer Shria wind up in the midst of an eyebrow-raising art spectacle. Salvatore's Relentless closes his "Generations" trilogy with Zaknafein reunited with son Drizzt Do'Urden and reconciled to life's unpredictability (100,000-copy first printing). In multi-award-winning Walton's intriguing-sounding Or What You Will, a character who's been a dragon, lover, scholar, warrior, and thief in the many books penned by Sylvia Harrison knows that the 73-year-old author won't be around much longer and is trying to figure out how the two of them can escape into immortality. Born in England to South American parents and raised in Africa near the historical territory of his Xhosa ancestors, Winter draws on his background to light The Fires of Vengeance, second in "The Burning" series, wherein a queen who has lost her throne joins with a young warrior in a battle to regain it (75,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 30, 2020
Jennings’s wonderful, slim debut pulls readers into an eerie, enchanting fairy tale set in a trio of Australian towns so tiny that they hardly exist. Nineteen-year-old Bettina Scott lives alone with her controlling mother, as her two brothers and father disappeared the same night years before. When Bettina receives a mysterious letter calling her a coward and addressing her by her nickname, “Tink,” a name only her brothers and father called her, she sets off to find them through her district’s small, dilapidated towns, hoping to piece together what really happened to them. She recruits her childhood friends Trish Aberdeen and Gary Damson to help her, though they have not spoken to her since the Scott brothers’ disappearance and are disconcerted by strange changes in Bettina, who used to be rebellious and is now compliant. Throughout their search, Jennings weaves tantalizing snippets of short fairy tales that Bettina and her friends grew up with and, as it slowly becomes clear that the line between fact and fairy tale is rather hazy, Bettina is forced to question her own jumbled memories of her family. In spellbinding, lyrical prose Jennings lulls readers into this rich, dreamlike world. Lovers of contemporary fairy tales and magical realism will find this a masterful work.

June 1, 2020
Jennings' debut is a deliciously mysterious Gothic fairy tale wrapped in elegantly descriptive prose. Nineteen-year-old Betina Scott is a proper young lady who diligently takes care of her delicately dispositioned mother. But is Tina really a good girl? Before her brothers left, folks in their small, close-knit community say Tina was always the instigator of trouble, although never the one caught or blamed. She cannot remember being that person and questions what really happened the day her father went away three years ago. Then one day a scribbled note arrives, written on the back of a three-year-old newspaper article in the handwriting of one of her brothers, that simply says, You coward, Tink. Determined to find answers, and with the help of two friends who have reasons of their own for joining the hunt, Tina runs away to track her sibling. Teeming with folklore from the Australian Outback, this compelling mystery is laced with familial connections and interspersed with entwined tales of curses, miracles, witches, and vengeance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 1, 2020

Quiet and constrained Bettina Scott found a note in the mailbox, addressed to her, that could only have come from one of her two brothers. But they disappeared years ago. As Bettina begins a journey to discover the truth behind the note's cryptic message, she opens a Pandora's box of memories that slowly unravel the true story behind their and her father's departure, from layers of storiesfrom old friends and others about mysterious dogs, magical bottles, and monsters born right inside their small Queensland town of Runagate. Within curses and cages lies the truth, with Bettina at the center. VERDICT Jennings's debut novella is pure, poetic Australian gothic, filled with haunting emotions, fairy-tale action, and sharp prose.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.