In the last couple of months the new international science fiction and fantasy imprint (recently obtained by Random House) Angry Robot Books has begun to roll out a vast catalog of new titles that booksellers and readers alike have been waiting to see on bookstore shelves for a year.
Based in the U.K., the imprint boasts an impressive stable of both established and new writers from around the globe, including the prolific British novelist and comic book writer Dan Abnett (Gaunt’s Ghost), popular Israeli fantasy writer Lavie Tidhar (The Bookman), South African journalist and screenwriter Lauren Beukes (Moxyland), U.S. novelist and publisher Chris Roberson (Book of Secrets), and Australian horror and fantasy writer Kaaron Warren (Slights), along with many others. Most of the newcomers are unknown to U.S. audiences but already have large followings of devoted science fiction and fantasy fans in their native countries.
Angry Robot already has a considerable list of paperback original books out in the U.S., with many more titles set to come out over the next few months.
Here are a just a few of the titles already on our bookshelves:
Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett
Her Divine Majesty Queen Elizabeth XXX sits upon the throne. Great Britain’s vast Empire is run by Alchemy and Superstition.
Sir Rupert Triumff. Adventurer. Fighter. Drinker. Saviour? Pratchett goes swashbuckling in the hotly anticipated original fiction debut of the multi-million selling Warhammer star. Triumff is a ribald historical fantasy set in a warped clockwork-powered version of our present day…a new Elizabethan age, not of Elizabeth II but in the style of the original Virgin Queen. Throughout its rollicking pages, Sir Rupert Triumff drinks, dines and duels his way into a new Brass Age of Exploration and Adventure.
A frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable, this novel follows the lives of four narrators living in an alternative futuristic Cape Town, South Africa. An art-school dropout, an AIDS baby, a tech-activist and an RPG-obsessed blogger live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone’s got to stand up to Government Inc.—whatever the cost. Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, this tale paints anything but a forecasted utopia, satirically undermining the reified idea of progress as society’s white knight.
When his spaceship crashes on an unknown and forgotten planet, scientist Karl Allman discovers himself hunted by an ancient race. The descendants of earlier colonists have reverted to a savage tribal culture of sacrifice, pillage and violence. When Karl falls in love with an outcast girl, he has only one goal: escape. But escape is a distant dream on this nightmare planet.
Kell’s Legend (The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles, Book 1) by Andy Remic
It is a time for warriors, a time for heroes. Kell’s axe howls out for blood. The land of Falanor has been invaded by an albino army, the Army of Iron. A small group sets off to warn the king: Kell, a magnificent and brutal hero; his granddaughter, Nienna and her friend, Katrina; and Saark, the ex-Sword Champion of King Leanoric, disgraced after his affair with the Queen.
Fighting their way south, betrayal follows battle, battle follows deviation, and they are attacked from all quarters by deadly warriors, monstrous harvesters who drain blood from their victims to feed their masters. Ferocious fantasy from a real-life hardman come to claim the post-Gemmell world.
