The Fantasy Review’s list of 8 Mind-Blowing Modern Science Fiction Books You Can’t Put Down.
Stars and Bones (Continuance, #1) by Gareth L. Powell
From the blurb:
Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arks—each shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities.
When her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanity’s survival.
Sleeping Giants (Themis Files, #1) by Sylvain Neuvel
Check out our interview with Sylvain Neuvel.
From the blurb:
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.…
Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Check out our interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky.
From the blurb:
The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.
After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared—and Idris and his kind became obsolete….
Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
From the blurb:
In the 1800s, a sailing ship crashes off the coast of Norway. In the 1900s, a Zepellin explores an icy canyon in Antarctica. In the far future, a spaceship sets out for an alien artifact. Each excursion goes horribly wrong. And on every journey, Dr. Silas Coade is the physician, but only Silas seems to realize that these events keep repeating themselves. And it’s up to him to figure out why and how. And how to stop it all from happening again.
Translation State by Ann Leckie
From the blurb:
Qven was created to be a Presger Translator. The pride of their clade, they always had a clear path before them: Learn human ways and, eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds.
But Qven rebels against that future, a choice that brings them into the orbit of two others: Enae, a reluctant diplomat attempting to hunt down a fugitive who has been missing for over two hundred years; and Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his biological past—or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him….
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
From the blurb:
Harry August is on his deathbed. Again.
No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.
Until now.
As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. “I nearly missed you, Doctor August,” she says. “I need to send a message.”…
Artifact Space (Arcana Imperii, #1) by Miles Cameron
From the blurb:
Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.
With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume – and value – of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species….
Beyond the Hallowed Sky (Lightspeed Trilogy, #1) by Ken MacLeod
From the blurb:
When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn’t know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited – and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.…
