FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[salty-horse]

Some Amazon UK daily deals. Kobo still shows the original prices for all except Annie Bot, but maybe that will change later today.

Bee Speaker (Dogs of War #3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky is £1.3 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

The Great When (Long London #1) by Alan Moore is £2.3 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

A propulsive tour through a fantastical London, where history and myth collide, murder stalks the streets and the mundane becomes very magical indeed…

The year is 1949, the city London. Amidst the smog of the capital is Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless eighteen-year-old employed by a second-hand bookshop. One day, on an errand to acquire books for sale, Dennis discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, a figment from another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How?

Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret: if Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks bizarre and disastrous repercussions, such as his body being turned inside out (or worse).

So begins a journey delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers – some from legend, some all too real, and all with plans of their own. Soon Dennis finds himself at the centre of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever.

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

Europe stares into the abyss.

Plague and famine stalk the land, monsters lurk in every shadow and greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions. Only one thing is certain: the elves will come again, and they will eat everyone.

Sometimes, only the darkest paths lead towards the light. Paths on which the righteous will not dare to tread . . .

And so, buried beneath the sacred splendour of the Celestial Palace, is the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency. For its congregation of convicted monsters there are no sins that have not been committed, no lines that will not be crossed, and no mission that cannot be turned into a disastrous bloodbath.

Now the hapless Brother Diaz must somehow bind the worst of the worst to a higher cause: to put a thief on the throne of Troy, and unite the sundered church against the coming apocalypse.

When you're headed through hell, you need the devils on your side.

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

WINNER OF THE 2025 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD

Annie is the perfect girlfriend. She has dinner ready for Doug every night, wears the outfits he buys for her, and caters to his every sexual whim. Maybe her cleaning isn’t always good enough, but she’s trying really hard.

She was designed that way, after all.

Because Annie is a robot. But what happens when she starts to rebel against her stifled existence and imagine the impossible – a life without Doug?

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

A bunch of Japanese Honkaku murder mystery translations are on sale in the US and the UK.
By Yukito Ayatsuji (Kobo GB)
By Seishi Yokomizo (Kobo GB)

I'm confused. Are these hybrid-genre books?

If there is an element of fantasy/science fiction, then I will buy them.

But if they're just mystery novels, then I'll pass on them. (But iff they're literary mysteries with a hint of Haruki Murakami, then I'll buy them. I'm always on the look-out for something with some 'Murakami' in it.)

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I'm confused. Are these hybrid-genre books?

Sorry, posted in the wrong forum

[salty-horse]

Cross-posted to Horror.
Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou is $2 on Amazon.com (only there, and it's a "digital list price" discount, so no Kobo price matching)
A Bluebeard retelling. Debut novel by a prolific short story writer.

“Harrowing…a fairytale for the ages, subverting the tale of Bluebeard to deconstruct the systems of gender, power, and the excuses people make for bad men.” —Chicago Review of Books

“A murder ballad sung in a dark room — it’s slow, haunting and strangely beautiful.” —The New York Times Book Review

The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy—until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Sorry, posted in the wrong forum

Noooooooo! My head! Exploding! Brain matter everywhere! Must try to think! Noooooooo!

[salty-horse]

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab is £2 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)
Multi-POV vampire tale. I'm reading this now from the library.

This is a story about hunger.

Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily - her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.This is a story about love.

London. A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow - but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.This is a story about rage.

Boston. College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.This is a story about life . . .
how it ends, and how it starts again.

Utterly unmissable, this is a twisting, gothic tale of immortality and hunger. From the bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky is £2 in the UK (Amazon only ATM, but Kobo is price-matchable)

‘Thrilling, terrifying and fascinating’
– Tim Peake, British ESA astronaut

They looked into darkness. The darkness looked back . . .

An utterly gripping story of survival and first contact on a hostile planet from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time.

A commercial expedition to a distant star system discovers a pitch-black moon alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is deadly to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

Under no circumstances can a human survive Shroud’s inhospitable surface – but a catastrophic accident forces Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne to make an emergency landing in a barely adequate escape vehicle. Alone, and fighting for survival, the two women embark on a gruelling journey across land, sea and air in search of salvation.

But as they travel, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s unnerving alien species. It also begins to understand them. If they escape Shroud, they’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all . . .

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky is £2 in the UK (Amazon only ATM, but Kobo is price-matchable)

Second Daily Deal in a row for Tchaikovsky. I wonder how long they could go on for?

[Cactus Chef]

Dispossessed, The [50th Anniversary Edition] by Ursula K. Le Guin is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels

“One of the greats. . . . Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon.” —Stephen King

"Engrossing. . . . [Le Guin] is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscape of the mind." —Cincinnati Enquirer

In celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, a commemorative edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award–winning classic, a profound and thoughtful tale of anarchism and capitalism, individualism and collectivism, and one ambitious man’s quest to bridge the ideological chasm separating two worlds. This special edition includes a new foreword by Karen Joy Fowler.

The Dispossessed is the spellbinding story of anarchist Shevek, the “galactically famous scientist,” who single-handedly attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust.

Anarres, Shevek’s homeland, is a bleak moon settled by an anarchic utopian civilization, where there is no government, and everyone, at least nominally, is a revolutionary. It has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—defined by warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to unify the two civilizations. In the face of great hostility, outright threats, and the pain of separation from his family, he makes an unprecedented trip to Urras. Greater than any concern for his own wellbeing is the belief that the walls of hatred, distrust, and philosophic division between his planet and the rest of the civilized universe must be torn down. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and explore differences in customs and cultures, determined to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart.

To visit Urras—to learn, to teach, to share—will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. Almost immediately upon his arrival, he finds not the egotistical philistines he expected, but an intelligent, complex people who warmly welcome him. But soon the ambitious scientist and his gift is seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.

FWIW, the non-anniversary edition of the book seems to have a $5 list price, so if you've already grabbed it, I don't think a new cover and a foreword are worth re-buying.

[Quoth]

Was in a Humble Bundle Nov 2024, in case you have it and might double purchase.

[ballfresno]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky is £2 in the UK (Amazon only ATM, but Kobo is price-matchable)

Now £1.99 on Kobo (in the UK). Got it. Thanks!

[salty-horse]

The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman is $3 in the US (Amazon only, but I got a price match on Kobo)
Sequel to The Half-Made World.

This is the story of Harry Ransom. If you know his name it's most likely as the inventor of the Ransom Process, a stroke of genius that changed the world.
Or you may have read about how he lost the battle of Jasper City, or won it, depending on where you stand in matters of politics.
Friends called him Hal or Harry, or by one of a half-dozen aliases, of which he had more than any honest man should. He often went by Professor Harry Ransom, and though he never had anything you might call a formal education, he definitely earned it.
If you're reading this in the future, Ransom City must be a great and glittering metropolis by now, with a big bronze statue of Harry Ransom in a park somewhere. You might be standing on its sidewalk and not wonder in the least of how it grew to its current glory. Well, here is its story, full of adventure and intrigue. And it all starts with the day that old Harry Ransom crossed paths with Liv Alverhyusen and John Creedmoor, two fugitives running from the Line, amidst a war with no end.

The Tindalos Asset (Tinfoil Dossier #3) by Caitlin R. Kiernan is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

[salty-horse]

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A debut novel of remarkable beauty and invention, The Fortunate Fall is back in print for the first time in almost three decades as a Tor Essential, with a new introduction by Jo Walton
Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure.
On its first publication in 1996, The Fortunate Fall was hailed as an SF novel of a wired future on par with the debuts of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. Now it returns to print, as one of the great underground classics of the last several decades in SF.
Maya Andreyeva is a "camera," a reporter with virtual-reality-broadcasting equipment implanted in her brain. What she sees, millions see; what she feels, millions share.
And what Maya is seeing is the cover-up of a massacre. As she probes into the covert political power plays of a radically strange near-future Russia, she comes upon secrets that have been hidden from the world...and memories that AI-controlled thought police have forced her to hide from herself. Because in a world where no thought or desire is safe, the price of survival is betrayal - of your lover, your ideals, and yourself.

This new Tor Essentials edition of The Fortunate Fall includes a new introduction by Jo Walton, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.

[salty-horse]

Envy of Angels (A Sin du Jour Affair #1) by Matt Wallace is $0.5 in the US (Amazon only, "digital list price" discount, so not eligible for Kobo price-matching)

In New York, eating out can be hell.
Everyone loves a well-catered event, and the supernatural community is no different, but where do demons go to satisfy their culinary cravings?
Welcome to Sin du Jour - where devils on horseback are the clients, not the dish.

PRAISE FOR ENVY OF ANGELS:
"Matt Wallace tells a raucous, riotous tale of culinary madness - a jaw-dropping horror-fantasy restaurateur Thunderdome that makes the 'monkey brain' scene in Temple of Doom look like something you'd see on Nickelodeon. It's like I dropped a heroic dose of acid and turned on the Food Network for eight hours. It's funny and demented and sticks in you like a pinbone. Matt Wallace writes like someone just jammed a needle full of adrenaline in his heart - and then, in yours. From this point forward, I'll read anything this guy writes." — Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirds and Zer0es

"No one makes me think, 'Dammit, I should have thought of that!' like Matt Wallace. The Sin du Jour series is something I read with equal amounts of envy and delight." — Mur Lafferty, Campbell Award winning author of The Shambling Guide to New York City
" Envy of Angels is one of the most original urban fantasies I've read in a damn long time. Angels, demons and the New York restaurant scene. It doesn't get any weirder than this. Matt Wallace is an author to watch." — Stephen Blackmoore, author of Dead Things and Broken Souls

" Envy of Angels is exactly the breath of fresh air I didn't know I needed: darkly funny, sweepingly inventive, and just plain fun to read. Every time I thought I got the hang of this book, the next turn took me someplace even more breathtakingly weird and wonderful. Buy it. DO IT NOW. It's the only way we can force him to write a dozen more of these!" — Andrea Phillips, author of Revision

[salty-horse]

Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
A classic realistic look at mind-reading. First time for this low price.

In 1972, Robert Silverberg, even then an acknowledged leader in the science fiction field, published a book that was immediately hailed as a masterpiece.
More than three decades later, Dying Inside has stood the test of time and has been recognized as one of the finest novels the field has ever produced. Never wasting a word, Silverberg persuasively shows us what it would be like to read minds, painting an unforgettable portrait of a man shaped by that unique power; a power he is now inexorably losing.
Acclaimed upon first publication by SF critics and mainstream reviewers alike, Dying Inside is overdue for reintroduction to today's SF audience. This is a novel for everyone who appreciates deeply affecting characterization, imaginative power, and the irreplaceable perspective unique to speculative fiction of the highest order.

[salty-horse]

The Hike by Drew Magary is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

**“The Hike just works. It’s like early, good Chuck Palahniuk. . . . Magary underhands a twist in at the end that hits you like a sharp jab at the bell. . . . It’s just that good.” —NPR.org

“A page-turner. . . . Inventive, funny. . . . Quietly profound and touching.”—BoingBoing

From the author of The Night the Lights Went Out and The Postmortal, a fantasy saga unlike any you’ve read before, weaving elements of folk tales and video games into a riveting, unforgettable adventure of what a man will endure to return to his family

When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.

On a quest of epic, life-or-death proportions, Ben finds help comes in some of the most unexpected forms, including a profane crustacean and a variety of magical objects, tools, and potions. Desperate to return to his family, Ben is determined to track down the “Producer,” the creator of the world in which he is being held hostage and the only one who can free him from the path.

At once bitingly funny and emotionally absorbing, Magary’s novel is a remarkably unique addition to the contemporary fantasy genre, one that draws as easily from the world of classic folk tales as it does from video games. In The Hike, Magary takes readers on a daring odyssey away from our day-to-day grind and transports them into an enthralling world propelled by heart, imagination, and survival.