FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Cactus Chef]

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami is $1.99 on Kobo US and Amazon US:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A REAL SIMPLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

***"*Haruki Murakami invented 21st-century fiction." —The New York Times • "More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world." —San Francisco Chronicle • "Murakami is masterful." —Los Angeles Times

When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he is heartbroken – and determined to find the imaginary town where he suspects she has taken up residence. Thus begins a lifelong search that takes the man into middle age, to a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own, and on a journey between the real world and this otherworld: a shadowless city where unicorns roam and willow trees grow.

There he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together and, as the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he must decide what he is willing to lose.

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times– and singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.

"Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change/movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about?” —Haruki Murakami, from the afterword

Been waiting since this came out for it to drop to $5 or below. So of course the day after I decide it's not going to anytime soon and start reading 1Q84 literally last night, the price then drops...

[Theodore02]

Originally Posted by Theodore02

Hello Everyone, Laura Kirwan’s UF series is a refreshing take with a 50+ protagonist, offering a unique perspective in the genre. The first book is currently free, and the second and third are on sale for just $0.99 on Kindle. I’ve read and enjoyed the first two installments, and highly recommend grabbing this deal.

some years ago I loved,nowadays i dont read them.

[salty-horse]

The Undefeated by Una McCormack is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A no-holds-barred heroine is on the front lines of an intergalactic war in this space opera adventure novella by a New York Times–bestselling author.
She was a warrior of words.
As a journalist she exposed corruption across the Interstellar Commonwealth, shifting public opinion and destroying careers in the process.
Long-since retired, she travels back to the planet of her childhood, partly through a sense of nostalgia, partly to avoid running from humanity's newest—and self-created—enemy, the jenjer.
Because the enemy is coming, and nothing can stand in its way.

[salty-horse]

Dark Eden (Dark Eden) by Chris Beckett is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

THE WINNER OF THE 2013 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD

You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the Forest's lantern trees. Beyond the forest lie mountains so forbidding that no one has ever crossed them. The Oldest recount legends of a time when men and women made boats that could travel between worlds. One day, they will come back for you.

You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, in the warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of an alien, sunless world.

You are John Redlantern. You will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. You will be the first to kill another, the first to venture into the Dark and the first to discover the truth about Eden.

[salty-horse]

Cross-posted to Horror.
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm is £2 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)
These stories were originally posted to the SCP Wiki, and later self-published by the author. This new traditionally-published edition has been professionally edited, and all mentions of SCP removed. More about the changes.

An antimeme is an entity with self-censoring properties. Some are benign; but others, less so…

These entities can feed on your most cherished memories, the things that make you you – and you’ll never even know anything changed.

And they aren’t just feeding on us. They’re invading.

But how do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?

WELCOME TO THE ANTIMEMETICS DIVISION

NO, THIS IS NOT YOUR FIRST DAY

[salty-horse]

The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien is $4 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door.

Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China.

Memory, political revolution, generational change, and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina’s illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea: how we come to believe what we believe, and how every person is an irreplaceable, unique vessel of history. Through the guidance of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family’s tragic past.

As Lina confronts her father’s troubling admissions, she begins to reconceptualize the world around her, gaining a deeper understanding of how our individual futures are shaped by our political circumstances, and she relies on the collective joy of art and intellectual endeavors to carry her through difficulty. A novel that voyages between centuries, generations, and ideas, The Book of Records is an indelible testament to the migratory nature of humanity and our ceaseless search for a home—in the physical world, in cyberspace, in history, and in the imagination—in the wake of catastrophe.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien is $4 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Got it.

Thank you!

[salty-horse]

Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume Two (Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction #2) by Stephen Kotowych is £3 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)
Contents

The complete (so far) Saint of Steel series (Paladin's ...) by T. Kingfisher is £3 each in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

[salty-horse]

Disquiet Gods (Sun Eater #6) by Christopher Ruocchio is £2 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi is £3 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)
Rajaniemi's latest novel.

Before the bio-terror attack, Darkome was a place where DIY genetics enthusiasts could communicate in peace. After the attack, they were pushed deep underground by a brutal government response. The perpetrators were from Darkome, and the biohacker community was simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist.

Inara was a member of Darkome, but was forced to leave when she realised she had a rare form of cancer which could only be controlled by accepting an Aspis medchip. It could monitor her health and pump her full of a cocktail of drugs to combat her illness, but it went against everything Darkome stood for. She had to choose between her community and her life.

But now Inara's Aspis appears to have malfunctioned. She can edit her own DNA on the fly, make herself stronger, improve her eyesight, move faster. It could be the genetic breakthrough of the millenium, but only if she can figure out how it works. And manage to stay ahead of everyone else who wants this new secret, and don't care if she dies as a result. Chased by Aspis, Darkome and the government, her new skills may be the only way Inara has to survive... but they may cost her everything, including her humanity...

Nine Goblins by T Kingfisher is $4 in the US (Kobo is on sale. Amazon is not.)
This is getting a trad pub now, and Amazon has an ebook with Tordotcom branding, while Kobo is still the self-published edition.

Nessilka had been in any number of battles, and she couldn't remember the first ten minutes of any of them.

She had a theory that if you could remember the first ten minutes, you'd never, ever charge at anybody again, so parts of your brain blotted them out.

The problem was that she couldn't imagine why her brain would want her to continue charging at people, and this then led her to the theory that parts of her brain worked for the Goblin High Command, which she didn't like at all.

Regardless, it was ten minutes into the battle, and she couldn't remember what had just happened. There'd been a lot of yelling. Everyone yelled. No matter what species you were, elf, human, goblin, orc, random bystander, you yelled. There had been a lot of hitting things. Her shield was bent in four or five places, and her arms ached dreadfully.

Algol went by at high speed, shield raised, with Mishkin and Mushkin practically stepping on his heels. Mishkin had gotten a sword from somewhere, and was waving it dangerously close to Algol's kidneys.
She had no idea how the battle was going, but she didn't seem to be dead, so from her perspective, everything was really going rather well.
Unfortunately, Sergeant Nessilka had just seen a problem.

The problem stood on a little rise, just enough to lift him out of the battle proper. He looked human, and he wasn't wearing armor, or carrying any weapons.

He was doing something with his hands, and there was a blueness in the air around him—not really a blue light, per se, but the world around him was turning shades of blue, like something behind a pane of cobalt glass. That wasn't right. That was magic, that was.

A bolt of blueness streaked out from his open mouth, and hit a knot of goblins, who fell down.

Aw, hell, Nessilka thought. It's a wizard...

The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2) by Katherine Rundell is £2 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

When Christopher Forrester is unexpectedly woken by a miniature dragon chewing on his face, his heart leaps for joy. For months he's dreamed of returning to the Archipelago – the secret islands where all the creatures of myth still live. But he did not know it would involve a rescue mission on the back of a sphinx, or a plan to enter a dragon's lair. Nor did he imagine it would involve a girl with a flock of birds at her side, a new-hatched chick in her pocket and a ravenous hunger for justice...

[salty-horse]

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi flies you to the moon with his most fantastic tale to date: When the Moon Hits Your Eye

The moon has turned into cheese.

Now humanity has to deal with it.

For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now... something absolutely impossible.

Astronauts and billionaires, comedians and bank executives, professors and presidents, teenagers and terminal patients at the end of their lives -- over the length of an entire lunar cycle, each get their moment in the moonlight. To panic, to plan, to wonder and to pray, to laugh and to grieve. All in a kaleidoscopic novel that goes all the places you’d expect, and then to so many places you wouldn’t.

It’s a wild moonage daydream. Ride this rocket.

[salty-horse]

All current 6 novels in the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown are £1 each in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

All current 7 novels in the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown are £1 each in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

I only see ony 6 ebooks and I want that 7th one, as well.

There's an omnibus, but that's just the first three novels together. Plus, the price is about 25 pounds - so you couldn't have meant that one.

Do you know if they made that 7th volume unavailable?

I would like to purchase all 7. Plus, I'm a fan of uniform covers.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Do you know if they made that 7th volume unavailable?

I would like to purchase all 7. Plus, I'm a fan of uniform covers.

I got confused and meant 6. The 7th is not out yet.
About uniform covers, you can always change the cover yourself

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

I got confused and meant 6. The 7th is not out yet.
About uniform covers, you can always change the cover yourself

Of course: I've been changing covers for over 15 years.

But when they're that cheap, I just like to purchase them all at once (in a kind of bundle purchase) and be done with it.

[salty-horse]

Year's Best SF 14 (2008) edited by David H. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer is $1 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
Contents

A few others in the series are on sale for $1 or $2.