Psyche and Eros

December 1, 2022

Set in an alternate 1840s New England, To Shape a Dragon's Breath features Indigenous teenager Anequs, honored by her people when she bonds with a newly hatched dragon but challenged by the repressive rules at her dragon school, run by Anglish conquerors; debuter Blackgoose is an enrolled member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe. Disappointed in love and life, Harlow Estrada returns home to The Enchanted Hacienda, where the women in her family purvey a gift she lacks, creating magic from flowers--but who knows what kind of magic might come her way as she runs the house in their absence; an adult debut from best-selling YA/Middle School author Cervantes. In The Water Outlaws, Hugo Award winner Huang draws on the Chinese classic Water Margin to tell the story of Lin Chong, who is driven from her job training the emperor's soldiers and taken in by the Bandits of Liangshan--thieves and murderers who seek justice for the empire's downtrodden (30,000-copy first printing). Living in an isolated apartment outside London five years after a microplastic storm killed most of Earth's population, Katie and son Harry--born after the storm--learn they are Not Alone in ecologist Jackson's debut; a stranger barges in, unsettling their lives but inspiring Katie to seek out her fianc�. In British Fantasy winner/Bram Stoker finalist Khaw's The Salt Grows Heavy, a mermaid murders her husband, destroys his kingdom, and runs off with a mysterious doctor to the taiga, where they discover a village full of creepy children whose blood sport jeopardizes their visitors (125,000-copy first printing). It is foretold that Psyche will vanquish a monster that makes even the gods quake, and she dutifully trains for battle, but in debuter McNamara's retelling of the Psyche and Eros myth, her victim is the god of love himself, pricked by his own arrow (100,000-copy first printing). In the mega-best-selling Paolini's Fractal Noise, a huge pit clearly made by someone or something is spotted by the crew of the Adamura on the supposedly uninhabited planet of Talos, and a team is dispatched to investigate (400,000-copy first printing). Seeking a cure for her desperately ill mother, Nat Drozdova travels to a snow-shrouded Manhattan skyscraper, where she encounters a winter goddess who sends her on a dangerous mission in the New York Times best-selling Saintcrow's Russian fantasy-inspired Spring's Arcana (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In this new fantasy from Wells, winner of Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex honors for her New York Times best-selling "Murderbot Diaries" series, Witch King Kai-Enna has been confined to a complex water trap after being murdered and is struggling to understand why he was imprisoned and why the Rising World Coalition is getting stronger by the day (200,000-copy first printing).

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April 1, 2023
Debut author McNamara revitalizes the classic myth with versatile prose and skillful world building, enmeshing her main characters' lives with those of other Greek tales and in turn giving readers access to a broad swath of rich mythology. At her birth, it is prophesied that Psyche, a princess of Mycenae, will become a hero. While it is an uncommon fate for a woman, Psyche's parents trust the oracle and give her the training a hero deserves, allowing Psyche to explore a world full of monsters, magic, and divine meddling. When Psyche's actions call a god's curse down upon her, Eros, a primordial being and immortal Titan disinterested in the politics of the gods and the petty squabbles of humanity, is the one who is tasked to deliver it, setting in motion their well-known tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. What sets this retelling apart and will no doubt endear it to readers is McNamara's unparalleled imagination, which folds a great many established myths into one cohesive narrative. The result is a multifaceted story full of rich nuance that will definitely require several rereads to fully capture.

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March 6, 2023
McNamara’s attractively told debut reimagines the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche as a romance between two unpleasant people. Difficult bits of Apuleius’s original telling in The Golden Ass have been smoothed to a simpler reflection of modern mores. Psyche is not a younger sister but an only child, raised like a boy to be a hero. Stripped of sibling rivalries, feminine constraints, and a belief in her powerlessness before the gods, this Psyche, though not without her charm, is unimaginative, single-minded, domineering, and arrogantly youthful. She doesn’t need to learn about agency and capability—she needs to get past self-absorption. Meanwhile, immortal Eros is bored and yearns for impossible death. He’s explicit that his arrows of desire only work “if I infused them with my will,” yet an accidental scratch is enough to infect him with cursed lovesickness for Psyche. It also turns him into one of the tropiest romantic types: the guy who’s too afraid to communicate. This pairing results in an eminently readable love story that fails to be memorable because it refuses to engage with the tough stuff. Agents: Maria Whelan and Catherine Drayton, InkWell Management.