Flood of Fire, the last in Amitav Ghosh’s wonderful Ibis trilogy, appears in August, and then I can at last set about getting matching copies of all three. Sea of Poppies was one of my favorite books of its year, and while River of Smoke was not what I expected the second book in the trilogy to be, it was still a really excellent read. I’ve revised my expectations that the trilogy will be classically trilogyish, and I think it will maximize my enjoyment of Flood of Fire.

I choose to be optimistic about Re Jane, by Patricia Park, a modern-day retelling of Jane Eyre that comes out in May. I’m choosing optimism because so far there are no good retellings of Jane Eyre, and that situation needs to end. Let’s see if Patricia Park can pull it off. The whole world’s counting on you, Patricia Park! No pressure!

If you liked Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life but felt it would have been improved by the addition of more Teddy, you are in glorious good luck. A God in Ruins, due out in May of next year, will be a companion story to Life after Life, starring Teddy Todd. Huzzah! As far as I can tell, nobody has said whether or not this book will take place in a world where Ursula shot Hitler (it’s not a spoiler, she does it on the first page).

As I may have mentioned one or two times, Daryl Gregory is my favorite author discovery of 2014. Harrison Squared tells the backstory of the protagonist of We Are All Completely Fine, which is to say, the story of a boy hero in a world of monsters. This one’s out in March from Tor.

When I was a kid, I had this wonderful book about Esther (as in the Book of) called Behold Your Queen. I therefore offer no apologies for being childishly excited about Game of Queens, by India Edghill, a novel about Vashti and Esther that’s slated to be released in August. Do I expect it to be awesome? Like, no. Not really. I expect it to be overwrought and to use the word “sex” as a euphemism for genitals, as many overwrought stories do. But if it did happen to turn out to be good, I would be elated.

By contrast, I have only the highest hopes for The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, a comic by Sydney Padua in which Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage fight crime together. Apparently this has been a webcomic for ages, a fact that demonstrates a parlous lack of internet awareness by me. Anyway, in April I’ll be able to read the whole thing for myself.

N. K. Jemisin, master worldbuilder and ferocious advocate for diversity in publishing, has a new book out in August from Orbit, called The Fifth Season. I need to do an NK Jemisin binge in early 2015. She has got several books out that I haven’t read yet, because I’ve been saving them slash I have to be really in the mood before I’ll read high fantasy. But her worldbuilding is just top-notch. Gotta get on that.

The Just City and The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton, are both coming out in 2015 (one in January, one in June), which feels like an embarrassment of riches. The premise of the world in which these two books are set is almost too bonkers to explain here, but suffice it to say that they feature Greek gods living among humans in an experimentally utopian city. Sounds great. Sounds like exactly what I never knew I was missing in my life.

I’m not mentioning the fourth Raven Cycle book because in my heart of hearts, I think it’s going to get kicked back to 2016. Likewise I am not mentioning Zachary Mason’s follow-up to the matchless The Lost Books of the Odyssey, because in my heart of hearts, I think it’s going to be 2017 at the earliest. And the people on Goodreads who put 2015 as an expected publication date for Robin McKinley’s Ebon are living on a prayer.

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Connie Willis writes books about Oxford historians who practice their historianship by going time traveling in their period of interest. I read The Doomsday Book a while ago, and did not care for it because I was bored by the characters, and I hate the Black Death, which is the protagonist historian’s period of interest. Yawn. I regretted not liking it better, because the premise felt like gold. Time-traveling and academics at Oxford? Gold.

Blackout has been garnering rave reviews all over the place, with warnings about the cliffhangery ending that it ends on, and I am as fond of the Blitz as the next person (okay, maybe a little more). I thought if I was ever going to be friends with Connie Willis’s time traveling historians, it would be because of Blackout (To Say Nothing of the Dog could have been great but Jerome K. Jerome and I are now enemies so I feared that would mess things up for me). And indeed, Blackout was a corrective emotional experience for me and my girl Connie. (Mostly.)

There are three main characters in Blackout: Michael, who is studying heroes in several different theaters of the war, accidentally winds up on a boat to Dunkirk, a crucial war divergence point that he’s not supposed to come anywhere near; Polly, who is meant to be a shop girl during the London Blitz but not for too long because she has to be gone by VE-Day (or else she will die because she’s already been to VE-Day); and Eileen (Merope really but she’s going by Eileen), who is studying children’s evacuations and is stuck with two truly dreadful London brats. They all, as it goes in time travel novels, get stuck there. The novel goes around between the three of them.

I am of two minds here. Primary Mind loved the administrative mix-ups in Oxford and couldn’t wait for the sequel so it could see more of adorable, love-struck Colin. Primary Mind, no matter how much it tries to convince itself that it has become cynical and cannot be affected by the magnificence of Blitzed London, always discovers in the event (and Blackout was no exception) that Blitzed London is magnificent enough to break through the most determined of cynicism. Primary Mind liked the plot and felt sad, when the book ended, that it didn’t have the sequel sitting right next to it. Primary Mind wanted every single page to be full of Sir Godfrey.

But Secondary Mind had some complaints. Secondary Mind didn’t like all the skipping around between characters who were always just missing each other and never connecting, and it made it hard to focus on worrying about any single set of characters. Secondary Mind got frustrated with all the times the contemps (contemporary citizens) would say “I wonder if we’ll all live through this night!” and the historian characters would think, You will. But sixteen people on Oxford Street won’t. Their bodies will be found tomorrow all shredded up, and Hitler will compose another verse in his crude parody of “Rule Britannia.” Secondary Mind was like, YES. We GET IT. You know the future and the contemps DO NOT. Secondary Mind couldn’t help thinking the book could have been better.

(Tertiary Mind meekly pointed out that Secondary Mind had cranky nitpicks about Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin too, a book about which Primary and Secondary Mind were in similar disagreement, and Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin now has an only slightly guilty place on the regular rereading circuit.)

And that’s how it all went down. My critical faculties and my heart were at war, but my heart is winning out insofar as I cannot wait to read All Clear, and probably To Say Nothing of the Dog as well. Maybe a couple of times. Maybe enough times that Connie Willis will be one of my favorite rereadable authors someday. You never know.

For more, I refer you to the Book Blogs Search Engine. Beware you do not accidentally click on a review that tells you what happens in All Clear. I know the big thing but you may not want to. Cause yeah. There’s a big thing. Library, come on! Send my book! I want it more than those other fools ahead of me in the hold line!

P.S. Speaking of mixed minds, I have watched this commercial six times this evening (twice by rewinding my television, and four times after finding it on YouTube). It infuriates me because I am still mad at BP and will never not be mad at BP; it causes me to hunger for shrimp etouffee even though I am full from eating the awesome pesto-spinach-ricotta-mozzarella stuffed shells I made myself for dinner; but mainly it makes me miss home. Dudes up here do not talk like that.

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