The Lady of the Lake (Witcher Series #5) by Andrzej Sapkowski, translated by David French (Orbit, March 14)
“After walking through the portal in the Tower of Swallows while narrowly escaping death, Ciri finds herself in a completely different world… an Elven world. She is trapped with no way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world. But this is Ciri, the child of prophecy, and she will not be defeated. She knows she must escape to finally rejoin the Witcher, Geralt, and his companions – and also to try to conquer her worst nightmare. Leo Bonhart, the man who chased, wounded and tortured Ciri, is still on her trail. And the world is still at war.”
Orbital Cloud by Taiyo Fujii, translated by Timothy Silver (Haikasoru, March 21)
“The global war on terror has a new front—the very edge of outer space. In the year 2020, Kazumi Kimura, proprietor of shooting star forecast website Meteor News, notices some orbiting space debris moving suspiciously. Rumors spread online that the debris is actually an orbital weapon targeting the International Space Station. Halfway across the world, at NORAD, Staff Sergeant Darryl Freeman begins his investigation of the debris. At the same time, billionaire entrepreneur Ronnie Smark and his journalist daughter prepare to check into an orbital hotel as part of a stunt promoting private space tourism. Then Kazumi receives highly sensitive information from a source claiming to be an Iranian scientist. And so begins an unprecedented international battle against space-based terror that will soon involve the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NORAD, and the CIA.”
Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel, translated by Rupert Copeland Cunningham (New Directions, March 28)
“The wealthy scientist Martial Canterel guides a group of visitors through his expansive estate, Locus Solus, where he displays his various deranged inventions, each more spectacular than the last. First, he introduces a machine propelled by the weather, which constructs a mosaic out of varying hues of human teeth, then shows a hairless cat charged with a powerful electric battery, and next a bizarre theater in which corpses are reanimated with a special serum to enact the most important movements of their past lives. Wondrously imaginativeand narrated with Roussel’s deadpan wit, Locus Solus is unlike anything else ever written.”
Kzradock the Onion Man and the Spring-Fresh Methuselah: From the Notes of Dr. Renard de Montpensier by Louis Levy, translated by W. C. Bamberger (Wakefield Press, March 28)
“Originally published in Danish in 1910, Kzradock the Onion Man and the Spring-Fresh Methuselah is a fevered pulp novel that reads like nothing else of its time: an anomaly within the tradition of the Danish novel, and one that makes for a startlingly modern read to this day. Combining elements of the serial film, detective story, and gothic horror novel, Kzradock is a surreal foray into psychoanalytic mysticism. Opening in a Parisian insane asylum where Dr. Renard de Montpensier is conducting hypnotic séances with the titular Onion Man, the novel escalates quickly with the introduction of battling detectives, violent murders, and a puma in a hallucinating movie theater before shifting to the chalk cliffs of Brighton. It is there that the narrator must confront a ghost child, a scalped detective, a schizophrenic skeleton, a deaf-mute dog, and a manipulative tapeworm in order to properly confront his own sanity and learn the spiritual lesson of the human onion.”
“Goodnight, Melancholy”
by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld Magazine)
