Recently I had the distinct pleasure of sitting in a set of book announcements from Tor, from September 2013 up through April of 2014. By the editors’ own admissions, this selection is incomplete (especially toward the end of that window) because many books that far out do not yet have cover art, and therefore were not in the powerpoint.
The thirty one books they announced surprised me: there is a fair bit of variety, but not exactly the type I would expect. The high fantasy titles which made Tor have definitely taken a back seat.
Urban Fantasy and its cousin genre Modern Fantasy dominate the list, holding a whopping seven slots counted together. To Dance with the Devil by Cat Adams caught my ear purely because of the protagonist. She’s part human, part vampire, part siren. That was a killer query letter, I’m sure, but if it means the book is an even mix of boyfriend trouble, blood sucking, and singing, most readers will spend two thirds of the book waiting to read what they’re there for. This concept requires great performance more than most high concept stories.
Science Fiction was the next best thing with five titles. I was not surprised to see SF there, but the second biggest genre is a fair bit more than I was expecting. Vicious (Victoria Schwab) got my attention because it’s a superhero story, but by and large SF was the usual suspects with a dystopia, a novella compilation, and some near-future stories.
Steampunk, High Fantasy, Alternate History, Horror, and Movie or TV tie-ins all tied at more or less two apiece, although some titles touch on more than one genre and there are some I can’t categorize without knowing more. These sections had the most variety. The Five by Robert McCammon sounds like great horror, and there’s UFO Hunters (William Birnes) which is niche marketing at its best. Then there are the ones I have no idea what to make of. Something More than Night, by Ian Tregillis is supposed to be a “noir meta-urban fantasy.” I haven’t the foggiest notion what this means.
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