Happy Publication Day to Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Binding Thorns!

It’s publication day, and we’re fantastically excited to be bringing you the next tale of fallen angels in Paris from Aliette de Bodard! Aliette is one of the most exciting new voices writing today and is the winner of Writers of the Future, two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a BSFA Award.

The House of Binding Thorns by Aliette de Bodard

The multi-award-winning author of The House of Shattered Wings continues her Dominion of the Fallen saga as Paris endures the aftermath of a devastating arcane war . . .

As the city rebuilds from the onslaught of sorcery that nearly destroyed it, the great Houses of Paris, ruled by fallen angels, still contest one another for control over the capital.

House Silverspires was once the most powerful, but just as it sought to rise again, an ancient evil brought it low. Phillippe, an immortal who escaped the carnage, has a singular goal – to resurrect someone he lost. But the cost of such magic might be more than he can bear.

In House Hawthorn, Madeleine the alchemist has had her addiction to angel essence savagely broken. Struggling to live on, she is forced on a perilous diplomatic mission to the underwater dragon kingdom – and finds herself in the midst of intrigues that have already caused one previous emissary to mysteriously disappear . . .

As the Houses seek a peace more devastating than war, those caught between new fears and old hatreds must find strength – or fall prey to a magic that seeks to bind all to its will.

Praise for Aliette de Bodard:

‘An intriguing mystery, elegantly written . . . with carefully crafted characters both with layers and depth, De Bodard reflects the best and worst of human nature in her novel’ Guardian

‘One of the most influential voice in fantasy today’ Starburst

‘The devastated Paris of Aliette de Bodard’s novel is especially haunting. This is partly because de Bodard, a Nebula Award-winning French-Vietnamese writer, lives in Paris and can convey a visceral sense of immediacy to a ruined Notre Dame or the remains of the grand department stores, and partly it’s because of the sheer lyricism of her prose…A series of mysterious deaths turns the novel into a surprising but compelling murder mystery, which plays out according to the supernatural terms de Bodard has laid out so evocatively’ Chicago Tribune

‘De Bodard aptly mixes moral conflicts and the desperate need to survive in a fantastical spy thriller that reads like a hybrid of le Carré and Milton, all tinged with the melancholy of golden ages lost’ Publishers Weekly

‘In the end, de Bodard manages to weave together the backstories and fates of the various characters…into a novel that is both haunting and original, its sense of loss almost palpable, and it setting not quite like anything else in modern fantasy’ Locus

‘Aliette de Bodard presents a gritty, otherworldly Paris in her fast-paced, fantastical thriller’ Washington Post

The House of Binding Thorns is available now in trade paperback, ebook and audiobook.