Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2024.
There are so many to choose from — but since I already featured a bunch in my winter TBR post, I’ll focus on a different set of books this week.
Here are (just some of) the books I can’t wait to read in 2024!
Listed in order of release date:
The Women by Kristin Hannah (2/6/2024)
To Woo & To Wed by Martha Waters (2/6/2024)
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden (2/14/2024)
The Prisoner’s Throne by Holly Black (3/5/2024)
Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle (3/5/2024)
Studies at the School by the Sea by Jenny Colgan (3/26/2024)
The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian (3/26/2024)
The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto (3/26/2024)
The Evolution of Annabel Craig by Lisa Grunwald (4/16/2024)
Funny Story by Emily Henry (4/23/2024)
What upcoming new releases are you most excited for? If you wrote a TTT post, please share your link!
Title: The Tusks of Extinction Author: Ray Nayler Publisher: Tor Books Publication date: January 16, 2024 Length: 192 pages Genre: Science fiction Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.
Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out, again.
The late Dr. Damira Khismatullina, the world’s foremost expert in elephant behavior, is called in to help. While she was murdered a year ago, her digitized consciousness is uploaded into the brain of a mammoth.
Can she help the magnificent creatures fend off poachers long enough for their species to take hold?
And will she ever discover the real reason they were brought back?
A tense eco-thriller from a new master of the genre.
The synopsis kind of says it all, yet doesn’t do justice to the weirdness and wonder of The Tusks of Extinction.
The main plot points are as described: A scientist who devoted herself to studying elephants, and lost her life in the doomed fight against poachers, is returned one hundred years after her murder to a new life thanks to the digital brain mapping made before her death.
Damira’s driving passion was to save the elephants — a passion that failed. Elephants are now extinct in the wild, with only a few specimens still living on in captivity. But a team of scientists has reconstructed mammoths through the wonders of genetic technology, and new herds wander the Siberian steppes. The problem, though, is that the mammoths were gestated and raised by captive elephants. They have no social structures with species memory, and lack the skills needed to survive and thrive in the wild.
Damira’s conciousness, transferred into the brain of a mammoth matriarch, has the ability to change all that. She understands elephant dynamics better than anyone, living or dead. With Damira leading the herd, the mammoths finally have a chance to reclaim their place in the world, and perhaps reclaim space for other resurrected species as well. But poachers are still as ruthless as ever, and the black market value of mammoth tusks can make people unimaginably wealthy. It may not be enough for Damira to simply teach the mammoths the ways of elephants — she may also have to teach them to fight back.
Giants may walk the earth again, but for how long? The problem you are trying to solve — how to bring animals back from extinction — it’s the wrong problem. Extinction has only one cause, and that cause is older, even, than the wheel. That cause is human greed.
As I said, this is a weird concept and a weird story, and yet, I really loved it. We learn about Damira through flashbacks and scenes of her present life, and the author presents mammoth thought processes in a fascinating way. At the same time, we follow poachers and hunters with varying motivations, learn about what their purposes are, and follow them to their fates.
Power was the ability to destroy without needing to. To do it not out of necessity, but as an act of pure excess. To do something to someone else simply because you could. And this was perhaps the greatest power of all: to kill something that no one else could kill.
To have a miracle resurrected — and then destroy it.
The writing is beautiful, with harsh truths about humanity’s future and the future of life on the planet. Through Damira, we’re shown reflections on the role of our pasts and how they shape our present. Damira’s thoughts flow across time, weaving together the disparate threads of her life to see the patterns that brought her to her new existence:
Whoever can remember is real. A being that remembers is alive, and authentic. I am here. That is enough.
The Tusks of Extinction is sad and awe-inspiring and thought-provoking. It’s definitely unlike anything else I’ve read. I’m looking forward to reading this author’s debut novel. The Mountain in the Sea, with my book group later this year.
Just shared today! It’s the cover reveal for the next Mercy Thompson book by Patricia Briggs! Winter Lost will be released in June 2024. Here’s the new (gorgeous) cover:
The last Mercy book was released in 2022, so it’s thrilling to see a cover and confirmed date.
Here’s the blurb for the plot:
Mercy Thompson, car mechanic and shapeshifter, must stop a disaster of world-shattering proportions in this exhilarating entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
In the supernatural realms, there are creatures who belong to winter. I am not one of them. But like the coyote I can become at will, I am adaptable.
My name is Mercy Thompson Hauptman, and my mate, Adam, is the werewolf who leads the Columbia Basin Pack, the pack charged with keeping the people who live and work in the Tri-Cities of Washington State safe. It’s a hard job, and it doesn’t leave much room for side quests. Which is why when I needed to travel to Montana to help my brother, I intended to go by myself.
But I’m not alone anymore.
Together, Adam and I find ourselves trapped with strangers in a lodge in the heart of the wilderness, in the teeth of a storm of legendary power, only to discover my brother’s issues are a tiny part of a problem much bigger than we could have imagined. Arcane and ancient magics are at work that could, unless we are very careful, bring about the end of the world. . . .
Title: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known Series: Wayward Children, #9 Author: Seanan McGuire Publisher: Tor Publication date: January 9, 2024 Length: 160 pages Genre: Fantasy Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
Dinosaurs and portals, and a girl who can find both in the latest book in the Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning series.
Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children.
When her fellow students realize that Antsy’s talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, she’s forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.
Along the way, temptations are dangled, decisions are reinforced, and a departure to a world populated by dinosaurs brings untold dangers and one or two other surprises!
A story that reminds us that finding what you want doesn’t always mean finding what you need.
What can you say about the 9th book in a series? Other than that’s it’s terrific, of course! The book opens with a paragraph that beautifully sums up the overarching plot of the series:
Children of the doors know about being mislaid. They are well-acquainted with stepping through an opening or following a passage that should lead from here to there, and finding themselves someplace entirely else, someplace entirely new. It is possibly their only truly unifying experience, the one thing they have so completely in common that there’s no need to even question it: once upon a time, they took an impossible step, opened an impossible portal, and ended up in a terribly, horribly possible place.
As the newest Wayward Children book, Mislaid in Parts Half-Known keeps the overarching storylines of the series moving forward while introducing some new twists, rules, and situations for the characters to deal with. Some of the installments in the series have more of a stand-alone feel, although they’re all connected, but this is not one of those. Mislaid is absolutely a sequel, mainly in regard to book #8 and its main character Antsy, but it also continues the stories of several other characters, and it’s helpful (I’d even say critical) to be familiar with them.
The previous book, Lost in the Moment and Found, focused on a young girl named Antsy, who runs away from a dangerous situation in her home and finds herself in the world of a store that’s actually a nexus point between worlds. Antsy’s new home in the store is mostly delightful — she’s safe, after all, and has the opportunity to visit countless new worlds through the portal doors that appear and disappear. But, as she discovers by the end of the book, there’s a price to be paid, and the book ends with Antsy returning, quite changed, to her home world and finding her way to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.
In Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, Antsy is settling in at the school, but doesn’t actually quite fit. She’s actually much younger than the other students, and their portal worlds are all so different that she can’t seem to connect with many of them. When a particularly dangerous student threatens Antsy’s safety, she and a handful of others escape through another door and begin a new quest.
Readers of the prior books in the series will be familiar with Antsy’s companions — Sumi, Kade, Christopher, Cora and a few newer faces too. As they flee, they’re also searching for possibilities. Most of the students yearn to return “home” — that is, to their lost worlds beyond the doors — and Antsy has the unique ability to find any door. So if they can actually go home, should they?
There are some interesting discussions about what it means to be sure about a choice, and how they’ll know when or if they’re ready, as well as conversations about whether someone truly still belongs in the place they consider home. These introspective bits are lovely, as the various characters get a chance to shine and express themselves, even in the midst of fleeing from dangerous goblins and dinosaurs.
Yes, dinosaurs. The cover doesn’t lie! The group does visit a primeval world populated by dinosaurs, and it’s amazing. I’m not going into further detail — read it and find out!
The challenge I had with this book, as hinted at earlier, is keeping track of the characters. Yes, I’ve read the entire series so far, but since they’re released at a rate of one per year, it’s been a few years since I’ve thought about some of these characters. Thank goodness there are wikis out there! I definitely had to go look up some backstories. At some point, rereading the whole series from the beginning might be a good idea!
If you’ve been curious about the Wayward Children series, I would recommend against starting with this book. It won’t make any sense! It’s such a great series, though, that I would strongly recommend picking up a copy of Every Heart a Doorway — I bet you’ll want to keep going!
I really enjoyed Mislaid in Parts Half-Known. It ends with certain characters spinning off into new directions, and leaves much still to be discovered in the wider world of the school. I can’t wait to find out where Wayward Children goes next.
Bookshelf Fantasies 