Salvation's Reach by Dan Abnett

The Tanith First and Only, the Ghosts, have been newly-reinforced by fresh troops from Belladon and Verghast and are preparing for their most audacious operation yet. Using intelligence gained at great cost from a Chaos prisoner, the Imperium has located Salvation Reach, a top-secret research facility for the Sons of Sek, their most tenacious foe in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. The Ghosts and several powerful allies having to mount a spaceborne assault on the facility, a single surgical strike which may decide the fate of the entire Crusade.

Salvation's Reach is the thirteenth novel in the Gaunt's Ghosts series (and the second in the "Victory" arc) and marks a new phase in the massive conflict known as the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. The Ghosts aren't taking on an enemy head-on, but are instead manufacturing division in the enemy's ranks, trying to turn the Blood Pact and the Sons of Sek against one another so the Crusade can take advantage of the division and secure victory. It's a difficult, ugly mission and one that most Imperium forces wouldn't be able to handle, but for the clandestine Ghosts it's a task more suited to their talents.

The previous book in the series, Blood Pact, was good but atypical for the series, focusing more on a much smaller-scale conflict. Salvation's Reach is a return to mass engagements, but in a different context, with the Ghosts have to take part in hostile boarding action on a space habitat hidden deep inside an asteroid. Along the way they have to take part in an absolutely massive space battle (which will have Battlefleet Gothic fans cheering), deal with a shapeshifting Chaos assassin and negotiate - delicately - with the three Space Marines assigned to help them with the mission.

The action side of things is, as usual, well-handled with the requisite fighting, brave last stands and tactical discussions all being quite good. However, the heart and soul of the series has been Abnett's handling of the characters, from Ibram Gaunt all the way down to the lowliest, greenest new recruit in the Ghosts' ranks. The character arcs are uniformly handled superbly, with several slow-burning story arcs extending across the series coming to startling climaxes in this book (with several callbacks to Necropolis, still arguably the best book in the series and certainly so far the most important). Several beloved characters bite the dust, but more impressive is the way character relationships are developed. The best scene in the book is where a stoic and merciless Space Marine solves one trooper's long-standing medical problem in one swift action and restores his life and military career (previously thought over) to him, without ever breaking character or the tone of the series.

On the negative side of things, there's a few cliches I could have done without (such as hitherto unknown family members showing up unexpectedly), but otherwise Salvation's Reach (****½) is a gripping, excellently-executed science fantasy war novel with a brilliant line in characterisation. It is available now (alongside Blood Pact) in The Victory: Part 1 omnibus (UK, USA).

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

Lovelace, the former AI of the Wayfarer, has been given her own body and is now living undercover as a human on a remote settlement. She is adapting to life as a human by her friend Pepper, who as a former genetically-engineered slave knows a thing or two about having to overcome your past to achieve a greater future. But Pepper also owes someone a debt, one that will take her across the galaxy as a way of fulfilling it.

A Closed and Common Orbit is the second volume of the Wayfarers series, following on from The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. It's not a sequel as such, picking up only on a single dangling plot thread from that book and expanding on several very minor characters, and can be read as a stand-alone novel.

The book is about many things, including friendship, humanity and what it means to be a person. There are human, AI and alien perspectives on this thorny question and on the ethical dilemmas involved. The story unfolds in two distinct threads, a current-day story about Lovelace adjusting to life as her new cover personality, Sidra, and an extensive flashback to Pepper's life as a slave and how she escaped. The story therefore unrolls in two directions simultaneously, backwards and forwards, until the two meet up satisfyingly near the end.

Like The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, this is book is much more concerned with character, relationships and moral quandaries than it is in shooty action. There are a few tense moments and sequences, but the characters are rarely in physical jeopardy. This is a book much more concerned with the characters, their backstories and their motivations and how that impacts on important moral and ethical decisions they have to make going forwards. Both characters having two names - Lovelace/Sidra and Jane/Pepper - is also a nice clue that the characters are going on journeys as their identities shift to deal with the new worlds they find themselves in.

One advantage A Closed and Common Orbit has over its predecessor is that it is primarily and tightly focused on just two characters rather than half a dozen. This means that both characters get a huge amount of development and we become deeply immersed in their lives.

The weakness is that A Closed and Common Orbit is also very much a relaxed, chill novel without much in the way of drama. The decision to move away from space opera cliches like laser gun battles and explosions is laudable, but there are moments where you do feel like it could use a few more stakes. The few tense and dangerous moments that do occur take place in Pepper's flashback, where you already know she's going to be just fine.

A Closed and Common Orbit (****) confirms Becky Chambers' place as the natural heir to Lois McMaster Bujold in writing interesting, innovative science fiction which examines moral and ethical concerns and how they impact on characters, but those looking for action and dramatic events are best-served elsewhere. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Tatiana Maslany teases new ORPHAN BLACK announcement for Thursday

Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany has teased a major new announcement related to the show to be made this Thursday (13 June).

Orphan Black ran for five seasons from 2013 to 2017 and told the story of a group of clones, all played by Maslany, who were trying to figure out where they came from. The show attracted critical acclaim for the way Maslany differentiated the four core clone characters (Sarah, Alison, Cosima and Helena) and another half-dozen or so minor clones from one another, and for how the show featured the clones in the same scene. Maslany won an Emmy Award for Best Actress (Drama) in 2016 for her multiple performances.

The show did attract some criticism for the corporate/government espionage/conspiracy storyline, which grew quite convoluted and stretched before it was finally resolved. The creators have teased a spin-off show for some time, but the suggestion was that this would not be related to the main series and would not feature Maslany.

It's unclear what this announcement could allude to, but it could be confirmation of the spin-off series or maybe a stand-alone TV movie featuring Maslany reprising some of the clone roles.

PHOENIX POINT gets release date

Phoenix Point, the new game from the original creator of X-COM, has a finalised release date and it's pleasingly soon: 3 September 2019.

Phoenix Point is the second game from Snapshot Games, the studio set up by legendary British designer Julian Gollop to revisit some of his previous titles. Following the success of Chaos Reborn (2015) (a remake of Gollop's 1985 game, Chaos: The Battle of Wizards), Gollop launched Phoenix Point with a crowdfunding campaign in 2017.

Phoenix Point uses a similar structure to Gollop's 1994 game UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defence), but draws on elements from X-COM: Apocalypse (1997) and the recent XCOM series from Firaxis Games, which began with X-COM: Enemy Unknown (2012). A strategic metagame is played via a global view, in which mode new technologies can be researched, targets selected and equipment upgraded. Once a possible mission is identified, the player can send a crack squad of soldiers to the location in question, at which point the game turns into a turn-based tactical wargame.

Unlike XCOM's near-future pulp SF setting, Phoenix Point is a post-apocalyptic game set several decades into the future, after most of civilisation is wiped out by a mysterious mist that has risen from the oceans, bringing mutated and horrifying creatures with it. The Phoenix Project is an organisation devoted to restoring order to the world. To do this, the organisation must deal with several rival human factions, including the cult-like Disciples of Anu, the militaristic New Jericho and the high-technology Synedrion, aligning with some and perhaps eliminating others, whilst also working to contain the threat from the sea.

Phoenix Point is launching on PC and X-Box One. The game attracted some controversy when it was revealed that the game would be exclusive to the Epic Games Store for one year after release. It will, however, also be available on the X-Box Game Pass, which will also allow access for PC gamers.

LOVE, DEATH AND ROBOTS renewed for second season at Netflix

Animated SF anthology show Love, Death and Robots has been renewed for a second season at Netflix.

The first season, produced by David Fincher, dropped earlier this year and featured 18 short films in a variety of animation styles from numerous different animation houses. Apart from two originals, all of the films were adaptations of short stories from well-known SFF authors, including John Scalzi, Peter F. Hamilton, Ken Liu, Joe Lansdale, Marko Kloos, Michael Swanwick and Alastair Reynolds.

The second season will also have a new art director in the form of Jennifer Yuh Nelson. Plans for the second season are being kept under wraps, but hopefully it will involve more female writers. With authors like Kameron Hurley, N.K. Jemisin, Becky Chambers, Ann Leckie and Naomi Novik being among the most prominent of the current generation of SFF authors (not to mention Lois McMaster Bujold still producing strong work), the first season focusing on older work by male authors felt a bit strange.

Given the long production lead time of the first season, it is unlikely we will see the second season before 2021.

Terry Pratchett's AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS optioned for film

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, the first Discworld novel for children by the late Terry Pratchett, is getting an animated film adaptation.

Toby Genkel (Richard the Stork, Oops! Noah is Gone and Legends of Valhalla: Thor) is directing from a script by Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Shrek). It will be a German-Irish co-production with a budget of around $15 million.

The previous adaptations of the Discworld series include live-action mini-series based on four of the novels (The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Hogfather and Going Postal) and animated mini-series based on another two (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music), along with three video games, a soundtrack album, numerous graphic novels and more. A new live-action series based on the City Watch sub-series is currently in pre-production at the BBC.

DUNE TV series based on authorised fanfiction in development

A Dune television series is in development, as a partner project to Denis Villeneuve's new Dune film (currently shooting on location). However, the TV series appears to be primarily based on the authorised fanfiction by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert, and not on the canonical Dune novels by Frank Herbert.

Dune: The Sisterhood has been given a straight-to-series order by Warner Brothers for their inevitable new streaming service, WarnerMedia. The series will focus on the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, a key element of the Dune novels but one kept on the sidelines by Frank Herbert in his original books (although they receive significant development in the final two books in the series, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune).

The Bene Gesserit did receive additional development in Herbert and Anderson's officially-authorised novel Sisterhood of Dune. However, their conception of of the Dune universe is at radical odds with that presented in Frank Herbert's original novels and is notably unpopular with Dune fans.

Dune: The Sisterhood will be executive produced by Denis Villeneuve, who has also agreed to direct the first episode. Jon Spaihts, who co-wrote the movie with Villeneuve, will also write for the TV show. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are listed as producers.

Villeneuve's movie, the first of two adapting the original 1965 novel Dune, is currently planned for release on 20 November 2020. It is currently shooting on soundstages in Hungary and on location in Jordan.

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (Part I) gets release date

The first part of Final Fantasy VII Remake will be released worldwide on 3 March 2020.

Square Enix have spent the last five years or so working on an ambitious, ground-up remake of their classic 1997 RPG Final Fantasy VII. Rather than settling for a simple re-release with better graphics, they have instead completely rebuilt the game, as if they were making it for the first time in 2019.

This means a considerably longer game, with previously closed-off areas of the game now available to explore in an open-world fashion, with more side-quests, new enemies and new content in the game. This has also meant splitting the game into multiple parts for release. Part I is expected to include at least the opening part of the game, set in the city of Midgar. In the original game the Midgar episode took roughly 5-6 hours to complete, but the Remake version sounds like it may last for several times that amount.

More information will be released on the game in the next few days, including hopefully more information on the release schedule for the remaining parts.

UPDATE: Square Enix have released more information about the game, including a new cinematic which reveals the character of Tifa for the first time and a more extensive gameplay demo. They have also confirmed that the first part of the game will focus almost entirely on Midgar and will fill two Blu-Ray discs for the physical version of the game. At the moment they don't have a confirmed timescale for release of the other episodes, although in previous interviews they had compared their plans for Final Fantasy VII Remake to be similar to those for Final Fantasy XIII, which ultimately took four years to release all three of its parts.

The game will initially be released on PlayStation 4, with X-Box One and PC versions of the game likely to follow (based on Final Fantasy XV, probably within 18 months of the original release).

Confirmed: BALDUR'S GATE III is happening

Last week's rumours have been confirmed: Baldur's Gate III is coming from Larian Studios.

The Baldur's Gate series is regarded as one of the finest computer roleplaying game series of all time. Consisting of the titles Baldur's Gate (1998), Tales of the Sword Coast (1999), Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) and Throne of Bhaal (2001), the series was set in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world and used a derivation of the 2nd Edition of the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons rules. It launched the career of developers BioWare and has been credited with paving the way for the renaissance of the Western roleplaying game genre.

Larian Studios are the developers of the critically-lauded Divinity: Original Sin series. Baldur's Gate III will use technology developed for that series and will be a party-based adventure (controllable by a party of players in co-op or a single player) drawing on the 5th Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons rules system. The game will be set in the present day of the Realms setting, 122 years after the events of Baldur's Gate II, and will see the heroes gathering together to face down an illithid invasion of the city of Baldur's Gate.

No release date has been set for the game; some reports suggested it would be available for the launch of the Google Stadia service in November this year, but this has not yet been confirmed.

THE OUTER WORLDS gets release date

Obsidian Entertainment's science fiction roleplaying game The Outer Worlds has been given a release date: 25 October 2019.

The game, an original title in a brand new universe, sees the character (who can be fully customised by the player) waking up from cryo-sleep in the remote Halcyon system, which is dominated by powerful corporations. The player finds themselves embroiled in a struggle between the different factions and can choose which side to support and which characters to align with.

Created by the team behind the original Fallout and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, the game will be available on PlayStation 4, X-Box One and PC via the Windows and Epic Game Stores (with a Steam release to follow in 2020).