On September 26th you’ll be able to get your first tastes of JY Yang’s Tensorate series with The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, twin standalone novellas that each offer entry into a deep and fascinating series that the author described as “Dragon Age meets Jurassic World meets Star Wars meets Mad Max” in an interview with io9.
The first line you read introduces a former prophet responding to her squad through a quantum-entangled remote communication device…
While directing her pack of raptors to hunt a sky-spanning monster…
While seated atop another, larger raptor.
It was the characters who convinced me that I absolutely had to buy Yang’s books. I instantly fell in love with the anxious and desperate Mokoya, who crushes her irreplaceable talker with magic because she’s too upset to try and understand it. I find myself constantly thinking of her twin brother Akeha’s endless wells of bitter brilliance, alternating between vicious mockery, fragile self-doubt, and unflappable determination. I’m grateful to have gotten to meet these people, and to let others have the same pleasure.
I’m here to tell you that the fun won’t stop with just these two books. Tor.com Publishing has acquired two more novellas in the Tensorate Series, currently titled The Descent of Monsters and To Ascend to Godhood, in a deal negotiated by DongWon Song of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. Together they will dive deeper into the world, exploring the natural, technological, and political monstrosities that lurk within the Protectorate and bringing to life Rider and the Protector, two characters you don’t know yet, but will come to love or fear.
In the dayjob half of their life, JY Yang edits fiction at Epigram Books, an independent press based in Singapore. In the writing half of it, they cheerfully destroy SF/F one story at a time. A queer, non-binary, postcolonial intersectional feminist, their work often examines issues of race, class, and gender; examples can be found (or are forthcoming!) in places including Uncanny, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. They had this to say about the sale:
Writing the first two Tensorate novellas was an adventure and a half. I loved immersing myself in the world and getting to know the characters. And the fine folks at Tor.com Publishing did a fantastic job of bringing the books into reality. So when they asked me to propose more in the series, I absolutely jumped at the chance. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be working with my editor Carl on these new standalones, which will not just explore the backstory of two of the characters—Rider and the Protector— but will also lay the foundations for the future of the series. To you, who’s reading this—you don’t know Rider and the Protector yet, but you will come September, and I so look forward to you meeting them.
The Descent of Monsters and To Ascend to Godhood will both be available in 2018. You can pre-order the first two books in the series, The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, now. The first two novellas can be read in any order, and will be released simultaneously on September 26, 2017.
The Tensorate Series by JY Yang:
- 1 & 2. The Black Tides of Heaven. The Red Threads of Fortune.
- 3 & 4. The Descent of Monsters. To Ascend to Godhood.
