3 novels that won the 2022 Locus Award

In the “debut novel” nomination, the book about the magical alternative Cairo of the beginning of the last century won, beating “The One Who Became the Sun”, a novel about an ancient alternative China, which will be released in Russian this summer.

“Masters of the Genies” is a story about a world where the usual order of things was disrupted by the appearance on Earth of genies, angels and other creatures previously known only from myths. In the forty years that have passed since then, humanity has adapted to a more or less peaceful coexistence with supernatural creatures, but excesses happen. To investigate magical crimes in Egypt, a special unit, the Ministry of Alchemy, Spells and Supernatural Entities, was founded. This is where the main character works.

In the world of the novel there is more equality between the sexes than in reality, but the protagonist, Fátima el Shaarawy, still has to prove from time to time that she is in the right place in the Ministry. However, the revealed cases speak for themselves. That is why, when charred bodies are found in a rich mansion with the total security of the whole situation, it is she who is called to the scene of the crime. Considering that all the dead belonged to a secret order, and the murderer claims that he is the legendary al-Jahiz, who let the jinn into the world, the matter is not the most common.

In the fantasy category, the winner is The Jade Legacy, which concludes the Greenbone Saga crime fantasy trilogy. Fonda Lee has painted a vast canvas of political intrigue, clan warfare, and personal destiny for some thirty years.

At the center of the story is Kekon Island, which is run by crime families behind the scenes. Two major clans, the Mountain Clans and the Plains Clans, are waging a ruthless fight against each other. The map of the city and the whole island is being redrawn, there are clashes over profitable business sectors and influence in foreign policy, but the most valuable feature of Kekon, which makes it such an interesting partner for other countries, are the deposits of bioenergetic jade. , which is not mined anywhere else in the world. He endows people who are sensitive to him with incredible strength, dexterity, and flair. A fighter with jade can successfully counter many ordinary fighters. But the magic ore can be used not only in battle, but also in other areas such as medicine. This is what attracts jade to both clans and other countries.

Across three Foundation books, Lee shows a rapidly changing world that not everyone has time to adjust to. Progress moves forward and Kekon trusts jade too much and is mired in old prejudices. Or is it better to say, faithful to ancient traditions? This is one of the main questions of the trilogy, to which each character answers in his own way.

The novel A Desolation Called Peace (the title can be roughly translated as “Pain, which is called the world”), which is currently being translated into Russian, received the “Locus” in the “science fiction” nomination. This is the second part of the cycle “Teikskalaan”, the continuation of the book “Memory, which is called empire”.

Memory That Is an Empire is a novel about a woman named Makhit Dzmare, who arrives as an ambassador in the magnificent capital of the Teikskalaan space empire. She admires the brilliance and beauty of the capital, its culture, its scope and grandeur, she has been learning its language since she was little, but even so, the otherness of everything that happens impacts her.

His situation is complicated by the fact that he was supposed to implant the previous ambassador’s memory, merge his consciousness with his predecessors’ experience to make his job easier, but he failed. And now she is alone in a huge and beautiful city, with which she is sincerely in love, but which, it seems, is in no hurry to reciprocate her feelings.

The second book starts from the beauties of Teikskalaan: the empire is threatened by an unknown external enemy, with whom it is not even possible to enter into negotiations. In an attempt to settle the matter through diplomacy, he calls Mahit to try and establish contact.