New York Review of Books Review

A runaway princess is called to rule a space empire; Deaths daughter hunts down the Reaper of War; summer in Seattle is disrupted by a mysterious mythic figure; and an exorcism goes creepily wrong. IN THE DISTANT FUTURE, the powerful Indranan Empire has just lost most of its royal family to betrayal and assassination. One heir remains, but there's a problem: She fled the centers of power 20 years before, hid her identity and has been doing quite well as the head of a criminal outfit. When her empress mother has her hauled home, nobody's happy - least of all the gunrunning princess herself. K. B. Wagers's BEHIND THE THRONE (Orbit, paper, $14.99) is that most familiar of space operas: a futuristic retelling of the King Arthur legend, or at least the part about a society needing its rightful rulers in order to thrive. Even casual science fiction fans will have seen it all before via films like "Star Wars": knights and the need to restore the old order and lots of mysticism about genetic destinies. Wagers's tale manages to freshen this somewhat by discarding the usual gender and cultural trappings - for example, making the hereditary monarchy matriarchal and flavoring Indranan society with the customs of ancient India in lieu of old Britannia. It's a thin freshness, however, because the underlying Arthurian structure is still present, right down to the looming Saxon (space kingdom) invasion. Only one thing saves this book from being tiresome: its protagonist. In contrast to the usual bildungsroman with a hidden heir to power who must find himself, Princess Hailimi Mercedes Jaya Bristol (Hail for short) is pushing 40. She knows who she is and knows full well that life as the ruler of an interstellar empire will be anything but glorious. She can also kill a man with the stem of a wineglass - the kind of skill that comes in handy over the course of the book's multiple explosive assassination attempts. Through Hail, "Behind the Throne" transcends its overfamiliar subgenre: Suddenly it's the King Arthur story starring one of the gun-toting badass heroines of urban fantasy, or a young adult warrior à la Katniss from "The Hunger Games." Imagine the "Star Wars" films if they had focused on Princess-turned-General Leia's efforts to strengthen the Rebel Alliance, instead of Luke's daddy issues. Readers excited by this prospect will want to read "Behind the Throne." IT'S HARD TO HANG a hat on PRETTY DEADLY, VOL. 2: THE BEAR (Image Comics, paper, $14.99), a graphic novel by Kelly Sue DeConnick, with art by Emma Ríos. This weird western saga gleefully, dreamily fuses a Greek chorus, spaghetti westerns, American trickster tales and creepy Japanese shoujo (girls') manga. At the core of it, however, is a masterpiece of mythopoeism that many literary fantasists struggle to emulate. The first volume of "Pretty Deadly" introduced readers to the Reaper-minions of Lord Death: enigmatic entities with Old West names like Big Alice, Johnny Coyote and - deadliest and most iconic of all - Death's own daughter, Deathface Ginny. After an epic, bloody regime change, however, the bitter old Lord Death has given way to a younger female successor. In Volume 2, Ginny and the other loyal Reapers must help consolidate this new Death's rule by hunting down a rogue: the Reaper of War, who feeds and is fed by the killing fields of World War I. Volume 2 is an improvement on the already stunning Volume 1, largely because the structure and stakes of DeConnick's mythic universe have become clear. This volume also lingers more on the human lives impacted by these supernatural dramas, which helps to show why the Reapers are necessary. It helps too that Rios's art and the colors of Jordie Bellaire, occasionally jumbled in the first volume, have clarified since - though it's still difficult to make out what's happening in full-page action scenes swathed with the same color, as when Ginny battles the visceral red monster that War has become, upon a red blood-soaked battlefield. This is a minor flaw. Every other element of this tale is a perfectly balanced mixture of the macabre with pure human poignancy. New readers will need Volume 1 too, but the return on investment is more than worthwhile. IN SUMMERLONG (Tachyon, paper, $15.95), his first new novel since "Tamsin" in 1999, Peter S. Beagle introduces readers to a cohort of eccentric yet fully textured characters: the aging flight attendant Joanna Delvecchio; her adult daughter, Lily; Joanna's longtime partner, Abe the retired professor; and various denizens of the Seattle community who float through and around their lives. All is well until a newcomer shows up at the local diner: a mystery woman called Lioness Lazos, who proceeds to enrich and disrupt their lives in an almost mythic fashion. The hook here is Beagle's realism, which so ably captures the satisfactions and frustrations of these "people of a certain age," as well as those of the more restless Lily. By turns of phrase, Seattle's brief summer becomes a character here too, as Lioness's presence causes any number of peculiar disruptions to the natural and social order. A baby orca nearly beaches itself in what might be homage; the most charismatic people at a dinner party are shown up in their pettiness; and the smell of a summer meadow manifests in the oddest of places. Lioness herself is too much of an archetype to feel as real as Joanna and Abe and Lily, but this is probably intentional, since it's fairly clear early on that she's Not From Around Here. The mystery of her true identity - which, again, feels intentionally non-mysterious past Chapter 2 or so - is secondary, probably because the story is really about how ordinary people change, and are changed by, the numinous. It's a rare story of summer that feels like the summer - like dreamy intense passions rising and arcing and then spinning away; like beauty underlaid with a tinge of sadness because it is ephemeral. Beagle has captured that seasonal warmth here, beautifully, magically. originally released as an e-book in March, Jason Arnopp's novel THE LAST DAYS OF JACK SPARKS (Orbit, $24) apparently did well enough to merit a hardcover rerelease in September, with a flashy additional marketing push. This is the sort of thing that would thrill the story's titular protagonist, a self-absorbed author and internet celebrity who thinks of his worth in clicks, new followers gained and whether his publisher is still willing to give him a big advance after he insulted its managing director during a cocaine-fueled 3 am. phone call. And like Jack Sparks himself, this story is hyperbolic, a hypertextual mingling of narrative with epistolary text messages and emails, transcribed interviews, fourthwall-breaking "notes" and other interruptions involving the hapless editors, agents and roommates who have to put up with Jack. The frame story is that Jack died in the writing of his latest book, meant to be a skeptic's exposé of the paranormal. Although the raw manuscript was illegally released in the immediate wake of his death, Jack's estranged brother, Alistair, has recently published an annotated version, with his own controversial verifications - or contradictions - of Jack's narrative. The bulk of the text is Jack's story, however, in which he relates a cascade of increasingly creepy incidents, all stemming from his attempt to report on the exorcism of a teenage girl in Italy. When Jack is so crass as to laugh at the height of the exorcism, he draws the attention of supernatural forces - or does he? Disturbing videos appear and then disappear from his own YouTube channel. Jack is haunted by visions of the teenage girl. There may or may not be a cursed paperback involved. And then things get really weird. Jack isn't a likable character, but his narcissistic antics tend to hang a humorous lampshade on the more stereo-typically "scary" moments. The complete story that unfolds is genuinely creepy in parts, however, as the layers overlap and blur the lines between what really happened to Jack and what Jack is willing to admit. It's less the story of supernatural events than it is of a skeptic's comeuppance, and maybe that's why "creepy in parts" never quite meshes into a truly scary whole. Still, it's a fun ride. N.K. JEMISIN won a 2016 Hugo Award for her novel "The Fifth Season." Her latest book is its sequel, "The Obelisk Gate."