I always want to start these reviews of my own books saying “It’s a bit weird and different from my other books,” so let’s take that as read.
Sunlit Uplands is about the worlds that are just a breath away, but out of reach. The world where you turned left instead of right. The world where you took the other job, or dated the other partner. The world where the last election went differently… It’s 2020. Hilary Clinton is president. Everyone says she’s no different from a Republican and she’s dragging her feet on expanding Obamacare because she’s in the pocket of Big Pharma. But in other worlds, other choices got made, and other things are happening. Some people have a way to reach those worlds — but when they do, there are other selves in their places, living their own lives. Ruth’s been moving between worlds since she was a teenager. She settled down for a while to have a baby. But now that kid, Sam, is a teenager, and ready to ask questions about what happened when they left Kansa City, and why the world doesn’t seem to have a Peter Rabbit movie any more. This is a story about the feeling we’re in the bad timeline, a story a road trip across multiple worlds, and friendship, and family, and the second order consequences of just trying to find a world that’s not on fire.
Personally I’d compare it to Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber and Pinsker’s “Then There Were N-1” and Piper’s “He Walked Around the Horses”, and indeed my SF-reading characters do compare it to these things. Tor are comparing it to the movie “Everything Everywhere All At Once”. It’s my American novel. It’s super-political. It’s first person and fast moving. I wrote the first 17500 words in February 2020, and I wrote the rest between July 2025 and February 2026, in a total of 49 writing days. And it’s coming out August 24th 2027.
