Till the end of the year and covers battle

The end of the year won't offer much in term of fantasy release, at least no big guns. Here's a couple of releases worth mentioning. I think it should be a good time to return to my growing pile of books already in my possession that I wanted to read for a while. Some of those novels have alternative covers, which one would you go for?

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The Infernal City : An Elder Scrolls Novel
Greg Keyes
November 24

Four decades after the Oblivion Crisis, Tamriel is threatened anew by an ancient and all-consuming evil. It is Umbriel, a floating city that casts a terrifying shadow-for wherever it falls, people die and rise again. And it is in Umbriel's shadow that a great adventure begins, and a group of unlikely heroes meet. A legendary prince with a secret. A spy on the trail of a vast conspiracy. A mage obsessed with his desire for revenge. And Annaig, a young girl in whose hands the fate of Tamriel may rest . . . . Based on the award-winning "The Elder Scrolls," The Infernal City is the first of two exhilarating novels following events that continue the story from "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion," named 2006 Game of the Year.

Greg Keyes is a good author in my opinion. I have read his Kingdom of Thorn and Bone series and its good fantasy, accessible and straight to the point. Since he already wrote novels set in pre-established worlds (Star Wars universe), he could come up with something nice.

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Burn Me Deadly
Alex Bledsoe
November 10

Above Angelina's Tavern in down-and-dirty Neceda you'll find the office of Eddie LaCrosse, a freelance sword jockey who, for twenty-five gold pieces a day, will take on any task short of murder for hire. Eddie's on his way back from a routine investigation when his horse almost runs down a half-naked blonde in serious trouble. Against his better judgment, he promises to protect the frightened young woman, only to find himself waylaid by unknown assailants and left for dead beside her mutilated body. Eddie isn't the kind of guy to just let something like this pass. But who killed Laura Lesperitt? Eddie's quest for payback leads him to a tangled mystery involving a notorious crime lord, a backwoods dragon cult, royal scandals, and a duplicitous femme fatale who has trouble keeping her clothes on. As bodies pile up, attracting the unwelcome attention of the king's guards, Eddie must use all his wits if he hopes to survive...

Which cover is the best? For me no real success with either one... About the book, it's the second novel in the Eddie LaCrosse Mystery series. The first book received good reviews, so probably a series to look for in the future.

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Beyond the Wall of Time
Russell Kirkpatrick
November 24

The wall of time has fallen and the Gods are free to ravage the world. The few that know of their escape into mortal lands are under the control of the malevolent Husk. Stella, a queen in hiding, makes a deal with the Undying Man even though she knows his agenda comes first. Noetos seeks revenge for the deaths of his loved ones, not yet realizing the enemy is closer than even he can imagine. And the unconventional cosmographer, Lenares, is the only one with the power to prevent the Gods from destroying the world - if only the others would believe her. The queen, the fisherman, and the cosmographer must travel to Andratan to confront Husk. But whether they can break free of his hold on them, and defeat the Gods, is another matter entirely.

Kirkpatrick sold a lot of copies of Across The Face Of The World (from the Fires of Heaven trilogy). I have never read any of his books and this is his Broken Man/Husk Trilogy final novel. For the cover, I would go with the first one, mostly because of the ugly border of the second one.

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Rage of the Behemoth
Antology
Already released (june 2009)

This RotB Anthology contains 21 stories about the biggest, baddest, boldest behemoths ever to roar across the pages of heroic adventure! Over 150,000 words of monstrous mayhem record the ferocious battles that rage between gargantuan creatures of myth and legend and the warriors and wizards who wage war against, beside, and astride them. Behemoths and battles will be presented in four-story sections of five different habitats introduced by the stunning illustrations of John Whitman and headlined by well-known authors Mary Rosenblum, C.L. Werner, Brian Ruckley, Lois Tilton, and – writing together for the final time - Andrew Offutt and Richard K. Lyon.

Ok this one is already released (and went under the radar) but I wanted to mention it mostly for the presence of Brian Ruckley in the list of author. I still haven't read his Godless World series, but it's at the top of my list. If your a fan you might want to check this out.

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Finally, here are the two covers (and the blurb) for the upcoming novel Spellwright by first time author Blake Charlton. The first one by Todd Lockwood looks way better.


Imagine a world in which you could peel written words off a page and make them physically real. You might pick your teeth with a sentence fragment, protect yourself with defensive paragraphs, or thrust a sharply-worded sentence at an enemy’s throat.

Such a world is home to Nicodemus Weal, an apprentice at the wizardly academy of Starhaven. Because of how fast he can forge the magical runes that create spells, Nicodemus was thought to be the Halcyon, a powerful spellwright prophesied to prevent an event called the War of Disjunction, which would destroy all human language. There was only one problem: Nicodemus couldn’t spell.

Runes must be placed in the correct order to create a spell. Deviation results in a “misspell”—a flawed text that behaves in an erratic, sometimes lethal, manner. And Nicodemus has a disability, called cacography, that causes him to misspell texts simply by touching them.

Now twenty-five, Nicodemus lives in the aftermath of failing to fulfill prophecy. He finds solace only in reading knightly romances and in the teachings of Magister Shannon, an old blind wizard who’s left academic politics to care for Starhaven’s disabled students.

But when a powerful wizard is murdered with a misspell, Shannon and Nicodemus becomes the primary suspects. Proving their innocence becomes harder when the murderer begins killing male cacographers one by one…and all evidence suggests that Nicodemus will be next. Hunted by both investigators and a hidden killer, Shannon and Nicodemus must race to discover the truth about the murders, the nature of magic, and themselves.