June releases

Weird. I'm used to dig a little every month to find the books that will be released in the coming weeks but in May, my search came up with absolutely nothing (as far as the "niche" in which I usually choose is concerned). This is not a problem since I don't need to add new books to my reading pile every month but nevertheless...

Anyway, if you follow the blog you probably know something about the kind of novels that usually catch my eye, so if I've missed something released in May, poke me!

This bring me to June 2010. Here we go :

City of Ruin
Mark Charan Newton
June 4th (UK)

Mark Charan Newton was my favorite debut author last year with Nights of Villjamur. I have great expectation for the follow-up, could be one of the best novel of the year. As I said for the first one, noire fantasy is a bliss! Here's the blurb :

Villiren: a city of sin that is being torn apart from the inside. Hybrid creatures shamble through shadows and barely human gangs fight turf wars for control of the streets. Amidst this chaos, Commander Brynd Lathraea, commander of the Night Guard, must plan the defence of Viliren against a race that has broken through from some other realm and already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of the Empire's people. When a Night Guard soldier goes missing, Brynd requests help from the recently arrived Inqusitor Jeryd. He discovers this is not the only disappearance the streets of Villiren. It seems that a serial killer of the most horrific kind is on the loose, taking hundreds of people from their own homes. A killer that cannot possibly be human. The entire population of Villiren must unite to face an impossible surge of violent and unnatural enemies or the city will fall. But how can anyone save a city that is already a ruin?

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Shadow's Son
Jon Sprunk
June First

An assassin in a book titled with the word shadow, and a hooded one! Could be way too generic or looking too much like Brent Week' work but make no mistake, from what the early reviewers are saying, Sprunk first fantasy series (The Shadow Saga) is worth picking up. Well see soon enough. Here's what we're looking at :

In the holy city of Othir, treachery and corruption lurk at the end of every street, just the place for a freelance assassin with no loyalties and few scruples.

Caim makes his living on the edge of a blade, but when a routine job goes south, he is thrust into the middle of an insidious plot. Pitted against crooked lawmen, rival killers, and sorcery from the Other Side, his only allies are Josephine, the socialite daughter of his last victim, and Kit, a guardian spirit no one else can see. But in this fight for his life, Caim only trusts his knives and his instincts, but they won't be enough when his quest for justice leads him from Othir's hazardous back alleys to its shining corridors of power. To unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the empire, he must claim his birthright as the Shadow's Son . . .

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Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword And Sorcery
Jonathan Stratam & Lou Anders
June 22nd

I have already posted the content of this appealing anthology and the two different covers... so without much need for introduction :

Check Your Dark Lord at the Door" — Lou Anders & Jonathan Strahan
Goats of Glory — Steven Erikson
Tides Elba: A Tale of the Black Company — Glen Cook
Bloodsport — Gene Wolfe
The Singing Spear — James Enge
A Wizard of Wiscezan — C.J. Cherryh
A Rich Full Week — K. J. Parker
A Suitable Present for a Sorcerous Puppet — Garth Nix
Red Pearls: An Elric Story — Michael Moorcock
The Deification of Dal Bamore — Tim Lebbon
Dark Times at the Midnight Market — Robert Silverberg
The Undefiled — Greg Keyes
Dapple Hew the Tint Master — Michael Shea
In the Stacks — Scott Lynch
Two Lions, A Witch, and the War-Robe — Tanith Lee
The Sea Troll's Daughter — Caitlin R Kiernan
Thieves of Daring — Bill Willingham
The Fool Jobs — Joe Abercrombie

***

Kraken
China Miéville
May in hardback and June 4th in paperback

Reviews are raving and even though it's been a while since I read speculative fiction aside from the epic style, I don't think I could forgive myself to pass on this one (and taking into account the fact that I never anything by Miéville...). Here's the blurb :

Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears? For curator Billy Harrow it's the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he's been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it's a god. A god that someone is hoping will end the world.

Covers - Sanderson, Marmell and Lynch

Busy week again in cover unveiling.

First off is the completely stunning cover art for The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. The new cover (UK) for the upcoming third book in the Gentleman Bastard Sequence was posted by James at Speculative Horizons (here). It features Locke and Sabetha and I think that so far this year, this is the best cover I've seen. I also posted the previous US cover. Enjoy :

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Next on the list is the cover for the follow-up to Ari Marmell's The Conqueror's Shadow, The Warlord's Legacy. This time, it was first posted by Aidan at A Dribble of Ink (here). I'm not a huge fan of this one but it fits well enough with the art style of the first book.

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Finally but not the least, the cover for Towers of Midnight, the penultimate book of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Aside from mentioning that the cover is clearly depicting Matt, Noal and Thom in front of the Tower of Ghenjei, I can only state the obvious, it's kind of bad-looking but keeping the art style (Darryl K. Sweet) from the previous books is probably the best thing to do.

Burn Me Deadly review

Burn Me Deadly is the second Eddie LaCrosse novel by Alex Bledsoe. It's not a direct follow-up (few tie-ins between the two books) but another great detective adventure for the harsh sword jockey. I reviewed The Sword-Edged Blonde not long ago and although I was not as much awed by the second opus of Eddie's tales, I still sincerely enjoyed the read.

Eddie's at it again. He stumbles upon a naked woman running from the woods. What can a guy do with a damsel in distress? He tries to help her and get knocked down again. Being left for dead after watching the woman being tortured, he will start an investigation with a simple goal in mind, get revenge. Eddie will discover a new dragon cult in league with the local mob boss and will have to go undercover in his own town to get the information needed for unmasking his hidden prey. Unfortunately, this will endanger the people he cares about.

The second case handled by Eddie has fewer connections with his past, I could even say none. That was a bummer for me at first since I loved the style and pace that the flashbacks gave to the first book. Anyway, considering we already know a lot more about the sword-jockey, I can understand that the author would want to get on with the past and focus on the present.

Eddie's star shines once more. Again, the narrative is fully his own and he delivers. The guy is genuine, every one of his actions, his skepticism, gruffness, loyalty and altruism felt right. With a character this much believable, one can only care about his hardship and preoccupations. He will unluckily get into a lot of trouble but that's the way I like to find him. Bledsoe made it so that he gets out of it without some miraculous divine intervention or unexplained magic tricks. The witty remarks and funny moments are plentiful as when Liz is treating his wounds :

"[...] someone screamed outside in the street. A fairly common thing in Neceda. "See", I said through clenched teeth. "It hurts so bad, it makes total strangers howling."

A couple of the secondary protagonists from the previous book are developed further (mostly so in Liz and Angelina's case) and a whole new cast is introduced. The new bad guys don't have much more motivation than their personal gain in associating with the dragon cult but at least they will make Eddie's life more complicated for a reason. And they don't explain all their motives before dying.

The investigation is more straightforward. Don't get me wrong, there's a couple of twist and more than enough guessing. As I said, I cared about Eddie's quest, so when something happens to one of his friends because he's getting involved, it gets more engaging. Add to this mix some hidden royals and an ambitious young captain full of himself interrelated in the case and you get a sufficiently elaborated plot. Bledsoe's skill in writing this tale is sharp and concise.

On the less positive side, there's still the naming problematic but in a reduced quantity and maybe a bit of a letdown in worldbuilding. We don't get to see much more than Eddie's adopted town and the surrounding countryside. I know that it's not the only aspect of worldbuilding but I think it made the world seems a bit too small. I mentioned in my review of the first book that this element was well handled in the way Eddie narrated the tale and to a certain extent, it can't always make miracles. However, the small touch of fantasy elements (that I can't spoil) adds a mystical aspect to the setting.

For the newcomer, I would recommend to start with The Sword-Edged Blonde even though it's not absolutely obligatory. My hopes are still high for Dark Jenny (working title), coming up.... sometime :) By the way, there will be at least a fourth book as Mr. Bledsoe wrote a post on his blog about a "tuckerization" (it's the name for using a person's name in an original story) for the generous givers to a charity (here).

Technically, there's improvement over the covers of the first book. Fits well for an Eddie LaCrosse novel. The narration of the audiobook is again performed by Stefan Rudnicki and he does a great job. The hardcover edition of the novel is 320 pages. Still no map (wouldn't have been useful anyway in this case...).

Burn Me Deadly audiobook review score :

Characterization............. 8 /10
World building............... 8 / 10
Magic system................. N /A
Story.............................. 7.5 / 10
Writing........................... 8 / 10

Overall (not an average) 8 / 10

Enjoy!

Alex Bledsoe page

K.J. Parker's The Hammer cover

I haven't read any book by the mysterious K.J. Parker but there's the first novel of the Engineer trilogy (Devices and Desires) sitting in my bookshelf. One of my friends who has pretty much the same taste as me and is sometimes my "test reader" couldn't get past the half mark. I'm still going to give it a try someday. Parker usually gets pretty good reviews.

Here's the cover for trade paperback edition of The Hammer (a stand-alone novel) set to be released in January 2011. Not bad and as it is mentioned on the cover launch post from Orbit, really inline with the previous covers, also designed by Keith Hayes.

And the blurb :

The colony was founded seventy years ago. The plan was originally to mine silver, but there turned out not to be any.

Now an uneasy peace exists on the island, between the colonists and the once-noble met’Oc, a family in exile on a remote stronghold for their role in a vaguely remembered civil war. The met’Oc are tolerated, in spite of occasional cattle stealing raids, since they alone possess the weapons considered necessary protection in the event of the island’s savages becoming hostile.

Gignomai is the youngest brother in the current generation of met’Oc. He is about to discover exactly what it is expected of him; and what it means to defy his family.

Spellwright review

Spellwright is the first novel by Blake Charlton, one of the contenders for the best debut of 2010 in fantasy. Plenty has been said about Charlton's dyslexia and it's really understandable since this is a though condition to be afflicted with when you're a writer and because a substantial part of his magic system is affected by this. I'll get to that later. The follow-ups to the trilogy will be called Spellbound and Disjunction.

Nicodemus Weal is a cacographer living in Starhaven, a school for mage apprentices. Cacography is dyslexia for spellwright (the magic users). The spells they touch get mixed up so they can't really become full wizards. However, some thinks that Nicodemus could be the spellwright spoken of in prophecy who could be the savior or the doom of humanity. When one of the teachers is killed during a gathering of magnus from the entire world, the apprentice will be suspected with his master. He'll be right at the center of events unfolding too fast for him with his future and the fate of the world in the balance.

This novel felt like good old fantasy, the kind originally representative of the genre. With the classic young apprentice touched by prophecy and old masters with long beards, the ground felt familiar. Judging by this, the book could almost be considered a YA novel, but I would tag it as for all ages instead, i.e. not specifically targeted towards the YA audience. You will find in Spellwright kobolds, druids, golems, avatars, gargoyles, dragons, familiars and demons. Everything you need to please the nostalgic fantasy reader.

Nicodemus is young, a bit reckless and leans toward the act without thinking type of personality. This gets him into all sorts of troubles and sometimes he felt a little dumb for me. In any case, I still wanted him to accomplish his goals, found him captivating, more so since his potential powers are limited by his cacography. The guy is struggling with his studies but he shows everyone what he is capable of, he goes against the odds. These last elements are surely representative of Charlton and I can't pass by the humanity in all this.

Some compelling supporting characters inhabit the universe created here. Among those is the obviously likable wise old magnus that serve as the father figure, a druid which seems to have a hidden agenda, a former student taking her work too seriously and the villain. The villain term can be applied directly in this case since his motivations are quite simply justified by the creation of a war which would make it possible for the demons to take over the human race.

Even though the story seems simple enough in the beginning, things get a bit more complicated. Nicodemus slowly discovers that his condition could be cured but then it could affect the schemes of every faction implicated in prophecy. The story itself revolves around the magic system. At times, it seemed even more important for the author than the tale he is trying to tell (although I have to admit that it's comprehensible since it's so much integrated into the world). I think the book could have profited from lesser time spent in explaining the system. The writing would have been more fluid. However, even though it's not flawless, it's imaginative enough to make us wonder abundantly. To put it simply, magical runes are created from the contraction of muscle in the arms. When theses runes are put together in words, sentences or whole books, they create spells.

As I said, the pace is occasionally slowed down by the magical system explanation. Nicodemus even teaches a class of youngster about it. However, mixed in with all the historical details and the creation of the gargoyles and golems, a nice layer of worldbuilding is created. Everything eventually connect together to create a rich good vs evil world. The battles and actions scenes derived from this are nicely described by the author, especially when gargoyles and golems are included. About these gargoyles, they are constructs created by the wizards. This idea is nicely exploited and is also applied to the golems used by the villain.

The aftermath was a notable problem for me. During a considerable amount of pages, we get to read about the years following the final battle. Nicodemus is training with a race we haven't seen before (and not heard of enough). So in a few chapters, I think there's too much evolution for the main protagonist... the hero won't be the same after that and it's too fast to grasp entirely. Maybe these chapters belonged to flashbacks in the second book or even as the first chapters and probably in a more detailed way.

In the end, the great new ideas Charlton included in his novel makes it a fresh classic fantasy delight. The book is not without flaws but it's entertaining enough to make me eager for the next one. The author writing is already fine by me so bring more bold concepts and a bigger scope.

Technically, since we are in the classic kind of fantasy book, I can't say anything bad about the overly used hooded man cover. The hardcover edition of the novel is 350 pages. The map included at the beginning of the book is simply beautiful and is also available on the web (link at the index).

Spellwright review score :

Characterization............. 7.5 /10
World building............... 8 / 10
Magic system................. 8 / 10
Story.............................. 7 / 10
Writing........................... 8 / 10

Overall (not an average) 8 / 10

Enjoy!

Blake Charlton page

The Path of Daggers ebook cover art

On May 18th, the eighth ebook of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, The Path of Daggers will be released. As with the previous ebooks, we are graced with another sumptuous cover art. The illustration was done by Julie Bell (more here).

The scene depicted for this book is the Aes Sedai using the Bowl of Winds (particularly Elayne, Aviendha, and Nynaeve). I'm not a huge fan of these colors usually, but there's something this time that gets me. Another great achievement. You can read more about the explanation of the cover at Tor.com.

You can see the first seven ebook covers here :

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven
Lord of Chaos
A Crown of Swords

Richard Morgan's The Dark Commands update

Richard Morgan posted an update on his blog about the state of The Dark Commands, the follow-up to The Steel Remains (my review here), the first book of A Land Fit for Heroes. A tentative publication date (April 2011) is included and it seems he found a way to rename the book The Cold Commands as he initially intended. Can't wait for this, with the way the first book ended and the prospect of Ringil future. Also, the book will be longer than TSR, hurrah!!! Here you go :

So here’s where we are: my UK publishers, who’ve carried these delays with much good grace, have set a putative publication date of April 2011. That means that I need to deliver the manuscript by some time in early Autumn this year. As the pressures of game deadlines ebbs a bit, and as my six month sabbatical from prose whets my appetite to get back to it, this is looking reasonably do-able. I’m actually starting to inch forward in the narrative, and I have – possibly a side effect of writing a lot of game and tie-in comic-book treatments recently – a clearer overall idea of where the book will go than at any time in the last two years. It may take a while to get there, but at least I have a map. And the good news is that, looking at that map, it seems me this book is likely to be a good deal longer than The Steel Remains; so if you liked Ringil and Co’s first outing, there should be about half as much again to like this time around.

Oh, and I think I’ve found a way to call it The Cold Commands after all.

Swords and dark magic Subterranean Press cover

Back in October, Lou Anders posted on his blog (the update I posted) the table of contents for the upcoming anthology edited by himself and Jonathan Strahan, Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword And Sorcery. I don't think that things could get better, at least in term of anticipation. Here's a peak again :

Check Your Dark Lord at the Door" — Lou Anders & Jonathan Strahan
Goats of Glory — Steven Erikson
Tides Elba: A Tale of the Black Company — Glen Cook
Bloodsport — Gene Wolfe
The Singing Spear — James Enge
A Wizard of Wiscezan — C.J. Cherryh
A Rich Full Week — K. J. Parker
A Suitable Present for a Sorcerous Puppet — Garth Nix
Red Pearls: An Elric Story — Michael Moorcock
The Deification of Dal Bamore — Tim Lebbon
Dark Times at the Midnight Market — Robert Silverberg
The Undefiled — Greg Keyes
Dapple Hew the Tint Master — Michael Shea
In the Stacks — Scott Lynch
Two Lions, A Witch, and the War-Robe — Tanith Lee
The Sea Troll's Daughter — Caitlin R Kiernan
Thieves of Daring — Bill Willingham
The Fool Jobs — Joe Abercrombie

The Eos edition is set for release on June 22 and the Subterranean Press edition will see the light of day in July. Now, for the covers. The cover for the Sub Press limited edition (first pic) was illustrated by Dominic Harman (more here) and the art for the standard edition is by Benjamin Carre (more here).

I'm not really a fan of either... it's not bad but I hoped for something better.