Shadow's Edge, January Dancer, & Pyr

The second book in Brent Weeks’ Night Angel Trilogy, Shadow's Edge, published last week and this week, I’m posting my review. Here’s a snippet:

Much of Shadow’s Edge concerns itself with Kylar finding himself. He yearns for a life of normalcy with Elene, the woman he loves. He hates the killer/assassin aspect of himself but can’t fight it either. His conflict spills over quite a bit of the novel and he vacillates between fighting his instincts and being the good man he thinks Elene wants. Of course, Elene doesn’t help matters. Their relationship was a frustrating aspect of the novel only in that Elene came across as a two-dimensional nag for a good portion of the novel. She and Kylar shared the same bed, but never really in the carnal sense. Their thoughts about consummating their love for each other was often at odds. Elene wanted to wait until they were married, but when she was finally ready to share the experience with Kylar, he felt unworthy of it and went on one of his nightly patrols.

I also posted my review of Michael Flynn’s The January Dancer, which didn’t work quite as well for me. I like parts of it, but didn’t feel those parts came together as congruously into a whole as I would have liked. Here's a sampler of my review:

Michael Flynn’s space opera The January Dancer is many things, part caper, part future myth, part mosaic novel; all of which come together in a very interesting stew of a novel. The object from which the book’s title is derived is a pre-human artifact first discovered by Captain Amos January on a relatively routine archaeological expedition. Human expansion is very widespread throughout the galaxy and the future is far enough beyond our time that the characters refer to Earth as Old Earth and speak of it in nigh-mythological terms.

Pyr just released their Spring/Summer 2009 catalogue with details on some really interesting books, including all three volumes of Mark Chadbourn’s Age of Misrule trilogy. I know the covers by John Picacio have been posted elsewhere, but they are terrific so here they are again:

Other books include:

James Enge, Blood of Ambrose - Behind the King's life stands the menacing Protector, and beyond him lies the Protector's Shadow... Against this evil, Morlock Ambrosius--stateless person, master of all magical makers, deadly swordsman, and hopeless drunk.

Matthew Sturges, Midwinter - Mauritaine once heroic Captain in the Seelie Army, now accused of treason and sentenced to life without parole, is offered one last chance to redeem himself, an opportunity to regain his freedom and his honor in the secrete service of Queen Titania.

Ian McDonald, Desolation Road - It all began 30 years ago on Mars, with a greenperson. But by the time it all finished, the town of Desolation Road had experienced every conceivable abnormality