Books in the Mail (W/E 2015-11-07)

One of these will be my next read.

Ash and Silver (A Sanctuary Novel #2) by Carol Berg (Roc, Trade Paperback 12/01/2015) - Berg has been on my radar for a couple of years, even more so over the past couple of years. My friend Sarah Chorn, (has a blurb for book one in the front matter of this one!) raves about Berg, so maybe with the duology published, I’ll jump into them.

Navronne's brutal civil war has exposed corruption that could bring the once glorious kingdom to its knees, unless someone can be found to stop it. . .

Ever since the secretive Order of the Equites Cineré - the Knights of the Ashes - stole his memory, his name, and his heart, considering the past makes Greenshank's head ache. After two rigorous years of training he is ready to embrace the mission of the Order - to use selfless magic to heal Navronne's troubles. But on his first assignment, the past comes roaring back, threatening to drown him in conspiracy, grief, and murder. 

He is Lucian de Remeni - a sorcerer whose magical bents for portraiture and history threaten the safety of the earth and the future of the war-riven kingdom of Navronne. He just can't remember how or why. 

To untangle his missing past and a cryptic outsider’s plan for his future, Lucian must evade the brutal justice of elemental beings, solve a crime hidden in the depths of history, and locate a city beyond the boundaries of the human world . . .

Made to Kill by Adam Christopher (The L.A. Trilogy #1) - (Tor Hardcover 11/03/2015) – Christopher has a really impressive output and this one is a robot noir mystery. Sounds like it could be fun

It was just another Tuesday morning when she walked into the office--young, as I suspected they all might be, another dark brunette with some assistance and enough eye black to match up to Cleopatra. And who am I? I'm Ray, the world's last robot, famed and feared in equal measure, which suits me just fine--after all, the last place you'd expect to find Hollywood's best hit man is in the plain light of day.

Raymond Electromatic is good at his job, as good as he ever was at being a true Private Investigator, the lone employee of the Electromatic Detective Agency--except for Ada, office gal and super-computer, the constant voice in Ray's inner ear. Ray might have taken up a new line of work, but money is money, after all, and he was programmed to make a profit. Besides, with his twenty-four-hour memory-tape limits, he sure can keep a secret.

When a familiar-looking woman arrives at the agency wanting to hire Ray to find a missing movie star, he's inclined to tell her to take a hike. But she had the cold hard cash, a demand for total anonymity, and tendency to vanish on her own.

Plunged into a glittering world of fame, fortune, and secrecy, Ray uncovers a sinister plot that goes much deeper than the silver screen--and this robot is at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Made to Kill is the thrilling new speculative noir from novelist and comic writer Adam Christopher

Black Wolves by Kate Elliott (Orbit Books Trade Paperback 11/03/2015) – This one has been on my radar for quite some time as I’ve been reacquainting myself with Elliott’s fiction.

An exiled captain returns to help the son of the king who died under his protection in this rich and multi-layered first book in an action-packed new series. 

Twenty two years have passed since Kellas, once Captain of the legendary Black Wolves, lost his King and with him his honor. With the King murdered and the Black Wolves disbanded, Kellas lives as an exile far from the palace he once guarded with his life. 

Until Marshal Dannarah, sister to the dead King, comes to him with a plea-rejoin the palace guard and save her nephew, King Jehosh, before he meets his father's fate. 

Combining the best of Shogun and Marco Polo, Black Wolves is an unmissable treat for epic fantasy lovers everywhere.

Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles #8) by Kevin Hearne (Del Rey, Mass Market Paperback 01/26/2016) – I’ve enjoyed every installment of this series Hammered is blurbed don the front, but because I also really enjoyed Hounded, loved it and posted the Hexed, Tricked, and Hunted

Iron Druid Atticus O’Sullivan, hero of Kevin Hearne’s epic New York Times bestselling urban fantasy series, has a point to make—and then drive into a vampire’s heart.

When a Druid has lived for two thousand years like Atticus, he’s bound to run afoul of a few vampires. Make that legions of them. Even his former friend and legal counsel turned out to be a bloodsucking backstabber. Now the toothy troublemakers—led by power-mad pain-in-the-neck Theophilus—have become a huge problem requiring a solution. It’s time to make a stand.

As always, Atticus wouldn’t mind a little backup. But his allies have problems of their own. Ornery archdruid Owen Kennedy is having a wee bit of troll trouble: Turns out when you stiff a troll, it’s not water under the bridge. Meanwhile, Granuaile is desperate to free herself of the Norse god Loki’s mark and elude his powers of divination—a quest that will bring her face-to-face with several Slavic nightmares.

As Atticus globetrots to stop his nemesis Theophilus, the journey leads to Rome. What better place to end an immortal than the Eternal City? But poetic justice won’t come without a price: In order to defeat Theophilus, Atticus may have to lose an old friend.

Praise for Kevin Hearne and The Iron Druid Chronicles

“[The Iron Druid books] are clever, fast paced and a good escape.”—Jason Weisberger, Boing Boing

“Celtic mythology and an ancient Druid with modern attitude mix it up in the Arizona desert in this witty new fantasy series.”—Kelly Meding, author of Chimera

“Outrageously fun.”—The Plain Dealer, on Hounded

“Superb . . . plenty of quips and zap-pow-bang fighting.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review), on Hounded

“Exciting . . . [Atticus] is one of the best main characters currently present in the urban fantasy genre.”—Fantasy Book Critic, on Tricked

“Funny, razor-sharp . . . plenty of action, humor, and mythology.”—Booklist (starred review), on Shattered

Corey, Fowler & Christopher Reviews at SFFWorld

I catch up with a book Mark read earlier in the year while Mark continues on with a newly found series he’s quite enjoying and Nila takes a look at a Superhero novel.


James S. A. Corey’s Expanse sequence has received deserved award nominations with the first volume and the second volume has already received a fair amount off praise. Here, I give my thoughts on Caliban’s War:

The plot itself is fairly familiar, ship on the run trying to find a missing girl, same macguffin from previous novel, interplanetary politics. But so what, the novel is a lot of fun and perhaps more fun than it’s predecessor because we can see more of the characters both new and old. With familiar situations established, Corey can delve further into the interpersonal relationships of the crew of the Rocinate, and more importantly, give us new strong characters to follow. While Prax is an interesting character, the ladies really shine in Caliban’s War. Bobbi is a complex character - a large, imposing woman whose thoughts and actions come across very naturally and realistic. Conversely, the ascerbic Avasarala provides some snarky humor throughout. Her uncompromising attitude is balanced by her interactions with her family. There’s also a good deal of political weaving especially through her character as she interacts with people very high up in the solar system’s hierarchy including a particularly grin-inducing scene with one individual at the novel’s conclusion. I hope to see much more of her in this series as it progresses..

Mark catches up with the second installment of Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May Mystery, and the book is The Water Room:

With the events of Full Dark House (reviewed here) I found the series a very pleasant surprise. The Water Room develops them further. Whereas the first book introduced them in their most recent reincarnation (they did appear in some of Christopher’s other writing previously) and Full Dark House was mainly about their first case back in 1940’s London, this one is resolutely ‘now’, with the book’s beginning at the time of the reopening of the redecorated Peculiar Crimes Unit’s base after the explosion in Full Dark House.

It’s not long before we’re into ‘the weird stuff’. Bryant is contacted by an old colleague whose elderly sister has been found dead in her house and in possibly mysterious circumstances. The body was in the cellar, sitting, as if at rest, but with water around her feet and Thames river water in her mouth. The house is nowhere near the river. Bryant is intrigued and involves the PCU. However, when her various and varied neighbours are interviewed, it seems initially innocuous, a case of relatively simple sudden-death.

Last, and most certainly not least, Nila jumps aboard the growing trend of Superhero Fiction in her review of Adam Christopher’s Seven Wonders:

Set in a fictitious town in southern California, Seven Wonders introduces us to Tony Prosdocimi; a regular guy, nothing special. Except for the fact that at the ripe age of 23, he has suddenly developed superhuman powers. Powers just like the Seven Wonders, a team of superheroes that supposedly protect the City of San Ventura from the last supervillain on earth, The Cowl.
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After this, the story then follows a myriad of protagonists and antagonists vying to either save the city, save their own skin, or hold the city hostage for some unsaid reason. In the midst of it all, a regular guys ends up being the last thing he thought he’d be, a cop’s dead body get’s hijacked by an alien, and the world is indeed saved - but not safe.

Empire and Empire Reviews at SFFWorld

Mark and I reviewed two books recently for SFFWorld and here’s where I provide a blurb, cover image and the link to the reviews.

Mark reviewed a debut novel from the fine folks at Angry Robot that’s generating quite a bit of buzz, for a number of reasons including the terrific cover/design, solid story, and marketing behind the book. The novel in question is Adam Christopher’s Empire State which involves gangsters and superheroes in a noirish New York City:

We have murder and gunshots in dark city streets, where it is always raining, detectives under streetlamps wrestling silently with their broody thoughts and dubious morals. We have Superheroes entwined with Gangsters. And with illicit booze, gang fights, car chases, airships, and robots, it’s a great mash-up of pulp fiction, film-noir and even a little SF ‘sensawunda’. It’s a book with the detective feel of Chandler and Marlowe living in the strange urban landscapes of China Mieville, mixed in with a good dose of Paul McAuley quantum universe SF. And above all, it’s a pulp style superhero book, one that is reminiscent of George RR Martin’s Wild Cards series, or my recent read of Paul Malmont.

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In such tales where the writer is juggling so many aspects, there’s a great risk it isn’t going to work, that there’s too many references to the past and not enough originality, and that ‘the grand idea’ in the end peters out to nothing. There was an issue here in that the set up in the initial pages is quite impressive, although by the middle the novel suffers by a colossal slow-down of pace, with lots of running around between low-key locations which is a tad repetitive. In order to maintain the air of mystery before the big reveal midway through, we don’t see a lot of Empire State and so momentum is lost. Some things are kept deliberately enigmatic: the war between Empire State and ‘The Enemy’, the fact that most residents of the Empire State cannot remember much of their history, but seem to exist mainly in the now.

I read and reviewed the second Riyria Revelations omnibus by Michael J. Sullivan, Rise of Empire:

As the title of the omnibus would imply, the Empire and lineage of the thought-to-be lost heir of Novron is making a foothold in the world, absorbing smaller nation-states into its thrall. The empress Modina is a puppet, existing in a state of shock – almost zombie-like – since she was raised from the backwoods girl named Thrace to the role of Heir of Novron and “rightful” ruler of the empire. The ‘scheming manipulator’ behind her ascendancy, Saldur the uncle of Princess or Arista and King Alric of Melengar has posited himself as the one pulling the strings of the burgeoning empire. As such, he raises a random kitchen girl, Amilia to the post of tutor to the emperor. Considering Amilia’s predecessor was not successful in Saldur’s eyes and taken to task because of that failure, Amilia is less than thrilled about her new appointment.

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In the two novels (Nyphron Rising and The Emerald Storm) collected in the Rise of Empire omnibus, Michael J. Sullivan’s storytelling abilities continue to shine. It becomes clearer that he’s got the forest of a saga in mind, rather than just a few trees of story. A lot of nice set pieces (a gladiatorial fight involving Royce, Hadrian and some of the companions from The Emerald Storm against a pack of goblins; the various identities under which we meet Arista, etc) highlight the panache of Sullivan’s narrative arsenal. I particularly enjoyed the character journey on which he’s got Arista moving, though she was a primary character in the previous volumes, she fully came into her own in these two novels as a character on the same importance level as Royce and Hadrian, from my perspective.