Books in the Mail (W/E 2014-02-08)

A Tor-themed week here at the 'o Stuff. A few e-ARCs and a few physical copies

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Tor Hardcover 04/01/2014) – It is something of an open secret that Katherine Addision is actually Sarah Monette. Regardless of the name under which this book appears, it looks quite interesting. Goblin-punk!

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.

Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.

Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend . . . and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne–or his life.

Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor is an exciting fantasy novel, set against the pageantry and color of a fascinating, unique world, is a memorable debut for a great new talent.

A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias (Tor Hardcover 01/28/2014) – This is the debut from Cambias and is a Hard SF novel about first contact. Cambias has been publishing short fiction for over a decade in various places.

On the planet Ilmatar, under a roof of ice a kilometer thick, a team of deep-sea diving scientists investigates the blind alien race that lives below. The Terran explorers have made an uneasy truce with the Sholen, their first extraterrestrial contact: so long as they don’t disturb the Ilmataran habitat, they’re free to conduct their missions in peace.

But when Henri Kerlerec, media personality and reckless adventurer, ends up sliced open by curious Ilmatarans, tensions between Terran and Sholen erupt, leading to a diplomatic disaster that threatens to escalate to war.

Against the backdrop of deep-sea guerrilla conflict, a new age of human exploration begins as alien cultures collide. Both sides seek the aid of the newly enlightened Ilmatarans. But what this struggle means for the natives—and the future of human exploration—is anything but certain, in A Darkling Sea by James Cambias.

Tin Star by Cecil Castellucci (Roaring Brook Press Hardcover 02/25/2014) – Castellucci is a very established author of many things, this is her latest YA SF novel.

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station.

When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson (Tor Hardcover 04/15/2014) – This is the debut from Davidson and looks like a nice blending of myth and magic. Minotaurs!

A hundred years ago, the Minotaurs saved Caeli-Amur from conquest. Now, three very different people may hold the keys to the city's survival.

Once, it is said, gods used magic to create reality, with powers that defied explanation. But the magic—or science, if one believes those who try to master the dangers of thaumaturgy—now seems more like a dream. Industrial workers for House Technis, farmers for House Arbor, and fisher folk of House Marin eke out a living and hope for a better future. But the philosopher-assassin Kata plots a betrayal that will cost the lives of godlike Minotaurs; the ambitious bureaucrat Boris Autec rises through the ranks as his private life turns to ashes; and the idealistic seditionist Maximilian hatches a mad plot to unlock the vaunted secrets of the Great Library of Caeli-Enas, drowned in the fabled city at the bottom of the sea, its strangeness visible from the skies above.

In a novel of startling originality and riveting suspense, these three people, reflecting all the hopes and dreams of the ancient city, risk everything for a future that they can create only by throwing off the shackles of tradition and superstition, as their destinies collide at ground zero of a conflagration that will transform the world . . . or destroy it.

Unwrapped Sky is a stunningly original debut by Rjurik Davidson, a young master of the New Weird.

Words of Radiance (Book Two of The Stormlilght Archive) by Brandon Sanderson (Tor Hardcover 03/04/2014) – The biggest fantasy novel to publish in 2014 in more ways than one. Sanderson is arguably one of (if not the) biggest name in Fantasy without the initials GRRM and this book is physically ginormous. My review of The Way of Kings is blurbed on the back cover.

The Stormlight Archive sequence began in 2010 with the New York Times bestseller The Way of Kings. Now, the eagerly anticipated Words of Radiance continues the epic story and answers many of your questions.

Six years ago, the Assassin in White, a hireling of the inscrutable Parshendi, assassinated the Alethi king on the very night a treaty between men and Parshendi was being celebrated. So began the Vengeance Pact among the highprinces of Alethkar and the War of Reckoning against the Parshendi.

Now the Assassin is active again, murdering rulers all over the world of Roshar, using his baffling powers to thwart every bodyguard and elude all pursuers. Among his prime targets is Highprince Dalinar, widely considered the power behind the Alethi throne. His leading role in the war would seem reason enough, but the Assassin’s master has much deeper motives.

Expected by his enemies to die the miserable death of a military slave, Kaladin survived to be given command of the royal bodyguards, a controversial first for a low-status "darkeyes." Now he must protect the king and Dalinar from every common peril as well as the distinctly uncommon threat of the Assassin, all while secretly struggling to master remarkable new powers that are somehow linked to his honorspren, Syl.

Brilliant but troubled Shallan strives along a parallel path. Despite being broken in ways she refuses to acknowledge, she bears a terrible burden: to somehow prevent the return of the legendary Voidbringers and the civilization-ending Desolation that will follow. The secrets she needs can be found at the Shattered Plains, but just arriving there proves more difficult than she could have imagined.

Meanwhile, at the heart of the Shattered Plains, the Parshendi are making an epochal decision. Hard pressed by years of Alethi attacks, their numbers ever shrinking, they are convinced by their war leader, Eshonai, to risk everything on a desperate gamble with the very supernatural forces they once fled. The possible consequences for Parshendi and humans alike, indeed, for Roshar itself, are as dangerous as they are incalculable.

The doors of the Stormlight Archive first opened to us with The Way of Kings. Read that book – now available in all formats – and then Words of Radiance, and you can be part of the adventure every dazzling step of the way.

Halo: Mortal Dictata (Kilo-Five Trilogy #3) by Karen Traviss (Tor, Trade Paperback 10/25/2011) Traviss seems to be doing quite well with these Halo books, as she seems to do with any of the SF properties she writes. This one closes out a trilogy.

Wars end. But hatred, guilt, and devotion can endure beyond the grave.

With the Covenant War over, the Office of Naval Intelligence faces old grievances rising again to threaten Earth. The angry, bitter colonies, still with scores to settle from the insurrection put on hold for thirty years, now want justice -- and so does a man whose life was torn apart by ONI when his daughter was abducted for the SPARTAN-II program. Black ops squad Kilo-Five find their loyalties tested beyond breaking point when the father of their Spartan comrade, still searching for the truth about her disappearance, prepares to glass Earth's cities to get an answer. How far will Kilo-Five go to stop him? And will he be able to live with the truth when he finds it? The painful answer lies with a man long dead, and a conscience that still survives in the most unlikely, undiscovered place.

Swept Away by the Tide - Backburner Books/Series

One thing I think people like myself who read review books regularly experience is that the more we read, the more we want to read. Despite Sturgeon's Law, there are indeed a fairly high percentage of good books being published.  At least from what I've been reading in the SFF realm of things.  To that point, keeping up with the new releases from popular authors and the hot and flashy debut authors can be a challenge. As my blog, review activity at SFFWorld and the SFFWorld Blog, as well as recent reviews at Tor.com, attest, I read a lot. I read, on average, about a book per week.  In more realistic numbers, take that "about one per week" to its annual conclusion, I've been averaging reading between 60 and 70 books read per year.  Even with that number, I feel like don't get to all the books I'd like to read.

One side effect is that focusing more on the newer releases of a given year means that a fair number of series I enjoy and have read over the years have tended to fall by the wayside. This is unfortunate, because at one point I enjoyed the authors a great deal. The evidence of my enjoyment of these books & series can be seen in the positive reviews I've posted to SFFWorld, discussions I've had in the SFFWorld forums,  or the posts I've made about those books/series/authors here on my blog.

Some of these series I feel guilty for not continuing because I did enjoy the books in the series; I want to support authors who have connected with me and entertained me. On the other hand, I’m curious if my lack of finishing them/continuing on with the series speaks to the quality of the series and my overall enjoyment of them rather than the annual, continuing tidal wave of new releases pushing them into more unreachable slopes of Mount Toberead. 

In the summaries of the series below, I assess my enjoyment of the books in the series and determine if I will (ever) forge ahead with those series. The reasons will be a mix of both of these eventual outcomes, because for some of these series, I will catch up with them and others the chances of that happening aren’t quite as good.

A last bit of preamble, these are series in which I’ve ventured fairly significantly. At the very least more than one book/the first book, none of these series “falloffs” involve me just not reading the final book, nor will any of the series be those where I’ve totally given up on the series, nor will these be series I am plodding forth (Dresden Files, Vorkosigan Series, etc). So, without further ado, here are the books/series that were swept away by the tide of review/current year releases.

Wess’har by Karen Traviss

I really enjoyed the first three installments of this Military SF series for a lot of reasons. From reading the first three novels, I felt Traviss had great POV characters, interesting alien cultures and overall, just entertaining stories.

Proof is in the pudding: My reviews of City of Pearl and the sequel Crossing the Line.  Books remaining to be read: Matriarch, Ally and Judge.

Chance of returning to this series? I'd say dead even at 50% mainly because I’ve gone 50% through them, they are relatively short and I recall them being fairly quick reads.

Side note, Traviss has a new novel, Going Gray, publishing in 2014 seemingly unrelated.

Marla Mason by Tim Pratt

I first read about Marla in The Solaris Book of New Fantasy edited by George Mann (2007) and was very intrigued.  I read the first two books back to back.

Proof is in the pudding: My reviews of enjoyed the first three novels Blood Engines and Poison Sleep. I’ve had a copy of the third book Dead Reign on Mount Toberead for nearly five years in what is one of the books I’ve had for the longest amount of time. Since reading the second book, I’ve noticed that Pratt has been self-publishing these books, including (I think) at least one of them through Kickstarter.

Chance of returning to this series - Better than 50%, I’ve got the third book and loved the world Pratt created around Marla, particularly the Lovecraftian feel. The nature of Urban Fantasy novels such as these seems more conducive to being read as standalone and might work with such a time lapse. 

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont

Yeah, this is a big one, right? I’ve read the first seven by Erikson (up to Reaper's Gale) and Esslemont’s first. For the most part, I enjoyed them a great deal, but reading Forge of Darkness last year really soured me on attempting to finish out either the mainline series by Erikson or the books Esslemont’s been writing. I've also seen less than positive response to the series' conclusion.

Proof in the pudding: My blog post and reaction to The Bonehunters (also here) and my review of Night of Knives. It has now been 5 years since I last read a mainline Malazan novel and I’m concerned about the challenge of remembering past elements of the series were I to pick up book eight, Toll the Hounds.

Chance of returning to this series - Less than 50%. Even though I have the final three books in physical form, they are huge books and as I’ve said, Forge of Darkness was such a difficult book for me to read.

Crown of Stars by Kate Elliott

I loved the first four King’s Dragon, Prince of Dogs, The Burning Stone, and Child of Flame, giving them (in my personal spreadsheet/reading log) scores ranging from 7 to 8.5, but this series really suffered from the Wave of Review books/reviewing.  My concern with this series, even more so than Malazan is just how much I likely have forgotten since reading Child of Flame back in 2003. Also, these books tend to be on the doorstopper side of the fence. I loved the worldbuilding in these books, but my other concern is how much my enjoyment dipped on her recent series Spiritwalker, enjoying the first Cold Magic but not quite so much with Cold Fire, book 2 to the point that I didn’t and don’t plan on reading the final installment. 

Proof in the Pudding: No reviews on this series as I read through the first four before I started writing book reviews for SFFWorld.

Chance of returning to this series - I’d say dead even at 50% because so much of the feel of these books still rumbles around in my head and I am more than 50% through the series, with only 3 of the remaining 7 books yet to be read.

Vlad Taltos by Steven Brust

I had been catching up with this series through each of the omnibus editions released The Book of Jhereg, The Book of Taltos, The Book of Athyra, and Dragon & Issola (one of many, many great Science Fiction Book Club Omnibus editions that make SFBC worth joining, quitting, and rejoining) and up to Dzur. 

Proof in the pudding: No reviews except for, like The Bonehunters, a blog post professing my enjoyment of the book and series as a whole.

Chance of returning to this series - This is probably the series I’m most likely to pick up again as the Taltos books, of those mentioned in this post, are the books I’ve enjoyed the most. I’ve read 10 of the 13 books published and only have three to read to be caught up, or four if you count the forthcoming Hawk publishing in 2014. I also happen to own book 11, Jhegaala, so if Tor decides to omnibify books 12 and 13 Iorich and Tiassa, my decision to jump back into the world of Vlad Taltos would be even easier to make.

So, am I the only reader/blogger/reviewer who has experienced this Sweeping/Backburner effect?

Books in the Mail (W/E 2011-10-22)

Only two books this week after two very big weeks of arrivals.



Halo: Glasslands by Karen Traviss (Tor, Trade Paperback 10/25/2011) – Traviss has been focusing her writing on some of the most popular genre franchises over the past handful of years - Star Wars, Gears of War and now Halo. I’ve only read, but greatly enjoyed, her first three Wess’Har novels, but I think this could be an interesting book.

The Human-Covenant War may be over, but the age of good feelings has not begun. In fact, with the unity that war brings now gone, old divisions once again become visible. Even more ominous are rumblings of a new uprising in the heart of the former Covenant Empire. With dangers on all sides, the UNSC must somehow reassert its presence in hostile territories. A reliable author in a potent trilogy starter set in the post-HALO 3 world.


The Emperor’s Will by John Blanche (Black Library Hardcover 11/08/2011) – This is an oversized art book featuring covers and other assorted illustrations from Black Library’s Warhammer 40K line. More B&W illustrations than color, it seems.

Inquisitors, assassins, astropaths, navigators – these and many other agents of the Imperium are celebrated in this glorious full-colour art book.

Packed with previously unseen illustrations from John Blanche and David Gallagher as well as a host of classic images, The Emperor’s Will provides an unparalleled glimpse into the inner workings of the Imperium of man.

Cracked Review, Hines Interview, SFFWorld Review, & Reading Resolutions

Following on from last week, I posted my review of Joshua Palmatier’s The Cracked Throne, which more than straddles the line as a simple middle book in a trilogy. The book started a bit slow for me, but the ending really cranked up and more than balanced that beginning. Here’s a snippet:

The throne itself comes more into play and Palmatier expands on its strange history. Varis soon learns the souls of the former rulers of Amekor are housed within Throne, and more importantly, so are the souls of the seven who poured their essences into the creation of the throne. The visions of destruction are both a reminder of the past and a harbinger of the future, the throne was created to keep an invading force of blue-skinned nomads, the Chorl, from destroying Amenkor.

What makes this novel is very much what made its predecessor work – Varis’s engaging narrative voice. There are no pretentions and the strength of any first person narrative is one of Varis’s strengths – the reader (for lack of a better term) learns about things alongside the protagonist. Another strength of Palmatier’s story is the throne itself and the slow reveal of its nature. It might be odd to make another comic book comparison to Palmatier’s work, but the Throne reminded me a great deal of an element of the Superman/Doomsday storyline where by rulers of a world pool their magical abilities together to create a super-being to battle the threat of the monster Doomsday. Palmatier’s theme of sacrifice for the greater good and its ultimate consequences echo more powerfully and subtly.

I’m also conducting an e-mail interview with Joshua which should probably go up when my review of The Vacant Throne is posted.

Also in SFFWorld updates, an interview with Jim C. Hines went up over the weekend. His Jig the Goblin books have been fairly well-received and I have his latest, The Stepsister Scheme on the review pile.

Hobbit also posted the third and final part of SFFWorld’s 2008 Year in Review.

Some reading resolutions I’d like to make for 2009:

Read more short fiction
Last year I read only 6 collections/anthologies, one of which was new fiction (Eclipse One), two were the John Joseph Adams-edited reprints; two were reprint anthologies/retrospectives (David Weber, Kull). I’ve got a backlog of some anthologies and will hopefully pick up some more with different authors/editors. Short fiction never comprised a majority of my genre reading and every year I tell myself to read more of it.

Read more fiction from different voices
This is somewhat encompassing. I read only three women writers last year in novel length form (Liz Williams, Kay Kenyon, and Karen Miller) and most of what I read was written by white guys. While I can’t control what books publishers publish and send to me, I can choose from that pool which books to read. In past years when I keep tallies of what I read, I read more women and more than just white guys.

Read outside of what I typically read
Most of the fantasy I read is secondary world/epic/high fantasy. While I’ve been dipping my toes into Urban Fantasy for a while, I would like to read more of it and from across the board. As for the Science Fiction I read, it often leans to Space Opera/Military Science Fiction. Point being, both genres have enough variation for me to try the many different flavors of Speculative Fiction. I’d also like to read some more mystery and more non-genre work, Mrs. Blog o’ Stuff has plenty of non-fiction stuff for me to tackle like a recent Ben Franklin biography and some history books.

Catch up with series fiction
The Dresden Files; Vampire Earth by E.E. Knight; Wess'Har by Karen Traviss; Vlad Taltos by Steven Brust (I'm only one book behind); Shadowmarch (I'm only one book behind); Marla Mason by T.A. Pratt; Malazan; Black Company, Dread Empire, and Garrett, P.I. (OK, I didn't even start the Garrett, P.I. books yet) by Glen Cook; Dune (a re-visit and catch-up really), Takeshi Kovacs by Richard K. Morgan; Alex Benedict by Jack McDevitt; and the list could probably continue. Shit, I just added another dozen plus books and may be counter-intuitive to some of the above reading resolutions

All of the above are things I’ve been thinking about as constantly reshuffle my Pile o' Shame /"To read"pile, and with the amount of books I receive for review and still have unread, it isn’t practical to justify spending hard earned cash on more books. But what is practical, anyway? There are just too many books to read at this rate.

Books in the Mail (W/E 9/06/2008)

Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie - I read the first two books (The Blade Itself and Before They Are Hanged) and really liked them so I’ll definitely be getting to this one soon. I have the UK ARC signed, a copy of the US ARC and what arrived this past week is the ‘final’ book as it sits on shelves in fine retailers near you. From my review of Before They Are Hanged:

All of this may lead one to believe Abercrombie is merely writing a character study set in a harsh fantastical world. Well, in some respects the characters do give the novel its greatest flavor. However, within each character interaction, Abercombie fleshes out both the story and the world. Through Glotka’s eyes, we see how war is affecting the nation of Angland and those who run the nation. Granted, Glotka may have a hardened point of view, but this makes it no less entertaining or warranted. Through the eyes of Bayaz and his companions seeking the Stone, we see the larger affects of war on the world and more importantly to their cause, the wide-spread misuse of magic. We also see the history of the world through the stories Bayaz and his protégé Quaim tell on their collective journey. Again, these snapshots of the world past are thrilling reads and enhance the already ample depth of the world Abercrombie has created.

The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams - This looks gigantically awesome.

From White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead; from Resident Evil to World War Z, zombies have invaded popular culture, becoming the monsters that best express the fears and anxieties of the modern west. The ultimate consumers, zombies rise from the dead and feed upon the living, their teeming masses ever hungry, ever seeking to devour or convert, like mindless, faceless eating machines. Zombies have been depicted as mind-controlled minions, the shambling infected, the disintegrating dead, the ultimate lumpenproletariat, but in all cases, they reflect us, mere mortals afraid of death in a society on the verge of collapse.

The Living Dead is 230,000 words of zombie fiction (34 stories!), collecting the best tales from Book of the Dead, Still Dead, and Mondo Zombie, along with the best zombie fiction from other sources.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - John Joseph Adams, This Year's Class Picture - Dan Simmons, Some Zombie Contingency Plans - Kelly Link, Death and Suffrage - Dale Bailey, Ghost Dance - Sherman Alexie, Blossom - David J. Schow, The Third Dead Body - Nina Kiriki Hoffman, The Dead - Michael Swanwick, The Dead Kid - Darrell Schweitzer, Malthusian's Zombie - Jeffrey Ford, Beautiful Stuff - Susan Palwick, Sex, Death and Starshine - Clive Barker, Stockholm Syndrome - David Tallerman, Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead - Joe Hill, Those Who Seek Forgiveness - Laurell K. Hamilton, In Beauty, Like the Night - Norman Partridge, Prairie - Brian Evenson, Everything is Better With Zombies - Hannah Wolf Bowen, Home Delivery - Stephen King, Less Than Zombie - Douglas E. Winter, Sparks Fly Upward - Lisa Morton, Meathouse Man - George R. R. Martin, Deadman's Road - Joe Lansdale, The Skull-Faced Boy - David Barr Kirtley, The Age of Sorrow - Nancy Kilpatrick, She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave - Catherine Cheek, Dead Like Me - Adam-Troy Castro, Zora and the Zombie - Andy Duncan, Calcutta, Lord of Nerves - Poppy Z. Brite, Followed - Will McIntosh, The Song the Zombie Sang - Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg, Passion Play - Nancy Holder, Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man - Scott Edelman, and How the Day Runs Down - John Langan

Woods and Waters Wild by Charles de Lint - Woods and Waters Wild is the third volume of Charles de Lint's Collected Early Stories. Here's the table of contents, a list of obscurities that will be the envy of de Lint readers everywhere.

High Fantasy:
"A Kingly Thing" (5900 words); first appeared in Beyond the Fields We Know #1; 1979
"Woods and Waters Wild" (2400 words); first appeared in SPWAO Showcase #1, 1981.
"The White Road" (8170 words); first appeared in Tales of the Witch World, edited by Andre Norton; Tor Books, 1987.
"The Graceless Child" (8650 words); first appeared in Halflings, Hobbits, Warrows & Wee Folk, edited by Baird Searles & Brian Thomsen; Warner, 1991
"The Fane of the Grey Rose" (14,700 words); first appeared in Swords Against Darkness IV, edited by Andrew J. Offutt; Zebra Books, 1979
Angharad
"Cold Blows the Wind" (4450 words); first appeared in Sword and Sorceress II, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley; DAW Books, 1985
"The Weeping Oak" (5400 words); first appeared in Sword and Sorceress IV, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley; DAW Books, 1987
"Into the Green" (5500 words); first appeared in Sword and Sorceress V, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley; DAW Books, 1988
Dennet & Willie
"Dennet & the Fiddler" (8000 words); first appeared in Night Voyages #8; 1982
"Dragonwood" (5700 words); first appeared in Night Voyages 10; 1984
Pastiches
"A Tale of Tangle Who Has Many Names" (1200 words); first appeared in Valhalla #1; 1979
"Of the Temple in the City of the Burning Spires" (600 words); first appeared in Valhalla #1; 1979
"Nareth the Questioner" (800 words); first appeared in Valhalla #1; 1979
"Llew the Homeless" (1750 words); unpublished.
Thomas the Rhymer
"Thomas the Rhymer" (10,800 words); first appeared in The Mythic Circle #1, 1987
"Gipsy Davey" (8200 words); first appeared in Mythic Circle #5; 1988
"Cruel Sister" (7950 words); unpublished

Star Wars: Order 66 A Republic Commando Novel Karen Travis - After the fierce combat of Hard Contact, Triple Zero, and True Colors comes the spectacular culmination of New York Times bestselling author Karen Traviss’s gripping Republic Commando series. As a battle-scarred era nears its end, a shattering power play is about to stun the entire galaxy . . . and set in motion events that will alter destinies and resound throughout history.

Even as the Clone Wars are about to reach an explosive climax, no one knows if victory will favor the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) or the Separatists. But no matter who wins, the stakes are highest for elite Special Ops clones like the Republic Commandos in Omega and Delta squads–and the notorious renegade Advance Recon Commando troopers known as Null ARCs.

With Republic forces stretched to the max and casualties mounting, the last thing these beleaguered warriors need to hear is that Chancellor Palpatine is keeping vast armies of secret clone troops in reserve. Sergeant Skirata, a mentor to the clone commandos, has no intention of standing idly by while Palpatine sends them into battle like lambs to the slaughter. Skirata begins to plan the clones’ escape from the GAR, but his heroic effort will be in vain unless he can reverse the clones’ accelerated aging process.

Caught in the treacherous dealings of their leaders, and locked in the battles of their lives, the disillusioned Null ARCs and Commandos nonetheless fight with everything they’ve got, determined to wrest victory from the Seps and save the galaxy.

But even the deadliest weapons may not be powerful enough to defeat the real menace. And nothing will stop the apocalyptic horror unleashed when Palpatine utters the chilling words The time has come. Execute Order 66. Translation: The Jedi have tried to stage a coup, and all must be shot on sight.

With their faith in the Republic and their loyalty to their Jedi allies put to the ultimate test, how will the men of Omega and Delta squads react to the most infamous command in galactic history? All the breathtaking action, suspense, and intrigue of Karen Traviss’s Republic Commando series comes alive in Star Wars: Order 66.


After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove - 1945: Russian troops have entered Berlin, and are engaged in a violent orgy of robbery, rape, and revenge...

Wehrmacht officer Hasso Pemsel, a career soldier on the losing end of the greatest war in history, flees from a sniper's bullet, finding himself hurled into a mysterious, fantastic world of wizards, dragons, and unicorns. There he allies himself with the blond-haired, blue-eyed Lenelli, and Velona, their goddess in human form, offering them his knowledge of warfare and weaponry in their genocidal struggle against a race of diminutive, swarthy barbarians known as Grenye.

But soon, the savagery of the Lenelli begins to eat at Hasso Pemsel's soul, causing him to question everything he has long believed about race and Reich, right and wrong, Ubermenschen and Untermenschen. Hasso Pemsel will learn the difference between following orders... and following his conscience.

From Harry Turtledove, the master of alternate history, comes After the Downfall, a novel of magic, epic warfare, and desperate choices.

Books in the Mail (W/E 7/26)

The City at the End of Time by Greg Bear – This is the final book, I received the ARC a few months ago and the actual on sale date is August 5, 2008.

In a time like the present, in a world that may or may not be our own, three young people–Ginny, Jack, and Daniel–dream of a doomed, decadent city of the distant future: the Kalpa. Ginny’s and Jack’s dreams overtake them without warning, leaving their bodies behind while carrying their consciousnesses forward, into the minds of two inhabitants of the Kalpa–a would-be warrior, Jebrassy, and an inquisitive explorer, Tiadba–who have been genetically retro-engineered to possess qualities of ancient humanity. As for Daniel: He dreams of an empty darkness–all that his future holds.

But more than dreams link Ginny, Jack, and Daniel. They are fate-shifters, born with the ability to skip like stones across the surface of the fifth dimension, inhabiting alternate versions of themselves. And each guards an object whose origin and purpose are unknown: gnarled, stony artifacts called sum-runners that persist unchanged through all versions of time.

Hunted by others with similar powers who seek the sum-runners on behalf of a terrifying, goddess-like entity known as the Chalk Princess, Ginny, Jack, and Daniel are drawn, despite themselves, into an all but hopeless mission to rescue the future–and complete the greatest achievement in human history.

The Diamond of Darkhold (the fourth BOOK OF EMBER) by Jeanne DuPrau – I love getting the fourth (or any non first) book in a series after not having read any of the previous books. This is an ARC with the actual book publishing at the end of August.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars by Karen Traviss – I’ve read a few books by Traviss, so this might jump the pile a bit so I can read it before the movie hits theaters. This is, if it couldn’t be surmised by now, the novelization of the upcoming CGI-animated Star Wars flick.


The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld – For some reason, Tor reissued this series in trade paperback. To me, it would make sense to bind the two books in this duology, planned from what I’ve gathered as a single volume, rather than two trades which are double the price of the mass market paperback which went out of print. Those marketing choices aside, I read the first book a while ago and it was the selection of the SFFWorld Science Fiction book club back in 2005, but never made it to the second book. The arrival of this book is a good opportunity to revist Westerfeld’s saga, since I’ve enjoyed his YA vampire novels.