Books in the Mail (W/E 2015-10-24)

Just a few books here at the home offices of the 'o Stuff, have a gander...

Departure (A Laundry Files novel) by A.G. Riddle (HarperVoyager Hardcover 10/20/2015) – Riddle is the latest self-published sensation (having sold over one million copies) to make the jump to traditional publishing. This one, as the tag line indicates, has some resonance with Lost. This is the final/hardcover of the ARC I received back in June.

Flight 305 took off in 2014...

But it crashed in a world very different from our own...

With time running out, five strangers must unravel why they were taken...

And how to get home.

FROM THE BACK COVER

Harper Lane has problems. In a few hours, she'll have to make a decision that will change her life forever. But when her flight from New York to London crash-lands in the English countryside, she discovers that she's made of tougher stuff than she ever imagined.

As Harper and the survivors of Flight 305 struggle to stay alive in the aftermath of the crash, they soon realize that this world is very different from the one they left. Their lives are connected, and some believe they've been brought here for a reason.

In addition to Harper, several other passengers seem to hold clues about why Flight 305 crashed. There's:

Nick Stone, an American on his way to a meeting with The Gibraltar Project, an international group dedicated to building a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar and draining the Mediterranean.

Sabrina Schröder, a German scientist who has unknowingly sealed the fate of half the flight's passengers.

Yul Tan, a Chinese-American computer scientist who has just made the breakthrough of a lifetime: a quantum internet capable of transmitting more data, farther, faster than ever thought possible. His invention, however, does much more than he ever dreamed possible.

With time running out to save the survivors of Flight 305, Harper and Nick race to unravel the conspiracy that crashed their plane. As they put the pieces together, they discover that their decisions have already doomed one world and will soon determine the future of ours.

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The Alchemy of Chaos by Marshall Ryan Maresca (DAW Mass Market Paperback 03/02/2016) – Third book featuring Maresca’s superhero/sword and sorcery tale. I had a lot of fun reading the first one (The Thorn of Dentonhill) earlier this year, but somehow the second book never made its way to me.

Veranix Calbert is The Thorn—the street vigilante-turned-legend—and a pest to Willem Fenmere, the drug kingpin of Dentonhill. Veranix is determined to stop Fenmere and the effitte drug trade, especially when he discovers that Fenmere is planning on using the Red Rabbits gang in his neighborhood.

But Veranix is also a magic student at the University of Maradaine, and it’s exam week. With his academic career riding on his performance, there’s no time to go after Fenmere or the Red Rabbits. But when a series of pranks on campus grow deadly, it’s clear that someone has a vendetta against the university, and Veranix may be the only one who can stop them…

A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar (Melville House Hardcover 03/08/2016) – Tidhar is an author I’ve been wanting to read for a few years now, very glad to get this one.

A twisted masterpiece . . . A Holocaust novel like no other, Lavie Tidhar’s A Man Lies Dreaming comes crashing through the door of literature like Sam Spade with a .38 in his hand. This is a shocking book as well as a rather brilliant one. —The Guardian

A noir thriller with a twist and a Holocaust novel infused with the spirit of shund–the dark Israeli pulp fiction that thrived in the years after World War II–the British Fantasy Award-shortlisted A Man Lies Dreaming is a radical literary experiment that brings alternate history to life. Lavie Tidhar has reimagined the rainy, atmospheric energy of London in the 1930s, and the troubled private detective with an unspeakable secret who roams its streets. As A Man Lies Dreaming unfolds and more of its mysteries come to the surface, we find ourselves drawn into a novel at once gripping and profoundly unsettling.

Ariel and The Bookman reviewed at SFFWorld

Ace Books re-released a cult-classic genre novel in August of last year, Ariel by Steven R. Boyett. The novel has some genre famous fans like John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow and I now consider myself a fan of the book. It is the first book review I posted to SFFWorld this year.

Boyett quickly avoids some of the fluffy cutesy cliché associated with unicorns when Ariel begins to speak and mouth-off back to Pete. The bond between the two is more than that of a mage and a familiar, it is an intimate bond that might even border on that of star-crossed lovers. This description sounds trite, I admit and even writing it does as well. However, Boyett’s skill in evoking the feelings between Ariel and Pete is wonderfully rendered.
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Little, rather no explanation is given to the reason behind the Change. It just happened and though it may have been interesting to find out the why, Ariel is a stronger novel because no explanation is given. Perhaps because I recently finished it, I couldn’t help but draw mental comparisons between Ariel and Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece The Road. Stylistically both novels couldn’t be more different, but the sense of ruin and the dangers of a decay of civilization they both illicit in the feel of the world as seen through their characters is similar.

Another recent review is Bridie Roman's review of The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar. Tidhar is doing a Q & A at SFFWorld for the next week or so. Here’s a blurb from Bridie’s review

This is a steampunk gem. The settings are marvellously detailed, giving you the feeling that there is a London in which Lizards reign and whales swim up the Thames to sing lullabies to the city dwellers. The technology is mystical yet mechanical, blending souls and machines into a fascinating mix that would spark one hell of a debate between philosophers. The society itself, in which poets and writers are revered, is pretty cool too, as you keep reading certain names often pop up that make you go “Hey! I’ve heard that somewhere!” Names dropped include Prime Minister Moriarty, Byron the Automaton and Captain Nemo. This particular feature of the book was fun and made much of it seem like an “in” joke. The plot itself was interesting, fast paced and diverse. One minute Orphan is being abducted, the next he is a pirate on a ship. I felt the pace was a bit too rushed, as though Lavie was trying to cram a big book into fewer pages. A lot of explanation was left out in favour of intrigue and descriptions of how Orphan is feeling. I often had a feeling that everyone in the book knew more and that nothing was being fully explained to me, however I let my imagination run wild and that filled the gaps for me, if a little insufficiently.