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 Plus: R.A. Salvatore’s
Latest Drizz’t Do ‘Urden Adventure
Another fairly big release week highlighted by Charlaine Harris’ “A Touch of the Dead” a collection of all of her Sookie Stackhouse short stories which have exploded in popularity thanks to the HBO TV show “True Blood”.
…Also out this week, R.A. Salvatore’s “The Ghost King” the third book in the Transitions series starring his popular swords and sorcery character, the dark elf Drizz’t Do ‘urden.
…Announced this past week, Sci-Fi authors Joe Haldeman and John Varley are the winners of the Robert A. Heinlein Award for 2009. The award is for "outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings to inspire the human exploration of space."
New In Fantasy...
A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris
(Sookie Stackhouse) (Ace)
Every Sookie Stackhouse short story ever
written-in one special volume-from the New York Times bestselling author.
New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris has re-imagined the
supernatural world with her "spunky" (Tampa Tribune) Southern
Vampire novels starring telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse. Now,
for the first time, here is every Sookie Stackhouse short story ever
written-together in one volume. Stories include "Fairy Dust,"
"One Word Answer," "Dracula Night," "Lucky,"
and "Giftwrap."
When the Spellplague ravages Faerûn,
Drizzt and his companions are caught in the chaos. Seeking out the help
of the priest Cadderly–the hero of the recently reissued series The
Cleric Quintet–Drizzt finds himself facing his most powerful and elusive
foe, the twisted Crenshinibon, the demonic crystal shard he believed
had been destroyed years ago.
 Dragon's Ring by Dave Freer (Baen Hardcover)
Tasmarin is a place of dragons, a plane
cut off from all other worlds, where dragons can be dragons and humans
can be dinner. It’s a place of islands, forests, mountains and wild
oceans, filled with magical denizens. Fionn—the black dragon—calmly
tells anyone who will listen that he’s going to destroy the place.
Of course he’s a joker, a troublemaker and a dragon of no fixed abode.
No one ever believes him. He’s dead serious.
Others strive to refresh the magics that built this place. To do so
they need the combined magics of all the intelligent species, to renew
the ancient balance and compact. There is just one problem. They need
a human mage, and dragons systematically eliminated those centuries
ago. Their augury has revealed that there is one, and they seek her
desperately. Unfortunately, she’s fallen in with Fionn, who really
doesn’t want them to succeed. He has his own reasons and dark designs.
The part he hadn’t worked out is that she will affect his plans too.
Chaos, roguery, heroism, theft, love, kidnapping, magic and war follow.
And more chaos.
The myth of a lost city carved of precious
jade has proven irresistible to many in Mithgar. Now Aravan, captain
of the Elven ship Eroean, has undertaken a quest to find it. With his
true love Aylis, the Magekind Seeress, beside him and a crew of men
and dwarves, he sets sail to follow the lure of legend.
New In Sci-Fi
Vigilante: A Major Ariane Kedros Novel by
Laura E. Reeve (Roc)
Amidst an uneasy peace between the Autonomists
and the Terrans, Major Ariane Kedros and her partner,
Matthew Journey,
have discovered alien ruins on a remote planet-ruins that bear evidence
to an ancient and highly advanced technology. But their discovery has
drawn the interest of high stakes players from every corner of the universe-including
that of the rogue leader of a fringe Terran sect. Ari must find a way
to stop him, before they all become ancient history...
The Tuloriad (The Legacy of Aldenata)
by John Ringo (Baen Hardcover)
Of the once innumerable battle clans
of the possess only a handful survive. And that on the sufferance of
a group of despised Indowy and Himmit. Plucked from the maelstrom on
Earth they are cast out into the eternal blackness of the stars with
only a slightly insane Indowy and a computer virus to guide them. What
follows is a trail of tears and remembrance as the Posleen retrace the
footsteps of their ancestors in a search for their homeworld. A search
to determine if the Posleen posess the one thing no Human would give
them credit for: A soul. Returned to their beginnings, the question
remains: Is there a new path for the Tular Posleen?
 At Empire's Edge by William C. Dietz
(Ace Hardcover)
In a far-distant future, the Uman Empire
has spread to the stars and beyond, conquering and colonizing worlds,
ruling with a benevolent-but iron-fist. The Pax Umana reigns, and all
is well. But on one planet, the remnants of a violent, shape-shifting
race called the Sagathis are confined, kept captive by xeno-cops, who
have been bio-engineered to be able to see through their guises. Still,
sometimes one manages to escape.
Zak Cato is a xeno-cop. He's returning
a fugitive Sagathi when things go horribly wrong. Cato- the only survivor
after the rest of his men are slaughtered-must now figure out who betrayed
them and bring the alien in, whatever the cost.
New In Horror
Eleisha Clevon has begun a correspondence
with fellow vampire Rose de Spenser. Both reluctant predators, they
venture outside only when the hunger becomes unbearable, trying not
to draw attention to themselves-and feel guilty when ending human lives.
But Eleisha has learned a way to draw blood from her victims without
killing them. She wants to share this knowledge with like-minded vampires
and create a haven where they can exist together-and forge a united
front against Julian Ashton, a vampire who has been hunting down and
destroying his own kind...
Ten months after vampires revealed their
existence to the mortals of Chicago, they're enjoying a celebrity status
usually reserved for the Hollywood elite. But should people learn about
the Raves-mass feeding parties where vampires round up humans like cattle-the
citizens will start sharpening their stakes.
So now it's up to the new vampire Merit
to reconnect with her upper class family and act as liaison between
humans and bloodsuckers, and keep the more unsavory aspects of the vampire
lifestyle out of the media. But someone doesn't want peace between them-someone
with an ancient grudge...
The stories are legendary, the characters
unforgettable, the world horrible and disturbing. Howard Phillips Lovecraft
may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left
behind after his death in 1935 have shaped modern horror more than any
other author in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and
the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great
Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets
of life and death at a terrible cost. In Lovecraft Unbound, more than
twenty of today's most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy
tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
There’s one sound a woman doesn’t
want to hear when she’s lost and alone in the Arctic wilderness: a
howl.
When a strange wolf’s teeth slash Cheyenne’s
ankle to the bone, her old life ends, and she becomes the very monster
that has haunted her nightmares for years. Worse, the only one who can
understand what Chey has become is the man–or wolf–who’s doomed
her to this fate. He also wants to chop her head off with an axe.
Yet as the line between human and beast
blurs, so too does the distinction between hunter and hunted . . . for
Chey is more than just the victim she appears to be. But once she’s
within killing range, she may find that–even for a werewolf–it’s
not always easy to go for the jugular.
The criminal underworld meets the spiritual
otherworld in this thrilling debut collaboration between the inspiration
for television’s The Ghost Whisperer and an award-winning writer/director.
Anza O’Malley is in most ways a typical
single mom. She lives a happy, busy life with her five-year-old son
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, juggling the joys and challenges of life
as a doting parent and a freelance bookbinder. But there is more to
Anza than meets the "ungifted" eye: she can see and speak
with ghosts.
Although she’s been solving cold cases
for the police for years, Anza has been hoping to focus her energies
on her son and her bookbinding career. But when an exquisite and priceless
illuminated manuscript is stolen from the Boston Athenaeum, and when
its desecration spurs the appearance of some very unhappy spirits, Anza
can neither look nor walk away. With an unlikely trio of ghosts by her
side–a charming butler and two medieval monks–Anza leads us on an
urgent journey through Boston’s winding, cobbled streets to uncover
a trail of deceit, danger, and ghoulish intrigue.
Reviews
 The Return of the Black Company by Glen
Cook (Tor)
Glen Cook really bothers me…And I mean
that in the most complimentary way. I’ve always thought Cook
should be considered one of the greats of modern fantasy but for some
reason, true superstardom has eluded him. His Black Company series
is the pinnacle of his work. A series of gritty fantasies punctuated
by outstanding characters. The Black Company novels continue to
be re-released in a series of omnibus editions, the latest featuring
the novels Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness.
The Black Company is an elite free Mercenary
group and its annals are told by Croaker. “Bleak Seasons”
is the sixth book in the series and told through the eyes Murgen, the
group’s standard-bearer. Murgen is not Croaker and Cook successfully
gives him a very different personality. Intentionally or not,
the book moves at a slower pace than previous books and gets confusing
because so much of it is told in flashbacks the keep the reader guessing
just where we are at in the story.
“She is Darkness” continues where
“Bleak Seasons” left off and thankfully picks up the pace as the
Black Company battles against the Shadowmasters. While the flashbacks
continue, Cook weaves in some new plotlines that forwards the story
along much better than in the previous novel.
It’s tough doing a review of what is
essentially the middle of the series. You really do need to start
from the beginning but it’s well worth it. Grade B
 Will Eisner’s The Spirit: The New
Adventures Archive Edition (Dark Horse Comics)
Volume 27 of the Spirit Archives presents
a changed from previous volumes. Firtst off, it’s published
by Dark Horse Comics and not DC Comics like the previous volumes in
the series. So why the change? Well this volume collects
the issues originally presented in The Spirit: The New adventures #1
– 8, originally published by Kitchen Sink Press in 1997 – 1998.
So I guess the reason is Dark Horse had the rights to the Kitchen Sink
material, and with DC’s blessing, published this volume to fit nicely
in to the numbering of the DC volumes.
The other thing that makes this volume
different is that creator Will Eisner steps aside and allows an all-star
lineup of writers and artists to take a stab at his legendary character.
The talent roster includes writers Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, John Wagner,
Kurt Busiek, Mark Shultz, John Ostrander, Joe R. Landsdale, and artists
Dave Gibbons, Paul Pope, Tom Mandrake, Bo Hampton, Daniel Torres, And
Paul Chadwick.
In fact the first three tales are courtesy
of the famous Watchmen team of Moore and Gibbons but their tales are
far from that cynical, yet groundbreaking work. Gibbons’ art
is far removed from his Watchmen style, and done to emulate the noirish
1940s style of Eisner. Their tale “The Most Important Meal”
gives a take on the death of Denny Colt as seen through the eyes of
the man who killed him.
These tales feature the Spirit’s usual
cast of characters including his famous femme fatales Sand Saref, Mink
Stole and Villains like Dr. Cobra. The group does a surprisingly
masterful job of capturing the, uhhh…spirit of the Spirit including
Eisner’s trademark sense of humor. Not all of the artists are
able to frame their work in the Eisner style…he was essentially a
film director working in panel art…but the art is uniformly outstanding
throughout. I tend to think these Archive books, and not just
the Spirit, but all of them from DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, etc., are a
bit over-priced at $50. Still this is great work by a fantastic
group of comic creators. Grade A- |
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