Whew… what a week. Getting used to waking up at the crack of dawn (actually, the moon is still shining bright when I go to work) is taking some getting used to. I had to wake up at 3:30am today, which is why the blog was silent. I’m still pathetically behind on Special Needs in Strange Worlds, but if things work out the way I hope, I should be kicking that off again with a post being written and sent to SF Signal this weekend. Regarding this website, working 40 hours a week is definitely affecting my reading and website time… as in, I have enough strain at work, I want to spend my time on my website having fun and celebrating all the things I love about reading, rather than complaining or picking it apart. Maybe that makes me a Pollyanna. I realized that my drama free resolution for this year might be incredibly easy for me to keep due to that.
To sum it up, I’m tired, and I want some time to hopefully write some stuff for next week so I have to do less when I’m tired next week. Instead of a review, I’m going to (re)launch my (hopefully) weekly Books I’m Eyeing column.
Books I’m Eyeing serves a few purposes:
1) It points my readers in the direction of some great books/reviews they might have overlooked
2) It gives deserving websites much deserved attention
3) I don’t have a ton of time to comment on websites, so Books I’m Eyeing is a way for me to show other blogs that I pay attention to how hardcore you are.
So here are the books I’m eyeing this week, and the websites to blame them on. What books are you eyeing?
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Shadow Bridge – Gregory Frost
Discovery blamed on: The Completist
About the Book
“You rattle the darkness where you walk, Jax.”
Enter Shadowbridge, a world of linked spiraling spans of bridges on which all impossibilities can happen. Ghosts parade, inscrutable gods cast riddles, and dangerous magic is unleashed.
Monstrous creatures drain the lives of children and for a price, you can sample their fleeting quintessence–provided the creatures don’t sample you instead.
Traveling these spans is a brilliant, secretive shadow-puppeteer called Jax, who knows all the stories of love, of war, of the gods, and even of Death and his lover.
But Jax has more than a few secrets, too–not the least of which is his true identity: that of Leodora, daughter of the greatest storyteller who ever played the spans, and the woman known as the Red Witch.
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Maze – J.M. McDermott
Discovery blamed on: The Skiffy and Fanty Show
About the Book
From every corner of time and space, sometimes people go missing without a trace. They never come back.
Get lost in the long stone halls of the maze with the ones that find each other, form tribes, scrape out a life from rocks and sand. Their stories interweave. Maia Station is a scientist ripped from stasis, but she has no tools to test the way things are. Instead, she raises her daughter as best she can and survives. Wang Xin once had his head dipped in water, and a djinni in the water entered his eye. He sees the future, exactly as it was supposed to be if he hadn’t seen the light, but it does him no good in the life he has. In a world much like our own, Joseph comes home from a ten year high school reunion and encounters a light in the darkness. The light speaks.
My name is Jenny. Put me in your lung. Breathe deep.
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The Summer Prince – Alaya Dawn Johnson
Discovery blamed on: Fantasy Book Critic
About the Book
A heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.
The lush city of Palmares Três shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that’s sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June’s best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist.
Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Três will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government’s strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die.
Pulsing with the beat of futuristic Brazil, burning with the passions of its characters, and overflowing with ideas, this fiery novel will leave you eager for more from Alaya Dawn Johnson.
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Absorption – John Meaney
Discovery blamed on: Civilian Reader
About the Book
600 years from now on the world of Fulgor, Roger Blackstone aches to see the mythical Pilot’s city of Labyrinth.
In 8th Century Norseland, a young carl called Wulf kills a man, watched by a mysterious warrior who bears the mark of Loki the Trickster God.
In 1920’s Zurich, Gavriela Silberstein enters the long, baroque central hallway of the Eidgenossosche Technische Hochschule where Einstein so recently studied.
And on a nameless world, not knowing his human heritage, a silver-skinned youth tries to snatch back an Idea – but it floats away on gentle magnetic currents.
There are others across the ages, all with three things in common – they glimpse shards of darkness moving at the edge of their vision, they hear echoes of a dark, disturbing musical chord, and they will dream of joining a group known as the Ragnarok Council…
Absorption is the first novel of Ragnarok, a new space opera trilogy of high-tech space warfare and a mindblowing new rationale for Norse mythology.
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Dead Things – Stephen Blackmoor
Discovery blamed on: The Ranting Dragon
About the Book
Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it’s a title Eric Carter is stuck with.
He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He’s turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course.
When he left L.A. fifteen years ago he thought he’d never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him.
But now his sister’s been brutally murdered and Carter wants to find out why.
Was it the gangster looking to settle a score? The ghost of a mage he killed the night he left town? Maybe it’s the patron saint of violent death herself, Santa Muerte, who’s taken an unusually keen interest in him.
Carter’s going to find out who did it and he’s going to make them pay.
As long as they don’t kill him first.
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The Bread We Eat in Dreams – Catherynne M. Valente
Discovery blamed on: Far Beyond Reality
About the Book
Subterranean Press proudly presents a major new collection by one of the brightest stars in the literary firmament. Catherynne M. Valente, the New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and other acclaimed novels, now brings readers a treasure trove of stories and poems in The Bread We Eat in Dreams.
In the Locus Award-winning novelette “White Lines on a Green Field,” an old story plays out against a high school backdrop as Coyote is quarterback and king for a season. A girl named Mallow embarks on an adventure of memorable and magical politicks in “The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While.” The award-winning, tour de force novella “Silently and Very Fast” is an ancient epic set in a far-flung future, the intimate autobiography of an evolving A.I. And in the title story, the history of a New England town and that of an outcast demon are irrevocably linked.
The thirty-five pieces collected here explore an extraordinary breadth of styles and genres, as Valente presents readers with something fresh and evocative on every page. From noir to Native American myth, from folklore to the final frontier, each tale showcases Valente’s eloquence and originality.
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A Turn of Light – Julie E. Czerneda
Discovery blamed on: The Ranting Dragon
About the Book
The village of Marrowdell is an isolated pioneer community, but it is also the place where two worlds overlap, and at the turn of light–sunset–the world of magic known as the Verge can briefly be seen.
Jenn Nalynn belongs to both Verge and Marrowdell, but even she doesn’t know how special she is–or that her invisible friend Wisp is actually a dragon sent to guard her… and keep her from leaving the valley. But Jenn longs to see the world, and thinking that a husband will help her reach this goal, she decides to create one using spells. Of course, everything goes awry, and suddenly her “invisible friend” has been transformed into a man. But he is not the only newcomer to Marrowdell, and far from the most dangerous of those who are suddenly finding their way to the valley.
7 Responses
I snagged a copy of The Bread We Eat in Dreams when it first came out. It is a lovely book, from the book-as-art perspective. Subterranean Press always puts out a quality product and Kathleen Jennings’ wrap-around cover is lovely. I’m a big fan of her work.
Thanks for the link/shout out! I really think SHADOWBRIDGE is up your alley, Sarah.
Ok, Absorption sounds frakkin’ AMAZING!! How have I never heard of John Meaney?? The covers are pretty sweet, too.
Hmm, “Shadow Bridge” does sound interesting. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one. Ditto “Dead Things,” though I pay less attention to dark UF than I probably should, given that I’m uncovering far more good UF than I ever gave the genre credit for in the past.
And as I mentioned on Twitter, I’m just a little bit in love with Catherynne Valente’s writing, so I definitely have to get my hands on a copy of “The Bread we Eat in Dreams.”
Shadow Bridge looks interesting. Maze I snagged last week (and have J.M. stopping by to talk about this week). A Turn of Light has been sitting on my shelf for far too long – looking to finally get it read this winter.
I forgot about the Shadow Bridge, because it’s not new and it sort of disappeared from my to-read list a couple of years ago. Then I read the same review you did and now it’s back on my TBR!
I love this feature of yours. I’ve heard of a lot of books from it that I came to love.
I’ve seen A Turn Of Light on the shelves for a while now, but while I’ve been intrigued there has been too many other books higher up on my “to read” list. If you read it I’d love to see your review of it!