Jamie-Love (and Other Links)

I said previously I loved Sarah Rees Brennan‘s tumblr – well, this post* made me crack up.  She has a crazy sense of humour.  I cannot wait for her new releases this year.

*Unfortunately, it only works if you’ve read her Demon books.  Which if you haven’t, you really should.  Because I adore them.

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I posted previously about enjoying the free Lightspeed & Fantasy Magazine short stories online – they’re also offering (paid) subscriptions that will allow you to get a monthly issue on your ereader, with a exclusive subscribers-only novella.  Here’s a free sampler as a taster.  I haven’t gotten around to reading this yet, but I’m tempted.

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Lois McMaster Bujold‘s released PROTO ZOA, an e-collection of her early short stories – I don’t think I’ve read any of them previously, so yay!   And I came across this Catherine Asaro novella on Amazon UK - it’s called THE CITY OF CRIES and is part of her Skolian Empire series apparently.  I can’t find much information on it, apart from that it’s also available in this hardback AURORA IN FOUR VOICES, which I kind of want, but it’s $30 for the book AND $30 shipping to the UK?? Sigh.

Around the Web

Heather @ The Galaxy Express has asked for suggestions for “must read” science fiction romance, and the discussion thread is getting pretty interesting.  It’s been flagged that the list of authors is almost exclusively female as well, which, to be honest, is not a massive surprise to me. 

I’m thinking the list so far is very much a YMMV list – I adore some of the authors listed, but am more on the fence about others.  My standard SFR author recs – Catherine Asaro, Lois McMaster Bujold, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller – are already on the list, though I did propose Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman’s Star of the Guardians quartet for inclusion.  Has anyone else ever read it?  I think they’re OOP now, but I remember being totally caught up in the whole saga and devouring all four novels within a very short period of time (seriously, Maigrey and Sagan set the standard for star-crossed lovers, and you then add a lost royal heir, intergalactic battles, and a gang of very cool mercenaries).  I’ve found the Wikipedia entry for the series (here, but major spoilers) and just reading the very terse plot summary makes me want to re-read (alas, my copies are packed away somewhere in my parents’ home – safely, I hope!).

 

On a different note, Kelley Armstrong is doing the graphic novel thing – she’s writing an original Otherworld story with the Dabel Brothers.  If my memory serves me correctly, the Dabel Brothers did the first of Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake graphic novels before they parted company with Marvel or something, and left the Anita rights with Marvel?  In fact, I think it’s the same artist, Brett Booth.  And they did the first Mercy Thompson graphic novel “Homecoming” too, before that moved somewhere else as well, IIRC.

Anyway.  As an introduction to the Otherworld universe, they’re doing a limited-edition Otherworld Primer, which is being exclusively offered to Ms Armstrong’s fans before being officially announced.  I’m sort of on the fence – it’s around £16, which is on the pricey side.  Decisions.

And a final link: While trying to verify my patchy information about Dabel Brothers above, I came across this interview linked on Patricia Briggs’ website – it’s with the writer doing the upcoming adaptations of “Cry Wolf” and “Moon Called”, David Lawrence.  There are some great sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes links.

Books for May

So after the fantastic month that was April (no, I haven’t posted my thoughts on any of the April releases in detail, and yes, I still have the Ann Aguirre and Jo Beverley left to read), here are the May new releases I’m anticipating:

 

First up, Diana Peterfreund’s “Tap & Gown”, the fourth and final book in her Secret Society Girl series.  It’s no secret that I adore these incredibly addictive books, and while part of me gets slightly teary-eyed at the thought of waving goodbye to Amy and the rest of her fellow Diggers, I cannot wait to find out what happens in Amy’s final year.

Re-reading the excerpt for this one has made me so ridiculously excited about “Tap & Gown” now.  Ack.  I’m going to take a deep breath and try to calm down. 

 

Excerpt here (out May 19)

 

I posted a bit about reading Catherine Asaro’s “Diamond Star” earlier, and yes, that’s a May release too.  Okay, that is so a typical Baen cover, but you know what?  Baen has such a great user-friendly digital publishing strategy ($6 ebooks for hardcover releases, no DRM, multiple formats), plus they provide lengthy excerpts (the first eight chapters for “Diamond Star” is online) and they have a large Free Library to try out new-to-you authors… I’m just going to ignore the covers. 

Anyway, I’m a big fan of Ms Asaro’s Skolian Empire books and getting this one was a no-brainer for me.  From her website:

…Del, the renegade prince who would rather be a rock singer than sit on the throne. The royal family wants him to stop, his friends want to use him, his label wants to own him, and his enemies want to kill him. Del just wants to sing—without starting an interstellar war.

Also, Ms Asaro collaborated with the band Point Valid to create a soundtrack accompanying the book, and some of the songs are available on the Diamond Star MySpace website (warning: music plays when you enter the site!).  It’s pretty cool as the lyrics are included in the text and I’m loving the fact I can listen to the actual music.

Excerpt here (out May 5, ebook available now)

 

Charlaine Harris’ latest Sookie Stackhouse, “Dead and Gone”, is also out in May.  This is the ninth book in the Sookie series, and while I’ve wondered whether the series is running out of momentum, that’s not going to stop me from getting this one.

And okay, my jaw just dropped when Amazon UK came up with the cover on the right – please do not say that is the UK cover for “Dead and Gone”?  That is just so wrong – it doesn’t capture the dark but offbeat feel of the series at all!

Excerpt here (out May 5)

 

Another book that has taken what feels like forever to be released is Eloisa James’ “This Duchess of Mine”.  I am an unashamed Eloisa James fangirl, and have been completely absorbed by her Georgian historical romance series. 

This, of course, is Jemma and Elijah’s book – finally.  I know Ms James’ habit of including an unresolved secondary romance is not everyone’s favourite, but the way she has woven the overarching storyline focusing on the Jemma-Elijah-Villiers conflict throughout the past four books has totally worked for me.  I am so invested in Jemma and Elijah getting their HEA (look, it’s a romance and therefore they will have one).

Excerpt here (out May 26)

 

And that’s not all the new releases I want.  Also due out is:

Jacqueline Carey’s “Santa Olivia”, which is something completely different from her Kushiel books.  The blurb says it is Ms Carey’s “… take on comic book superheroes and the classic werewolf myth”.  Okay, I’m not a massive fan of the former (though I expect Thea and Ana to be all over this?), but I love her writing and I will definitely be giving this a go.  Excerpt here (out May 29).

Richelle Mead’s “Succubus Heat”, fourth in her Georgina Kincaid series.  I’ve enjoyed the previous three in this UF series and the last one ended on a bit of a pivotal note, IIRC.  It’s the UK version of the cover below, btw.  Excerpt here (out May 26).

A maybe is Kim Harrison’s “Once Dead, Twice Shy” – when I read the short story setting up this novel in the anthology “Prom Nights from Hell”, I actually thought it felt like a first chapter of a novel.  Well, there you go.  My “maybe” is because it’s a hardcover.  Some further poking around Amazon UK indicates a possible paperback July release for the UK.  Excerpt here (out May 26).

And speaking of “Prom Nights from Hell”, a follow-up anthology is out this month, “Vacations from Hell” featuring contributions from Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Claudia Gray, Maureen Johnson, and Sarah Mlynowski (out May 26).

 

How Many Books…

I used to be the sort of person who only ever read one book at a time (then again, I also never ever had a TBR pile – I blame book blogging).

Now at the moment, I’m reading:

Catherine Asaro’s “Diamond Star” (SF, part of her Skolian Empire series):  I picked this up at Baen’s Webscription ebook store (I love Baen’s pricing policy, btw – $6 for an ebook, even when it’s in hardcover).  I’m about one-third through at the moment, and have mixed feelings.  I definitely want to finish it, but I’ve got a really really bad feeling that Del’s going to mess things up for himself and something’s going to go badly wrong before the payoff at the end? 

Lisa Shearin’s “The Trouble with Demons” (fantasy, Book 3 in the Raine Benares series):  I started this a couple of nights ago when I was looking for an excuse to put down “Diamond Star” for a while, and wanted a light easy read.  However, I’m finding it slightly difficult to get into this because – and I am being picky – there are some phrases that I feel are repetitive, and now that I’ve noticed, they sort of jump out at me.  It’s like when someone says don’t think of pink elephants and then all you can think of are pink elephants.  So I’m putting Raine and Tam and Mychael aside for a bit.

Also, I’ve sort of started JD Robb’s “Salvation in Death” (futuristic romantic suspense) and Mike Shepherd’s “Intrepid” (military SF) – “sort of” meaning I’m at least one chapter in but haven’t yet committed fully to the book    There are also the anthologies I picked up last month, I’m still slowly making my way through them (and a massive collection of Agatha Christie short stories).

And finally *deep breath* I just bought Kelley Armstrong’s “The Awakening” (YA urban fantasy, 2nd in her Darkest Powers trilogy), and well, had to start reading it on my way home – hey, there were delays on the line! 

My plan of attack?  Finish the Kelley Armstrong, then the Catherine Asaro (I think I just need to get on with it!) – and then re-evaluate where I am…

How many books do you normally have on the go?

Around the Web – or Free (Legal) Reads

Not breaking news by any means, but Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Beguilement” (first in the Sharing Knife series) is available to read online for free during January.  And the first 20% of Ms Bujold’s “Horizon” (the fourth and final book in the Sharing Knife series) is also available here.

Also free (and Angie piqued my curiosity on this one) is Anna Godbersen’s “The Luxe”.  I personally think HarperCollins’ Browse Inside widget needs serious rethinking and/or redesigning, but if nothing else, it gives you a feel for the story and the writing.

As an aside, I’m sort of torn when it comes to reading excerpts for books I’ve been anticipating – part of me wants to gobble them up, but the other part prefers to wait because it sort of spoils me for the actual book when I do get my hands on it.  On the other hand, if it’s a series and/or author I’ve not read before, I almost need to read an excerpt before deciding if I want to purchase or not.

Back to free reads, Catherine Asaro posted her short story “The Spacetime Pool” on Facebook (public access).  It’s on the preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award – I’m definitely reading this one.

The First Quarter of 2008

Okay, I’ve been wondering how to go about doing this, and I think I’m going to start off with a month-by-month review, based on notes made in my trusty reading spreadsheet. 

 

January

Highlights for me were Patricia Briggs’ “Iron Kissed” (urban fantasy), Eileen Wilks’ “Night Season” (urban fantasy) and Catherine Asaro’s “The Ruby Dice” (science fiction).  Now the first probably has had the most air-time (or is that blog-time), but I have much love for the other two as well. 

“Night Season” is the fourth book in Ms Wilks’ Lupi series – yes, werewolves as well, but so not Mercy Thompson.  Instead you have an equally kickass heroine in Lily Yu, a homicide detective, and a very alpha hero in Rule, the werewolf prince with a rather complicated family.

“The Ruby Dice” is the latest in Ms Asaro’s Skolian Empire series, and one that had me holding my breath up to the very end.  A very satisfying read.  If you’re a SF/Romance fan, you have to try this series.

I read 11 books in January, which was around average for me.  This included three Elizabeth Peters’ books (mystery, all standalone), so I was polishing off the rest of her backlist.

 

February 

Moving on to February, standouts for me were Julie Hyzy’s “State of the Onion” (cosy mystery), Nalini Singh’s “Mine to Possess” (paranormal romance), and Barbara Michaels’ “Stitches in Time” (mystery).

Ms Hyzy’s book was an impulse buy in a bookstore, and one that paid off in spades.  I really really liked – and moaned about the fact that not only was it the first in her White House Chef series, it was also her first cosy mystery.  Sigh.  I did note at that time that she had written a few suspense novels, which I still haven’t tracked down *checks The Book Depository and finds out that “Deadly Interest” is retailing for £20* umm… maybe not.

“Mine to Possess” was Clay and Tally’s story in Ms Singh’s Psy/Changeling series – one of the things I like most about this series is the worldbuilding and how the overall story arc is developing.

I continued reading Barbara Michaels a.k.a Elizabeth Peters backlist and “Stitches in Time” was a very spooky read.  This is loosely-linked to “Ammie, Come Home” and “Shattered Silk” – I think I preferred “Shattered Silk” best out of the three.

10 books read in total during February, but not a fantastic reading month.  I read Maria Snyder’s “Magic Study”, which *whispers* reinforced the fact that her books aren’t for me despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews elsewhere, Alexandra Potter’s “Me and Mr Darcy” my I-know-I-don’t-care-for-chicklit-so-why-do-I actually-buy-them purchase, and “My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon” anthology, where I only really liked three or so of the short stories (Kelley Armstrong, Jim Butcher, and PN Elrod’s).

 

March

And then March – Keishon kicked off the TBR Day challenge and I started with Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Legacy”, which I loved.  This was the first blogland challenge I’ve participated in, mainly because I’m rather lazy and anything requiring me being organised normally ends in dismal failure.  But having viewed my TBR pile with horror at the beginning of the year, I decided anything that would make me read from my TBR pile would be a good thing.  And it was – it not only made me read books I already had, it made me post about them.  I daresay without this challenge, I would have been pretty rubbish at actually writing any reviews.

I also loved Deanna Raybourn’s “Silent in the Grave” (historical mystery), which I finally picked up after reading numerous recs.  This book totally wins my best opening line award for 2008: “To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.”

I read Elizabeth Moon’s fifth and final book in her Vatta’s War series “Victory Conditions” (military SF) and thought it was easily the best in the series.  I also very much liked Jo Beverley’s “A Lady’s Secret” (historical romance) and JD Robb a.k.a Nora Roberts’ “Innocent in Death” (futuristic mystery), both part of long-running series, with the latter probably longer than most.

I read 15 books in total during March, and re-reading the list of books I read makes me smile, so it was a good month.

 

Much longer than I thought this would be – and nine months left to go!

Around the Web

A really good interview with Patricia Briggs is up at Nalini Singh‘s blog.  She talks about her upcoming Anna and Charles book “Cry Wolf” (and the cover is posted there as well – love it!) as well as the Mercy series.  The next Mercy book is called “Bone Crossed” and the vampires are back.

Catherine Asaro‘s “Primary Inversion” has been added to the Baen free library.  If you haven’t yet read any of her Skolian saga series, this is a great book to start with.

Books for January

ETA: I can’t believe I forgot to add Patricia Briggs‘s “Iron Kissed” (urban fantasy) to my list.  I loved her books when she wrote straight fantasy, and now I love her urban fantasy.  This is the third in her Mercy series, and apparently the love triangle gets resolved.  I can’t wait to read this one.  Excerpt here.

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Happy New Year! 

There are quite a few January new releases that I want to get: 

“Night Season” by Eileen Wilks (urban fantasy) - As mentioned in my previous post, this is one of my favourite urban fantasy series.  Excerpt here.  It looks as though Ms Wilks has also put up a bonus short story (yay!)- I’m waiting until after I finish reading “Night Season” though.

“Kitty & the Silver Bullet” by Carrie Vaughn (urban fantasy) – Fourth book in Ms Vaughn’s Kitty series.  Another werewolf urban fantasy, yes – but how many out there have a werewolf named Kitty?  I like but don’t love this series – at least not yet.  I’m still going to get it though – I like how Kitty develops and grows throughout the series.  Excerpt here.

“The Wicked Ways of a Duke” by Laura Lee Guhrke (historical romance) – Ms Guhrke was a new-to-me author in 2007 and I enjoyed the first book in her Girl-Bachelors series “And Then He Kissed Her”.  I’m hoping this is just as good.  The cover’s a bit cliched though – I like the dark blue colour scheme but not the standard romantic h/h clinch.  Excerpt here.

“Succubus on Top” by Richelle Mead (urban fantasy) – Another 2007 new-to-me author.  I read the first book in this series a couple of months ago, not expecting much (I was in an urban fantasy reading slump), and really liked it.  Heh.  I’ve just re-read the review I wrote back then – and I *really* liked it.  LOL.  Excerpt here.

“The Ruby Dice” by Catherine Asaro (SF) – The latest installment in her Skolian Empire series.  Ms Asaro does SF with really good romance.  I’m very excited about this one – except for the awful awful cover.  Sigh.  This is why I shouldn’t complain about romance covers.  There are worse ones for SF books out there.  Excerpt here.

As for Jan releases I’m interested in, but probably won’t get:
“My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon” (urban fantasy anthology) – Why I want to read it: It has some of my favourite authors, including Jim Butcher and Kelley Armstrong.  And a rather cool theme – honeymoons with a supernatural twist, in case the title didn’t quite make that clear   Why I’m not quite sure: It’s a trade paperback release, so more expensive than a mass-market.  And short stories aren’t quite my thing.  Nice cover though.
 
“Plum Lucky” by Janet Evanovich (mystery) – Oh no, another “between the numbers” book!  Now I know I bought “Plum Lovin” (her last Valentine Day novella) despite swearing not to, but this time, I’m definitely not getting this St Patrick’s Day one – as much as I love Stephanie Plum.  £17 for a 176-page book is just mad.  I don’t know if I’ll even get this one if it comes out in paperback.  IMO, the problem with her “between the numbers” books (apart from the length, that is) is that because not many of her Plum readers buy them, she can’t really advance the overall story plot – and that leaves you feeling unsatisfied.  Excerpt here.