New Book/ARC Arrivals, 1/15/14
Posted on January 15, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 45 Comments
I noticed it was a slow couple of weeks for getting new books and ARCs in, and then I remembered it was the first couple of weeks of January, and it takes a little bit of time for the PR machine to get up and running after the holidays. And sure enough, today all of this showed up at the door. And thus, duly reported to you.
However, Baen Books sent over a bunch of books a couple of days ago, which I noted on Twitter but was remiss in noting here. So in the spirit of catching up:
A nearly all @BaenBooks haul from today’s mail. See something that looks good to you? pic.twitter.com/i6WSiOBioR
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) January 13, 2014
So: Anything in either stack that catches your eye? Let me know in the comments.
I saw Hubbard in the pile. Not that Hubbard, right?
L. Ron is still dead, yes. This is Jenny Hubbard. Probably no relation.
Yes, the year is starting slowly. The first week of 2014 saw only 3 titles in my mailbox, though I expect that to pick up briskly. The Cargill book is exciting to see. You get a lot of non-SFF and mainstream titles, and I can’t imagine the additional storage burden that would entail! You must have a very happy library in your town.
American Craftsmen looks good to me.
There’s been a host of these Military /Magic books being published lately and I’m trying to read most of them but a lot of them are very, very bad. I hope American Craftsmen is one of the good ones.
“To sail a darkling sea” is an unbelievably awful book. The narrative and character actions make no sense. It reads like Ringo was writing to a mandated minimum ratio of plot for every page of ideological exposition.
And it’s rather bizarre, because he spends the first half of the first book setting up a fairly plausible ‘zombie’ apocalypse. And then after laying all that groundwork he wanders off into the wilderness.
After giving it more thought than it deserves, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the anti-World War Z. WWZ doesn’t really concern itself with the how or why of the apocalypse, just with tracing out the consequences and developments. Ringo’s apocalypse devotes an enormous amount if time and page count to the how and why, and then all the actual plot grows from ideological exposition rather than growing from the world building groundwork he so carefully laid.
Also, the level of jingoism is truly spectacular.
I am forced to conclude that John Ringo is a real live person, but holy cats! does the man sleep, or is he just shackled to a word processor?
Jingoism from John Ringo? It’s incontheivable!
Day Watch is an interesting inclusion. Did the English rights shift ownership or something? I read that back in around 2007 I think. Wonderful series.
The David Wellington is interesting; I really enjoyed his serialized online stuff (Monster Island etc in print form I think) so a series that uses his talents in a Jonathan Mayberry sort of way, as one review put it? Yes please. If nothing else I owe him a few bucks from all the free zombie stories online.
Being Sloane Jacobs looks like a cute YA novel but I would want my money back if the phrase “toe pick!” isn’t in it at least once.
@ Thomas
This is notable, even by his standards. At one point a survivor is rescued who is a former member of the British military. He is informed that, while they desperately need his expertise, he can’t officially join what passes for the survivors armed forces because he’s not an American.
This is not the worst example, just one that stuck with me due to its complete stupidity.
I’m not offended by reading strongly ideological books. I doubt there’s many issues Ringo and I would find ourselves on the same side of. However, he writes an excellent adventure story and I quite enjoyed much of his earlier works. It’s not the ideology of his recent books/characters that offend me. It’s how incredibly dumb and unsupported they are. Their actions often don’t even work in the context of the story.
As to his recent prolific writing, I suspect that his current books are both very dear to his heart as well as being effectively editor-proof. Together those would go quite a ways towards upping his output.
Frank Chadwick? Is that the same Frank Chadwick who created Traveller and owned GDW Games?
I read Wellington’s vampire stuff and I thought his blunt style worked well for horror. So much horror is abstract or romanticized. Even gore hound horror is romanticized in a negative way. Wellington’s bare prose and not particularly intellectual characters (not dumb just not academically inclined) really bring out how horribly banal and awful it would be to get ripped apart by monsters, or to be a state trooper trying to protect people from superhuman monsters.
Off topic: League of Bisexuals should be your next comic book pitch, not a band. Feel free to name the most awesome one after me.
Carousal Sun is a great sequel to Sea. American Craftsman looks interesting has anyone heard anything about it?
Yes it is the same Frank Chadwick and the book is great!
Day Watch by Lukyanenko is a reprint, no? His latest Watch book has a US translation due this summer. I need to get caught up.
I looked up the titles that looked interesting to me and decided that I am going to read, in this order: Strange Bodies, And We Stay, The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen. You were going to send them to me, right? ;-)
Holy crap, is that the long promised next book in the march series by David Weber and John Ringo? They’ve been promising that book to fans since I was in my teens.
Strange Bodies is quite good, fyi.
Haha, nope to my earlier question. Just an omnibus.
Um…none of those books are by John Ringo.
Not that I’d buy any of that guy’s stuff, anyway. I read like six chapters of one of his books, and I gave up after the de-aged Nazis who are for some stupid reason the planet’s only hope against some generic aliens were introduced to some Jewish guy, who was portrayed as an asshole.
I literally threw that book across the room in disgust, which is something I NEVER do, especially with library books.
Oh yes. That book.
I’m consistently amazed I by the degree to which I quashed my reactions when reading that book. (For whatever it mitigates, I read it on the old Fifth Imperium baencd pages.) I’m also kind of embarrassed that it took the tract at the end of one of the Panama stories, where he explains his allegory, to get a handle on the sheer scale of Ringo’s xenophobic nationalism.
Let’s focus more on the books above, please, and not on other books the authors may have written.
Totally looking forward to Sharon Lee’s new book.
Sharon Lee’s Carousel Sun sounds quite good…but got a not-so-hot review here:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/01/book-review-carousel-sun-sharon-lee
I’ve fallen in love with the cover so might throw caution to the wind and give it a read anyway! (How can you pass up a giant looming chicken?)
I hope Carousel Sun is good, I loved Carousel Tides and this one is one my tbr list
The Frank Chadwick must be a new edition, I read it early last year and it went onto my Hugo nom short-list.
Jennavier, I’m heard somewhere that they finally figured out what to do with the next Empire of Man book and were working on it, so the previous ones coming out in an omnibus may be a good sign they’re leading up to it.
I am really looking forward to reading Strange Bodies.
James — Carousel Sun is the sequel to Carousel Tides, but you’re right — it’s awesome. In fact, they’re both awesome :) The third book in the trilogy is Carousel Seas, due out early in 2015.
I love the books by Ringo and Weber. I find the thicker it is the more I get into it. That is one book that I will pick up if I don’t win it. There will probably be 2 to 3 sequels to come so they can count on me buying them
Glad to see American Craftsmen arrived safely. lkeke35, I hope it’s one of the good ones too.
Reblogged this on Tom Doyle and commented:
My ARC spotted on Scalzi’s blog.
My ARCs never have real covers on them. :/
Day Watch is great. I liked all of the series, so far. Different pacing and sensibility to western fantasy. Really interesting worldbuilding.
[Deleted because off topic, but to answer the question, I have a basic, recurve hunting bow with a 50 pound draw. Simple, classic – JS]
Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux and Queen of the Dark Things by Robert Cargill seem quite promising, as does (I’m being snarky about mentions of Ringo and Weber) The Almost Girl by Amalie Howard.
I can see how somebody could see Weber from a quick glance at The Hydra Protocol by Wellington, but am having trouble with getting to Ringo because pro tip: Stop reading /before/ you hate a book so much that seeing the word “dark” in “Queen of the Dark Things” takes you solely to your loathing of “To Sail a Darkling Sea.”
The Empire of Man is a collection of his Prince Roger books? I have all of those except We Few. I liked that series… I like some of Ringo’s stuff, but not the rest. His attitudes drive me nuts, but as someone said above, he can write an excellent adventure book.
I am happy to see Carousel Sun! I have been waiting for it. Carousel Tides was great. And I am looking forward to Carousel Seas…
Has anyone read the Sara Hoyt book?
Oh, I get it now. Some people are also looking at this pic.
New Sharon Lee book!!! Must have…Enjoyed Carousel Tides, no reason to think I won’t like Caurousel Sun.
Scalzi, assuming the veracity of the story, Hemingway and a couple authors made a bet who could write the best, shortest short story. “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn” was Hemingway’s entry, and the other authors agreed he’d won. “All alone during couples skate” beats it by one word, and I think is just as powerful (though probably not as universal).
Ooooh, that makes sense.
Yeah, still no way I’m reading through all of that John Ringo crap. I have a multithousand-word Brandon Sanderson novel coming out in two months that is calling my name. And my autographed copy of Steelheart to reread. And my beautiful, precious copy of “The HUman Division”.
No time for fourth-rate SF, I have Brandon and Scalzi.
John–curious what you do with all these ARCs. Do you read them all, then give them away? Or are you building a Great Pyramid-sized pile in your backyard, on that Sahara-sized chunk of property you’ve got in OH?
-Ry
@RyMM That’s somewhere on this page.
Day Watch is a fine sequel to Night Watch, but note it’s pretty difficult to follow without having read the first book. The wise reader will stop after Day Watch.
Aside from that, I hardly recognize at title in those two stacks. Pretty unusual.
Here’s what caught MY eye: Baen books needs a new cover designer.
A new Day Watch ARC? That’s a little confusing; I thought ARC’s were full of wording that wasn’t yet set in stone. Or are they just hoping for commentary on the new cover art? Absolutely freaking stoked for New Watch in a couple months though. And Skin Game, and above all, Causal Angel…wait those aren’t in the stack, those are just books I’m googling daily with the title and ‘ARC’ or ‘galley’…
Ringo is in there twice? How many books does he write a year?
John could use all the books to build a really big Christmas tree next year? Then they all live again one last time in the posted pics of a decorated, slightly pyramid-shaped tree