New Books and ARCs, 2/13/15
Posted on February 13, 2015 Posted by John Scalzi 33 Comments
A double-header of new books and ARCs today. These were ones that came in before I headed off on the JoCo Cruise last week. On Monday, I’ll catch up with some of the ones that have come in since. In the meantime, some excellent stuff here. See anything you like? Tell me about it in the comments.
Holy cow – is that a new one from Dean Ing? I haven’t seen anything new from him in a long time, too long.
Ooooh – a new Peter Clines book! It’s not in the Ex-Heroes universe, but the description on his website looks promising. Will definitely be watching for that one!
Tim Powers. Every time.
Ooh, Worlds of ERB sounds interesting.
Flint and Spoor, Dean Ing,and John Ringo
Tim Powers, Paul McAuley, Paolo Bacigalupi and both by Joe Abercrombie. OK, I’ve already read (and can recommend) Half A King. And Something Coming through is ordered. But would love to get my paws on the other ones
I’ve read Castaway Planet and Worlds of ERB (the latter in a trade PB close to a year ago), and have Carousel Seas but haven’t gotten to it yet. Slavers of the Savage Catacombs sounds possibly amusing and worth checking out. Nothing else stirs much interest – I like Tim Powers as a person, but not too much as an author (not that he isn’t a decent writer, but doesn’t write the sort of thing I like to read).
The Ringo was actually a fun romp until the political rant at the end.
Hey, I can’t get the new Joe Abercrombie till Feb 17. This must be one of the benefits of being a famous author. Half A King was very good, so I have high hopes for the next one.
Tim Powers for the win, always.
And I just finished reading Beth Cato’s Clockwork Dagger last night. Decent debut novel. The magic system was interesting, and the plotting was fun. Character relationships seemed a little forced, but I’ve already pre-ordered Clockwork Crown.
The new Paolo Bacigalupi! Loved The Windup Girl, hope this will be equally good.
Also, “Something Coming Through Paul McAuley” is an interesting book title.
The ERB antho, definitely.
Just finshed Spell Blind last night.
It was most excellent.
Tim Powers will win every time. I’m also interested in Something Coming Through.
I agree with the Ringo being fun, and about the politics at the end. I also think it dropped the ball as the end to the series, though. One very large and one not so large dangling plot thread completely ignored, presumably so he could just be done with the story. Well worth reading if you’ve already read the others, but I’m not sure I’d recommend the series as a whole to people who haven’t started it. Definitely wouldn’t recommend it to people who aren’t already into Ringo.
Castaway Planet, on the other hand, was awesome. I’m not sure I liked having the setting jump 150 or so years into the future after the last book, but I can understand why they wanted to do it. And they couldn’t possibly have told this story in the near-future setting of the earlier books, since Our Heroes needed an Earthlike planet to become castaways on. Great story, with adventure, survival, interesting human and non-human characters and a very cool planet filled with very interesting and very nasty beasts.
A new Flint and Spoor book makes me happy. Have to grab the ebook.
I really loved Carousel Seas by Sharon Lee. A fitting conclusion to a great trilogy that none the less stands on its own just fine.
Johne Cook,
That’s what I thought
I heard a podcast about Castaway Planet, and it’s apparently a retelling of Swiss Family Robinson (you know, IN SPACE). Which is right up my alley, actually.
Abercrombie. Show me another 100, and it’ll still be his books first. Look no further.
Thanks to Baen eARCs, I’ve read the Flint&Spoor, Ringo, and Lee. Liked all three, though, as always, one needs to ignore Ringo’s political preachiness/rants.
What is it with – it seems – mostly conservative authors, that they need to preach politics all the time? Especially bad if they get to the denialist bits (like oh no, anything environmentalist, especially AGW, is all just a commie conspiracy), or that welfare is just making good people pay for bad people … I’ve read too many like that in the last few years.
Reblogged this on oshriradhekrishnabole.
Ooh, new Beth Cato. I enjoyed the first one and plan to read the second in hopes of seeing more of the world she built.
A new Dean Ing! Many, many years ago I sent him a brief letter with a local newspaper clipping I thought might interest him. Never expected to hear back, but he wrote me a very nice letter in return.
Half the world look intresting.
Ooh, Dean —Ing good.
Although the Dean Ing is published by Baen, it’s actually a non-SF, possibly semi-autobiographical, coming of age story which takes place during WW2. I enjoyed it, but if you wanted new SF from him, this is not it.
I found the Ringo mostly enjoyable until the last 3 chapters, especially when he made the Secretary of Education functionally illiterate. Yeah, we get that Real Conservatives hate the DOE but this was one of the more eye-rolling Real Conservative digs of the series, especially since this was supposed to be a Republican administration.
Just finished dancing about the office cuz I saw my book in your pile.
I’ll read (almost) anything by Paolo Bacigalupi but holy crap is that a bad spine!
Ooooh, I will take Clockwork Crown by Beth Cato and Briar Queen by Katherine Harbour, if you are looking for homes for these lovely orphan ARCs. Seriously, I love me some Beth Cato steampunk, and I like Harbours style. Pretty please?
Ahhh – Edgar Rice Burroughs! From Tarzan to John Carter to Carson Napier. Now that was a man with an imagination! I loved the Barsoom books (horribly mangled by the film in an eminently forgettable movie disaster) when I was growing up, and it is still hard to realise that he wrote the first one in 1911. Great books never die even if they do get a bit dusty on the shelves…
New Peter Clines. I haven’t read any of his Heroes series but 14 popped up as a recommendation for me on Audible and I listened to it on a whim. I ended up just enjoying the hell out of it. I just read a summary of The Fold on Amazon and now I must read it.
khms — re conservative authors putting political rants in their books, yes, there is more than one author I have just quit reading entirely for that reason.
I’ve read the first two books in the Blood Gospel Series by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell, so Blood Infernal definitely piques my interest. I haven’t had time to get my hands on it yet, but I am hoping to soon!