Posted on September 30, 2016 Posted by John Scalzi 19 Comments
It’s our last stack of new books and ARCs for the month of September, and it’s a very fine one, I have to say. What here looks good to you? Tell me in the comments!
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Just bought myself Ancillary Mercy… one of my all-time favorite sci-fi series!!
How does this work? Do we vote a book off the island each week until there is one book left, and it gets read?
Or do we arbitrarily pick a cover if we haven’t read any of them? (Caveat: That’s what I’m going to do. So this is really more of a title/cover pick than anything else.)
(Second caveat: It’s not really a cover pick, either. It’s more like a spine/title pick.)
(Third caveat: I accept remuneration from authors and/or interested 3rd parties who want me to change my influential vote. Paypal, cash, or two-party-out-of-state-payroll checks that you can’t get your supermarket to cash, for some strange reason.)
Having said all that:
Go with the FEVER CODE. Look how the letters start 3d from the left, to 3d from the right… yeah. Either that, or Bound by Blood and Sand, since I can’t imagine what that’s about. But it’s intriguing, and has the second best spine, behind FEVER CODE.
I really, really enjoyed Ancillary Mercy (the whole series, actually).
Starlit Wood. What luscious binding.
The new A.S. KING! **grabby hands** She is one of my drop-everything-and-read authors.
The Starlit Wood is a kickass collection of folklore influenced stories and a really impressive design work as well. You can’t really see it in the picture above but it has no dust jacket but rather has everything printed directly cloth boards with many raised elements as well. Certainly one of the more impressive books I’ve received to review in quite sometime.
Starlit Wood is the book I want, for reasons others have already noted.
The thing that caught my eye about the photo, though, was the reflection of Ann Leckie’s name in the wood below.
Do I see an omnibus of Lila Bowen’s novels?
x The Captain
I have an ARC of The Apostle Killer waiting for me right here at home. Quirky enough to intrigue me.
I very much enjoyed all three Ancillaries.
Looking forward to Starlit Wood, Conspiracy of Ravens, The Bear and the Nightingale.
If I could have just one superpower, it would be the ability to read everything I wanted to! Not an original thought, I’m sure; but heartfelt.
Just finished Wake of Vultures and immediately pre-ordered Conspiracy of Ravens. Great Weird West. Read Ancillary Mercy and loved that whole series as well. Interest is piqued by the title The Bear and the Nightingale, and the cover of Starlit Wood is gorgeous, and from what Cat Eldridge says it might be worth buying the actual physical book rather than the ebook.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Ancillary series ( and I first learned of the author on this blog, thank you very much). “Still Life with Tornado” intrigues me…
Hold On, am I missing something ’cause I read Ancillary Mercy last year and YOU are just getting a copy now. Did this stack of ARC’s get lost in a worm hole or on the Tardis?
laurie j kern – That’s the Subterranean Press limited edition.
“Bound By Blood and Sand” has nearly the exact same premise to half written novel I did in high school thirty years ago. I love coincidental creation! (and the book looks awesome!)
Oh my gosh, Conspiracy of Ravens! I read Wake of Vultures last year and found myself sort of pulled along against my will. It’s odd and compelling and surprising and by the end I’d decided I couldn’t wait for the next book.
J.M. Coetzee comes up with interesting things, even if they’re always hard to read, in my opinion. The Schooldays of Jesus? I’m intrigued.
I received an arc of The Bear and the Nightingale. I really enjoyed it. I hope everyone reads it. Arden does a great job making the setting seem very real and yet , it is very much a fairy tale.
Not in that stack, but I was delighted to see on Twitter that “Lock In” is now available in large print. I think one of my aunts would love it, but these days she has problems with standard print sizes (and her Kindle battery is dead/unreplaceable).
shbeaty: I son’t keep many books that come in post-divorce and living in an apartment but this is a keeper for both its design and its contents. Ironically the slimness of it makes it fit on the shelves which the two volumes of the stories of Ursula Leguin at sixteen hundred pages that also came in recently negated.