New Books and ARCs, 11/16/18
Posted on November 16, 2018 Posted by John Scalzi 21 Comments
Once again catching up on new books and ARCs after my travels, here’s a healthy of stack of titles for you peruse. What here would you like to take to the couch with you after a Thanksgiving dinner? Tell us all in the comments!
OOOH NEW ANN LECKIE
I’m intrigued by that People’s Future of the United States; bummer that it doesn’t come out until February!
Not buying new GRRM books in hardcover until Winds of Winter comes out. I know, he doesn’t owe me anything, but I don’t owe him either. Might take it out of the library though.
Father of the Bride of Frankenstein–this intrigues me. It has to be a comedy. I’m casting Kumail Nanjiani. Maybe I should read it first.
Terminal Uprising. I loved Terminal Alliance, the first Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse book.
Also, Ooh, a new Ann Leckie!
Definitely Ann Leckie, and I really want to read both the Jim Hines books (this new one and Terminal Alliance).
Ann Leckie and Martin.
Fireside Quarterly, and Father of the Bride of Frankenstein intrigue me most.
I don’t know anything about it, but to judge a book by its spine, I like the look of A Conspiracy of Truths. Makes me think of The Goblin Emperor, somehow, though probably it’s nothing like.
The Hod King!!! Well, after I read Arm of the Sphinx. Senlin Ascends, the first in the series, was AMAZING.
The Victor LaValle anthology, especially its subject matter intrigues me.
Still reading “Ancillary Justice,” but liked it enough to be curious about the new Leckie.
And Martin’s history of the Targaryen family sounds intriguing.
2/3rds of the way through Conspiracy if Truths ( thanks to the big idea) and pleased with it so far. Most of it takes place in a prison cell. I also wish that GRRM would finish his story before writing a prequel style book.
The Raven Tower, unless it makes me ignore family on the holiday. Very curious to see Ann Leckie’s first fantasy novel.
FATHER OF THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN: Uh, wut?! LOL, the title sounds like a parody the kids on Twitter would come up with.
THE RAVEN TOWER: Oh no, you have it before me! ::jealous rage:: ;-)
I can say more than a few good words for Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, the family duet who wrote Vita Nosta. I have red a few other novels by them – think an Ukrainian Ray Bradburry. Very poetic. The typical tor the eastern-european SF&F moral dilemmas are abundant, buit this is not Dostoevsky (I mean it is not difficult to read as him) either. And very poetic.
My favourites of what I have read are The Valey of Consciousness and Pandem. The last one is a hard SF book, about the post-human future of the humanity. Somebody here mentioned Leckie – she writes about along gender lines. In Pandem the approach is different – it is about the rise of an all-encompassing intelligence. But it is neither a religious nor a horror novel. This super-mind preserves the individual minds, so people still have individualities.
The novel is about how they cope the new situation. On some basic level the relation is symbiotic, but this is not an utopia either. The story drive is the attempt to find out what are the goals of the super-mind. The answer of Dyachenko is not particularly original, but it is convincing. Anyway, very interesting novel, but as far as I know it has not been translated in English.
I see people compare Vita Nostra wth the Harry Potter novels but they say it is darker and deeper.
I can say more than a few good words for Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, the family duet who wrote Vita Nosta. I have red a few other novels by them – think an Ukrainian Ray Bradbury. Very poetic. The typical tor the eastern-european SF&F moral dilemmas are abundant, buit this is not Dostoevsky (I mean it is not difficult to read as him) either. And very poetic.
My favourites of what I have read are The Valey of Consciousness and Pandem. The last one is a hard SF book, about the post-human future of the humanity. Somebody here mentioned Leckie – she writes about along gender lines. In Pandem the approach is different – it is about the rise of an all-encompassing intelligence. But it is neither a religious nor a horror novel. This super-mind preserves the individual minds, so people all have individualities.
The novel is about how they cope the new situation. On some basic level the relation is symbiotic, but this is not an utopia either. The story drive is the attempt to find out what are the goals of the super-mind. The answer of Dyachenko is not particularly original, but it is convincing. Anyway, very interesting novel, but as far as I know it has not been translated in English.
I see people compare Vita Nostra wth the Harry Potter novels but they say it is darker and deeper.
Thanks for including my book. For those wondering, “Father of the Bride of Frankenstein” — like my other novels — is very definitely a comedy. It will be out in January.
A Conspiracy of Truths started out slow and silly for me, but it was definitely worth sticking with.
I’m really intrigued by Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower. Orbit, her publisher, has a great eye for fantasy.
Terminal Uprising first, and then A Conspiracy of Truths.
I’m looking forward to Conspiracy of Truths. Plus it’s such a nice book tactile wise in the hand. Vita Nostra is a reprint though as I bought it on Kindle a while back in 2015 but it now has Tor as its publisher.
Oooh! Terminal Uprising and Anne Leckie writes fantasy. This is gonna be good.