18 Comments on “New Books and ARCs, 8/30/19”

1. I’m really looking forward to Daemon Voices. Pullman’s philosophy and his writing are so out of the box that I really want to know what inspires him and make him the magnificent writer that he is.

2. That book is much too small to hold the best of Glen Cook. I can’t fit the best of Glen Cook on one shelf!

3. The two above focused on two of my three picks. (The Gordon Dickson is unfamiliar, so time to do some searching.)

   Mark Wyman is not wrong. Kudos to Nightshade for this one.

4. “The Best of Glen Cook”, certainly.

5. The Cook and the Chizmar!!

6. @klhoughton Here (https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/a-way-out-of-the-cage) is a review of _Hour of the Horde_ by James Nicoll. He says: “This is a classic old-time SF novel, the sort where humans turn out to have very special gifts that trump advanced technology and physical prowess. ” and “This isn’t exactly a classic, but I would not be terribly surprised to discover that it had influenced both Glen Cook’s Starfishers series and David Weber’s Dahak series.” The novel dates rom 1969.

7. I am at least curious about _Council of Fire_ by Eric Flint and David Hunt. I have met Hunt several times — he is a friend of a friend — and liked his first four books a lot: the “Dark Wing” series.

8. You’re a classy person for promoting some of these author’s work considering how they threat you. That Kratman though … I’d have burned that one. That guy is pure malignancy.

9. I bought the ARC of the Flint/Hunt book and I have to say that it’s not doing much for me. I’m about a quarter of the way through it and I’m not sure I’ll finish. Not as much narrative drive as I’ve found in some of Flint’s other books.

10. Augusta:

    I don’t feel in the least bit threatened by any author, so.

11. Hey, for once you’re right about when summer ends, and then you asterisk it. I thought we were deadly enemies on this point. I can’t decide if the asterisk takes us back to being deadly enemies. (Also, can’t really be bothered having deadly enemies.)

12. “Idiotocracy For Dummies”??? –Implementation or best practices?

13. I love some of these comments…

    ““Idiotocracy For Dummies”??? –Implementation or best practices?”

    What a great question! The only thing that sometimes gets me is that many of these ARC books don’t hit the free market for a couple of months, or more. When I try to suck something down onto my tablet, and then I see it won’t show up until Nov 12th… SAD!

    Hate hearing an Eric Flint isn’t grabbing you, I’m pretty fond of much of his work, and the many derivitive works set in the mid 1600s. What a great founding idea for a wild bunch of series.

14. Hour Of The Horde! I don’t think it’s even close to Dickson’s best work (Wolf And Iron or maybe The Dragon And The George, for my money) but it’s one of those you can turn to when you look around at the world and need to be reassured that humanity can be pretty awesome. Some of his short stories are even better at that, pound for pound.
    But then there’s By Different Hearth Fires, in which humanity has betrayed its ancient oath to dogs. And Black Charlie, with its definition of “art” that still pisses me off every time I think of it.
    My feelings on Dickson are complicated, yo.

15. Daemon Voices, is a great title. I recently listened to a lecture discussing the topic of a Daemon: a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans. In this lecture it was like a muse that someone listened to at all times, following as if it was the correct path. In relation, I’m interested to see how Phillip Pullman discusses the Daemon and how it relates to storytelling.

16. Anyone do DragonCon?

17. American Royals is the kind of soapy alternate history that I might find fun.

18. The secret one on top of the Pullman, of course.