New SF, Fantasy, and Horror books seen : April 2005 Week 1

Fantasy novel about a battle for the throne of a nomadic tribe threatened by dark magic. It shares the setting of the author's Seven Brothers trilogy.
• DAW's site has this brief description.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review: "Benjamin makes fine use of Mongol culture as background for the Qubal clans, with their love of riddles and their colorful costumes."

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Literary quasi-SF novel set in an alternate 1990s England about young people in an isolated boarding school who grow up to become 'carers' and 'donors'.
• The publisher's site has this description with quotes from reviews and an excerpt.
• Amazon has the starred Publishers Weekly review, from its Jan 31st issue, which says the novel "is so exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. ... In savoring the subtle shades of atmosphere and innuendo in these three small, tightly bound lives, Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics."
• Most reviews at least hint at the book's SFnal revelation -- but don't read them if you want the the book to unfold at the author's intended pace. The Guardian ran this review by M. John Harrison; The New York Times, this review by Michiko Kakutani.

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Fantasy novel, sequel to This Scepter'd Isle (2004), about human and elven intrigue in 16th century England.
• Baen's site has a description and links to chapters.
• Amazon has a Booklist review by Frieda Murray: "Lackey and Gellis continue their superior blending of English folklore and history as they briskly cover the 10 years or so between the death of Jane Seymour and that of Henry."

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SF novel, a prequel to the Liaden Universe series, subtitled "The Great Migration Duology, Book 1", concerning the founding of Clan Korval. The follow-up will be titled Crystal Dragon. The book includes a cast of characters, and a glossary.
• Embiid.net, which released it electronically last October, has samples. Meisha Merlin's site has this description and an excerpt.
• SF Site has this review by Sherwood Smith.
• Carolyn Cushman reviews it in the April issue of Locus: "Series fans will delight in seeing the roots of the Liadan universe and the characters they know; others will undoubtedly find some scenes oddly freighted with an import not obvious to casual or uninitiated readers."

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YA fantasy novel, third in the series following Mister Monday and Grim Tuesday, about human Arthur Penhaligon battling a succession of enemies (each based on one of the seven deadly sins) for the 'keys' to inherit the Earth.
• Australian site www.keystothekingdom.com.au has background about the books, and a pdf excerpt.
• Carolyn Cushman reviews it in the April isue of Locus: "It's wondrously bizarre and twisted as always, but the plot holds together nicely, and Arthur's finally starting to take a little control, a welcome new development in a spellbinding series."

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First US edition of SF novel, sequel to Marrow (2000), set on a ship so enormous it contains an entire planet, also related to 2004 novella Mere. The UK edition was listed here.
• Publishers Weekly's March 28th issue gave it a starred review, reproduced on Amazon: "This literary SF novel works at all levels, from the big action sequences and mind-expanding concepts to the quiet, reflective moments."
• Nick Gevers reviews the book in the February issue of Locus, Russell Letson in the April issue. Letson writes: "What is as amazing as the story's Big Stuff is the fact that Reed pulls it off. Part of it has to do with making huge structures and events into characters of a sort: the Ship's internal geography, its caverns and rivers and seas; the fluid, reconfigurable Blue World that is one expression of the polypond's persona; the polypond ocean that covers the Ship and generates an endless variety of weapons. ..."

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Mystery/SF novel, fourth in the 'Retrieval Artist' series following The Disappeared (2002), Extremes (2003), and Consequences (2004). This one concerns human skeletal remains found on Mars and aliens called Disty who have unusual rituals concerning death.
• Amazon has a Booklist review by Regina Schroeder.
• Faren Miller reviewed the book in the March issue of Locus: "The earlier books paid full attention to psychological complexity and the drama of moral choices but adhered so closely to their genre-blending formula, they began to resemble episodes in a good TV series that falls just short of greatness. This time, Rusch ups the ante with a grand act of SFnal imagination in her creation of the Disty...."

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Nonfiction, an "in-depth analysis of the metaphysics of the two Star Wars trilogies" according to the description on the publisher's website. Includes a bibliography, filmography, index, and glossary.
• The author is a sociology professor at Cal State University Los Angeles.
• The publisher's site displays the table of contents and links to a pdf excerpt.

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Biography of Adams of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame. The author was the editor who bought the book rights for Britian's Pan Books back in 1978. Includes chronology, index, and a list of Douglas Adams' favorite Beatles songs.
• The official Douglas Adams site has this description. The US publisher's site has this description.
• Amazon has reviews from PW, which says that Webb and Adams "remained friendly until Adams's death, at age 49, in 2001, and that closeness pervades this authorized biography and its conversational tone", and Booklist, which concludes "A fascinating, witty portrait of a cultural icon who deserves an audience even larger than the present horde of his buffs."

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Military SF novel, fourth and final installment in the series that began with March Upcountry in 2001, about Prince Roger and his Royal Marines marooned on the planet Marduk.
• Baen's site has this description and links to two excerpts.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, which calls it "thoroughly satisfactory ... Whereas the first three volumes dealt with how the humans adapted to conditions on Marduk, this book shows how the alien Mardukians cope with human society, often with humorous results."
• Carolyn Cushman reviewed it in the February Locus.

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Fantasy novel, second in the "Chronicles of Everness" following The Last Guardian of Everness (August 2004) -- actually one long novel, The War of the Dreaming, published in two parts.
• The author's site has this page about the book, with links to interviews and quotes from reviews.
• Amazon reproduces the Publishers Weekly review: "With oughta-be-in-pictures imagery and dialogue designed for laugh tracks, Wright relentlessly riffs off every fantasy and action-movie cliche‚ in this boisterous agglutination of modernized myths..."
• Locus Magazine ran reviews by Damien Broderick in the March issue and Nick Gevers in the April issue.

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Historical fantasy novel about King Arthur, second in a series following In Camelot's Shadow (March 2004).
• The publisher's site has this description, with a link to an excerpt.

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My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That’ll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn’t necessarily because they think I’m fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who’ve been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I’m not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they’ve been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as “agitated,” even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my donors staying “calm.” I’ve developed a kind of instinct around donors. I know when to hang around and comfort them, when to leave them to themselves; when to listen to everything they have to say, and when just to shrug and tell them to snap out of it.

Jela crouched in the dubious shade of a boulder at the top of the rise he'd been climbing for half a day. Taller rock columns on either side glared light down at him, but at least helped keep the persistent drying wind and flying grit from his lips and face.

At the forward side of the boulder, down a considerably steeper slope than the one he'd just climbed, should be the river valley he'd been aiming to intersect ever since he'd piloted his damaged vessel to the desolate surface four days before.

Of Alexandra VII's three children, the youngest, Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock — known variously to political writers of his own time as "Roger the Terrible," "Roger the Mad," "the Tyrant," "the Restorer," and even "the Kin-Slayer" — did not begin his career as the most promising material the famed MacClintock Dynasty had ever produced. Alexandra's child by Lazar Fillipo, the sixth Earl of New Madrid, whom she never married, the then-Prince Roger was widely regarded prior to the Adoula Coup as an overly handsome, self-centered, clothes-conscious fop. It was widely known within court circles that his mother nursed serious reservations about his reliability and was actively disappointed by his indolent, self-centered neglect of those duties and responsibilities which attached to his position as Heir Tertiary to the Throne of Man. Less widely known, although scarcely a secret, was her lingering distrust of his loyalty.