14 March 2005

Swashbuckling fantasy novel, third in the "Viscount of Adrilankha" trilogy following Paths of the Dead (2002) and Lord of Castle Black.
• Brust has this recently updated weblog, though his home page still hasn't been updated since 2002.
• Bookslut has this May 2004 interview with Brust.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review, which calls the book "stylish", and several reader reviews.

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SF novel, first of a duo described as at right angles to the famous "Space Odyssey" series by Clarke; this is a "orthoquel" to them, taking similar premises in different direction. It concerns a 'discontinuity' in 2037, in which alien devices appear across Earth, and various eras of history are scrambled into a patchwork. As is usual with Clarke collaborations, this appears to be a novel by Baxter based on an idea by Clarke; the style is Baxter's, not Clarke's.
• The sequel, Sunstorm, is due out later this month in hardcover.
• Del Rey's site has this description and excerpt.
• Amazon has a review by Cynthia Ward, and reader reviews.

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Fantasy novel about the daughter of an exiled nobleman who finds herself unprepared for the intrigues of court life.
• Since the hardcover was published, the pseudonymous author has come out as Lisa Goldstein.
• Amazon has the PW review: "Romance fans looking for an entr‚e into fantasy could do worse than to start with Glass's accessible debut, which includes nearly every convention of the genre, from giants, shape-changers and zombie-like creatures to civil war, dungeons and some mild torture."
• Faren Miller reviewed the book in the April '04 issue of Locus Magazine: "At times the plot creaks under the weight of its contrivances, but Glass manages to hold the unwieldy contraption together with help from good characterization and settings that come alive on the page."

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Literary fantasy by a noted mainstream author about a man who ages backwards. It was well received by the critics, including John Updike in The New Yorker.
• See the Amazon page (click on title or cover) for the Publishers Weekly and Booklist reviews. The New York Times ran this profile of the author.
• The author's website, www.andrewgreer.com, includes descriptions and links of his books. The publisher's site has this description, with links to an excerpt and a readers' guide.
• The book was a Today Show Book Club choice.

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SF novel, a far future space opera concerning space settlers and AI war machines; the author's first stand-alone novel following the four-book "Fall Revolution" sequence (The Star Fraction, etc.), and the three-book "Engines of Light" sequence.
• This is a reprint of Tor's June 2004 hardcover; the first edition came out a few months earlier in the UK, described here.
• Gary K. Wolfe reviewed the book in the February '04 issue of Locus, noting its elements of screwball comedy--MacLeod's first novel "to import to political hard SF something of the sensibility of Preston Sturges".
• MacLeod runs a blog, The Early Days of a Better Nation.

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Anthology of 18 original stories combining the Sherlock Holmes mythos with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Authors include Neil Gaiman, Brian Stableford, Tim Lebbon, Richard A. Lupoff, Poppy Z. Brite, and Simon Clark. Stories are arranged chronologically by years in which stories are set.
• Neil Gaiman's story, "A Study in Emerald", won both the 2004 Hugo Award and the 2004 Locus Award for best short story.
• Del Rey's website has this excerpt from Neil Gaiman's story.

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Collection of 17 stories, with introductions to each by the author.
• Contents include the title pair of stories, "Forty, Counting Down" and "Twenty-One, Counting Up", that appeared in the December 1999 issues of Asimov's and Analog respectively (with the first a Hugo nominee), as well as 1995 Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette "Must and Shall".
• Del Rey's site has this description with an excerpt from "Forty, Counting Down".
• Steven H Silver wrote this review.

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YA dark fantasy novel, first in a trilogy, about a small town where only a select few have access to a 25th hour at night.
• The Eos site has this description and excerpt.
• The second volume, Midnighters, Book Two: Touching Darkness, just appeared in hardcover.
• Amazon has a School Library Journal review: "The story is exciting and the writing compelling."

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Literary fantasy novel set in 1950s Spain about a boy who discovers a book called The Shadow of the Wind and then finds that someone is trying to destroy every copy of every book written by the same author. Descriptions compare it to Eco, Garcia Marquez, and Borges.
• It was a bestseller in the author's native Spain, according to the PW on Amazon.
• The publisher's site has this description and an excerpt.

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