The Leaning Pile of Books

Hopefully there will be two new reviews over the next week. Last night I finished a draft of a review of The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee, and I've started a review of World's End by Joan D. Vinge (which will probably be short anyway since the book was not very long). I'd like to get both of those written by the time I'm done reading The Praxis so there is only one left to get caught up on. I've started getting to the really good part of the book now, though, so I may finish it pretty quickly (not that it was bad before or anything; it's just started to pick up the pace a lot). After that, I'm not sure what will be next although I'm leaning toward either The Poison Throne or The Last Stormlord at the moment.

This week I added two review copies to the huge mass that is slowly taking over my living room.

Shadow Bound by Erin Kellison

Shadow Bound will be released on June 29 and the sequel, Shadow Fall, has a publication date of July 29. This debut novel is supposed to be dark fantasy, science fiction, horror and romantic suspense inspired by Christian, Greek and Celtic mythology. Both books in the series will come with a money-back guarantee if readers are not satisfied with their purchase. The combination of dark fantasy and science fiction with some mythological foundation intrigues me, so I'll probably be reviewing this one at some point a little closer to the release date.

Death

Some people will do anything to avoid it. Even trade their immortal souls for endless existence.

Wraiths

Secretly, inexorably, they are infiltrating our world, sucking the essence out of unsuspecting victims with their hideous parody of a kiss.

Segue

Adam Thorne founded the Institute to study and destroy his monster of a brother, but the key to its success is held in the pale, slender hand of a woman on the run. There is something hauntingly different about Talia O’Brien, her unknowing sensuality, her uncanny way of slipping into Shadow.

Twilight

This is the place between life and what comes after - a dark forest of fantasy, filled with beauty, peril, mystery. And Talia is about to open the door.

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Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis

This is a debut novel by one of the authors involved in the new Wild Cards trilogy. It's an alternate history of World War II with a supernatural twist. It's coming out in hardcover on April 13.

It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.

When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities—a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present—Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.

Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, the tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.