Reviews by Steven

We noticed something the other day when browsing over our history of reviews (all of them awesome, of course). We didn’t have hardly any reviews of books published by Baen. We attribute part of this to us not reading a lot of their novels. Now, this isn’t because Baen books are bad (as one misguided soul insinuated in a comment to one of our earlier reviews), we just have a lot of books on our plate, many of which are Fantasy (which we prefer over SF). The few Baen novels we have read have actually been pretty solid (looking at you Larry Correia). One of the main Baen authors is David Weber. He practically has his own section at bookstores. His main series follows one Honor Harrington, and the latest book in that series, MISSION OF HONOR (Amazon), was just released.
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George Mann is awesome. That is all.

OK, that really isn’t all we are going to say, but it covers our opinions nicely. George Mann has given readers quite the year. If you were late to the party, you got THE AFFINITY BRIDGE (EBR Review). You also got GHOSTS OF MANHATTAN (EBR Review). In the UK you got THE IMMORALITY ENGINE. And now here in the US, THE OSIRIS RITUAL (Amazon) has finally been released. How great is that?
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Carrie Vaughn writes books for the female demographic, no doubt about it. Her Kitty Norville series (review of her latest book in that series coming later) has scooped up quite a bit of popularity and recognition, so really it was only a matter of time before she started branching out more and more. DISCORD’S APPLE is her latest effort towards giving her readers something a little different from her normal releases.
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It’s really not an exaggeration when we say SWORDS & DARK MAGIC (Amazon) was easily one of our most anticipated titles of the year. In fact, that doesn’t even say enough. Edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders, this collection, to us, was like the Holy Grail of short story anthologies. Why? The first three stories in the collection, in the order they appear: Steven Erikson, Glen Cook, Gene Wolf. Yeah. That’s just the first three stories.

Sheesh.
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NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR (Amazon), by Mark Charan Newton, has finally been released in the US. There was a fair amount of hype about the novel coming out of the UK, and where there is hype, there is usually heaps of disappointment. Anyone remember BONESHAKER (EBR Review)?. However in this case, we are treated to a solid debut novel.
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China Miéville is like Dan Simmons in a way. No matter how odd or bizarre the idea or synopsis, the novel turns out well. Imagine Miéville’s editor when China said, “So I’m gonna write this novel. It’s a comedy. Kinda. In London. Kinda. Where a giant squid is stolen. And there are people running around with a giant hand in place of their head–Knuckle-heads, get it? And there is a Star Trek phaser that works. And there are cults of every kind whose gods are all legit. And they all have real and scheduled Apocalypses.” With his track-record, what can Miéville’s editor say but, “Awesome! I’ll sell it tomorrow for a ton of money. Yay us!” (Note: This is similar to a post our friend, Larry Correia, did on the previously mentioned Dan Simmons. It was awesome, and it reminded us completely of how we feel about Miéville).
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So. Another Hugo nominated novel. Considering the luck we have had so far with the nominated novels, we weren’t holding our breath for anything awesome with Robert Charles Wilson‘s JULIAN COMSTOCK (Amazon). Thankfully, JULIAN COMSTOCK was an excellent and different read.

Wilson’s latest novel is a a tale set in 22nd Century America, in and around 2172. That makes it SF right? This novel is written by Wilson, so is HAS to be SF. Right? Well… kinda… but not really. Get all your preconceived notions out of the way. COMSTOCK is not really SF, and perhaps this is why some people have been put off by it. This is not like Wilson’s prior novels. Rather, COMSTOCK reads like a Civil War novel while simultaneously being a biopic of a famous “historical” figure: Julian Comstock.
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We love Adrian Tchaikovsky. There really is no way around it. It can be an inconvenience at times, seeing as we stare at other novels and wish that they were another novel in the Shadows of the Apt series. It turns out Tchaikovsky just keeps putting out novels that continually feel fresh, and that are immensely fun to read. Now the third book of the series, BLOOD OF THE MANTIS (Amazon), could have been awful. Tchaikovsky could have tried to go even bigger than DRAGONFLY FALLING (EBR Review). That would have been a terrible mistake. There was such huge-scale warfare in book 2, that to try to one-up it would have been nearly impossible. And yet we see it all the time.
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If you are an aspiring author, we can guarantee you have heard this advice: write what you know. Now granted, for the most part you can come to know most anything via study and research. When it comes to disabilities, however, you simply can’t know unless you’ve experienced it. We use this as a preface to Blake Charlton‘s SPELLWRIGHT (Amazon), because Charlton took that bit of advice and ran with it.
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As you will all recall, our Fantasy 202 post involved a lot of Horror. It is an under-appreciated genre that contains one of (in our opinions) the best writers out there: Brian Lumley. His novels, over the years, have continually been able to impress our critical minds. With the paperback due out soon, Tor sent us a copy of Lumley’s NECROSCOPE: HARRY AND THE PIRATES (Amazon).

Upon first taking the book in hand, the reader will first notice two things. First, the cover is done by the true Necroscope series artist, Bob Eggleton (one of our favorite artists)… and yet it seems almost YA. Second, PIRATES is very thin, only 189 pages. Suffice it to say, PIRATES is not YA. It contains two novellas, and a vignette (as Lumley calls it) that are set during the Lost Years of Harry Keogh’s life. For the uninitiated, the Lost Years mark the 8ish year period between books 2 and 3. We’ll say right here that if you haven’t read NECROSCOPE (Amazon) and VAMPHYRI! (Amazon) you shouldn’t read PIRATES yet. It just won’t make enough sense to you. If you find yourself in that camp, do yourself a favor and buy those novels yesterday.
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