Cover: THE SKULL THRONE by Peter V. Brett (Voyager)

March 2, 2015March 2, 2015 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Del Rey, Demon Cycle, Fantasy, Most Anticipated 2015, Peter V Brett, Skull Throne, Voyager

The US cover for THE SKULL THRONE, Peter V. Brett‘s fourth Demon Cycle novel, was released a while ago (at end). Today, Voyager Books finally unveiled the UK artwork (right) – Starburst Magazine had the exclusive first reveal. It’s pretty good. Here’s the book’s synopsis:

The Skull Throne of Krasia stands empty.

Built from the skulls of fallen generals and demon princes, it is a seat of honour and ancient, powerful magic, keeping the demon corelings at bay. From atop the throne, Ahmann Jardir was meant to conquer the known world, forging its isolated peoples into a unified army to rise up and end the demon war once and for all.

But Arlen Bales, the Warded Man, stood against this course, challenging Jardir to a duel he could not in honour refuse. Rather than risk defeat, Arlen cast them both from a precipice, leaving the world without a saviour, and opening a struggle for succession that threatens to tear the Free Cities of Thesa apart.

In the south, Inevera, Jardir’s first wife, must find a way to keep their sons from killing one another and plunging their people into civil war as they strive for glory enough to make a claim on the throne.

In the north, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn struggle to forge an alliance between the duchies of Angiers and Miln against the Krasians before it is too late.

Caught in the crossfire is the duchy of Lakton—rich and unprotected, ripe for conquest.

All the while, the corelings have been growing stronger, and without Arlen and Jardir there may be none strong enough to stop them.

Only Renna Bales may know more about the fate of the missing men, but she, too, has disappeared…

The Skull Throne is published by Voyager on April 9th, 2015. It is published in the US by Del Rey on March 31st, 2015. I received an eARC from Del Rey recently, and I intend to get started on the novel in about a week or so.

Also on CR: Reviews of The Painted Man, The Desert Spear, The Daylight War, The Great Bazaar & Brayan’s Gold and Messenger’s Legacy.

Interesting, Different Conventions in Publishing… Synopses

February 27, 2015February 27, 2015 Civilian Reader Covers, Random Conventions, Crime, Distance, Doubleday, Enchanted, Harper Collins, Helen Giltrow, Orion Books, Publishing, Rene Denfeld, Thriller

I’ve been thinking a lot about some various different conventions in book publishing. Partly because I keep moving around, but also because one element of one of my jobs at a literary agency is keeping track of international editions of clients’ novels. Couple these two things with my ‘work’ on this blog, and I spend a lot of time reading publishers’ websites and catalogues. Recently, I’ve spotted a few books published in the UK and North America with quite different synopses (as well as covers), and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a couple here. The differences aren’t massive by any means, and maybe I only picked up on them because I read so many. The differences between conventions in cover artwork are, however, much greater – I’ll put together another post about this in the future, I think.

The two novels that jumped out at me were Rene Denfeld‘s The Enchanted and Helen Giltrow‘s The Distance. I spotted them both first in Toronto, and thought they both looked really interesting (and, naturally, have bought them). Since then, I’ve seen that the novels are also published in the UK by Orion Books. With different covers and synopses, my interest in reading them only grew. To be clear, I don’t think whoever wrote the back cover text for either of these books’ North American editions did a bad job. I just think the UK synopses are a bit better, and exhibit some different conventions. Both of the novels are among my 2015 Must Reads. Let’s take the books one-by-one… Continue reading →

Cover: KILLING PRETTY by Richard Kadrey (Voyager)

January 21, 2015 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Harper Collins, Horror, Killing Pretty, Richard Kadrey, Sandman Slim, Urban Fantasy, Voyager

I’m a big fan of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, and I just stumbled across the cover for the seventh novel, Killing Pretty. Due to be published in July 2015 by Voyager Books in the UK and US, I was unable to find a synopsis… Nevertheless, here’s the cover, which continues the very cool, vintage-pulp movie poster feel:

Also on CR: Reviews of Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha From Hell, Devil in the Dollhouse, Devil Said Bang, Kill City Blues, The Getaway God, Killing Pretty

Upcoming: New John Sandford Fiction

January 19, 2015 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Crime, Gathering Prey, John Sandford, Knopf, Michele Cook, Outrage, Prey Series, Putnam, Singular Menace Series, Suspense, Thriller

Longtime readers of CR will know I’m a huge fan of John Sandford‘s various series – be it the Lucas Davenport/Prey series, the Virgil Flowers spin-off series, or the Kidd & LuEllen series, I’ve loved them all. So, I’m happy to share the information for two upcoming 2015 releases from the author, including the 25th Prey novel:

GATHERING PREY

They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes—they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them.

Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she’d befriended in San Francisco. The woman thinks somebody’s killing her friends, she’s afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. She’s hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn’t know what to do.

Letty tells Lucas she’s going to get her, and, though he suspects Letty’s getting played, he volunteers to go with her. When he hears the woman’s story, though, he begins to think there’s something in it. Little does he know. In the days to come, he will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has ever seen, a trip that will not only put the two of them in danger—but just may change the course of his life.

Gathering Prey is due to be published in the US by Putnam, on April 28th 2015.

OUTRAGE, w. Michele Cook

Shay Remby and her gang of renegades have struck a blow to the Singular Corporation. When they rescued Shay’s brother, Odin, from a secret Singular lab, they also liberated a girl. Singular has been experimenting on her, trying to implant a U.S. senator’s memories into her brain—with partial success. Fenfang is now a girl who literally knows too much.

Can the knowledge brought by ex-captives Odin and Fenfang help Shay and her friends expose the crimes of this corrupt corporation? Singular has already killed one of Shay’s band to protect their secrets. How many more will die before the truth is exposed?

The second novel in Sandford and Cook’s The Singular Menace YA series, it follows Uncaged (which I still need to read). It’s due to be published in North America by Knopf for Young Readers, on July 14th 2015.

New WOLFHOUND CENTURY Covers…

January 12, 2015 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Alternative History, Fantasy, Gollancz, Peter Higgins, Radiant State, Russia, Truth and Fear, Wolfhound Century

With the third installment fast approaching, Gollancz unveiled today a new cover style for Peter Higgins‘s excellent Wolfhound Century series. And it’s a pretty striking style, to say the least:

Book 1 – Wolfhound Century

Book 2 – Truth and Fear

Book 3 – Radiant State

The new editions are due to be published in April 2015. I may have to buy the first two again, so they look all nice on my shelves… I have shared the cover and details for Radiant State already, but I thought it would be nice to have them all together in one place. You can read my review of Wolfhound Century, here. In case you’ve missed the series, here’s the synopsis for the first in the series:

A thousand miles east of Mirgorod, the great capital city of the Vlast, deep in the ancient forest, lies the most recent fallen angel, its vast stone form half-buried and fused into the rock by the violence of impact. As its dark energy leeches into the crash site, so a circle of death expands around it, slowly – inexorably – killing everything it touches. Alone in the wilderness, it reaches out with its mind.

The endless forest and its antique folk lore are no concern to Inspector Vissarion Lom, summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist – and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown terrorism with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head at the children’s home.

Lom’s investigation reveals a conspiracy that extends to the top echelons of the party. When he exposes who – or rather what – is the controlling intelligence behind this, it is time for the detective to change sides. Pursued by rogue police agents and their man-crushing mudjhik, Lom must protect Kantor’s step-daughter Maroussia, who has discovered what is hidden beneath police headquarters: a secret so ancient that only the forest remembers. As they try to escape the capital and flee down river, elemental forces are gathering. The earth itself is on the move.

Upcoming: MOTHER OF EDEN by Chris Beckett (Corvus)

November 20, 2014 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Atlantic Books, Chris Beckett, Corvus, Dark Eden, Mother of Eden, Sci-Fi

Next year, Corvus Books will publish Chris Beckett‘s follow-up to his 2013 Arthur C. Clarke award-winning sci-fi novel Dark Eden. I was actually at the awards event (it was fun), and I picked up the novel that night — as, I’m sure, did many others. However, like so very many books I buy, I have yet to get around to it. With the sequel’s release approaching, however, I have extra impetus to get it read in time to enjoy the sequel. Here’s the synopsis:

“We speak of a mother’s love, but we forget her power. Power over life. Power to give and to withhold.”

Generations after the breakup of the human family of Eden, the Johnfolk emphasise knowledge and innovation, the Davidfolk tradition and cohesion. But both have built hierarchical societies sustained by violence and dominated by men — and both claim to be the favoured children of a long-dead woman from Earth that all Eden knows as Gela, the mother of them all.

When Starlight Brooking meets a handsome and powerful man from across Worldpool, she believes he will offer an outlet for her ambition and energy. But she has no idea that she will be a stand-in for Gela herself, and wear Gela’s ring on her own finger.

And she has no idea of the enemies she will make, no inkling that a time will come when she, like John Redlantern, will choose to kill…

Chris Beckett‘s Mother of Eden is due to be published on June 4th, 2015 in the UK by Corvus.

Upcoming: FISHBOWL by Matthew Glass (Corvus)

November 20, 2014 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Atlantic Books, Corvus, Fishbowl, Matthew Glass, Tech, Thriller

Matthew Glass is an author I’m very interested in reading. I have his first two novels, Ultimatum and End Game, but haven’t managed to get around to them yet. I spotted Fishbowl while browsing Atlantic Books’ latest catalogue, and I think it sounded very interesting. There are obvious connections with the story behind Facebook (see Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires or the superb film adaptation, The Social Network), while Glass’s other works have brought to mind Kim Stanley-Robinson’s Science in the Capitol trilogy. Here’s the synopsis for the upcoming novel:

When you’re the next big thing in Silicon Valley, the whole world is watching.

As a gifted Ivy League student, Andrei Koss hit upon an idea that would revolutionise social networking and move it on by a generation. Enlisting the help of his best friends, Ben and Kevin, he turned their dorm room into an operations base, where fl ashes of creative brilliance and all-night-coding sessions led to the creation of Fishbowl. He is now the 21-year-old CEO of a multi-billion-dollar empire. His creation reaches into every corner of the planet. But its immense power has many uses, and some will stop at nothing to get a piece of it.

Matthew Glass (a pseudonym) Fishbowl is due to be published on February 5th, 2015 by Corvus in the UK.

Cover Reveal: SECRET HISTORIES Series by Simon R Green (Jo Fletcher Books)

November 19, 2014 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Casino Infernale, Daemons Are Forever, For Heaven's Eyes Only, From Hell With Love, Jo Fletcher Books, Live and Let Drood, Secret Histories, Simon R Green, The Man With the Golden Torc, The Spy Who Haunted Me, Urban Fantasy

I haven’t read much of Simon R. Green‘s work. This is partly because they haven’t always been as widely available in the UK as one might have thought (the author is British, after all). Jo Fletcher Books is attending to this oversight, however: this year, they have published the author’s Nightside series (twelve novels) in eBook, and on December 11th they will publish the seven novels (so far) in Green’s Secret Histories urban fantasy series. The covers are above. Here’s the synopsis for the first novel, The Man With the Golden Torc:

For ages, Eddie Drood and his family have kept humanity safe from the things that go bump in the night. But now one of his own has convinced the rest of the family that Eddie’s become a menace, and that humanity needs to be protected from him. So he’s on the run, using every trick in the book, magical and otherwise, hoping he lives long enough to prove his innocence…

The Secret Histories: The Man With the Golden Torc, Daemons Are Forever, The Spy Who Haunted Me, From Hell With Love, For Heaven’s Eyes Only, Live and Let Drood, Casion Infernale

One I didn’t know before: Green also wrote the movie novelisation for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

The first two novels in the series were originally available in the UK, published by Gollancz.

Cover: WHERE THE TRAINS TURN by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Tor.com)

November 18, 2014 Civilian Reader Covers Fantasy, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Sci-Fi, Short Story, Tor.com, Where The Trains Turn

Spotted this on Tor’s website, and thought the cover (above) was stunning. Here’s the synopsis:

I don’t like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.

Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she’s willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert’s fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. “The train tried to kill us,” he tells her.

Rupert’s terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?

Published in English for the first time, Where The Trains Turn won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti’s annual short story competition and also the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.

Upcoming: THE DEAD LANDS by Benjamin Percy (Hodder)

November 18, 2014 Civilian Reader Covers, Upcoming Benjamin Percy, Dystopia, Hodder, Most Anticipated, The Dead Lands

I shared the US cover and synopsis for Benjamin Percy’s upcoming new novel a little while ago. This morning, Hodder unveiled the UK cover. As it is one of my most-anticipated novels of 2015, I had to share it here, too. Here’s the synopsis:

The world we know is gone, destroyed by a virus that wiped out nearly every human on the planet. Some few survivors built walled cities, fortresses to keep themselves safe from those the virus didn’t kill… but did change.

Sanctuary. A citadel in the heart of the former United States of America. Hundreds of miles in every direction beyond its walls lies nothing but death and devastation. Everyone who lives in the safety Sanctuary provides knows that.

Until the day a stranger appears. He speaks of a green and fertile land far to the west, a land of promise and plenty, safe from the ruin the virus has wreaked. He has come to lead the survivors away from Sanctuary, to the promise of a new life without walls.

But those who follow him will discover that not everything he says is true.

Benjamin Percy‘s The Dead Lands is published in the UK on April 9th 2015, by Hodder Books. It will be published in the US by Grand Central, also in April 2015.