Jo Fletcher Books

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

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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.

Guest Post: “When Reading Habits Become Writing Habits” by David Towsey

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TowseyD-AuthorPicCropA few months ago I stumbled across a Twitter discussion that changed the way I look at my reading habits – both past and present. I have since forgotten who was involved, which is unfortunate because, like a good academic, I prefer to cite my sources. Essentially, ideas of “deep” and “shallow” reading in genre circles were tabled (without attaching any value judgements to either term). In this sense deep meant reading all the works and series of relatively few authors – typically favourites – and shallow referred to someone who reads single texts by a lot of different authors. This was something I hadn’t really thought about. I started asking those difficult questions – the kind we aim at ourselves. What kind of reader am I? What kind of reader have I been in the past? Continue reading →

Review: CITY OF STAIRS by Robert Jackson Bennett (Jo Fletcher Books/Crown Publishing)

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BennettRJ-CityOfStairsUKAnother superb novel from RJB

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions — until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world’s new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself — first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it — stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy.Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem — and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over.

City of Stairs is a superb novel, offering imaginative new takes on classic fantasy ideas and themes, populated by diverse and well-realised characters, and presented in excellent prose. This was one of my most-anticipated novels of 2014, and it exceeded by expectations. Continue reading →

Guest Post: “City of Stairs and the Super Tropey Fantasy Checklist” by Robert Jackson Bennett

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City of Stairs is definitely a fantasy novel. It’s got dead gods, magic, monsters, political skullduggery, and a healthy serving of mayhem. (I actually think all my novels are fantasy, but that’s beside the point.)

However, despite the popular aphorism, the clothes don’t make the man: if I put on a policeman’s uniform, for example, that doesn’t make me a cop.

So despite City of Stairs having a huge amount of fantasy elements, I sometimes find myself wondering – does it act like a fantasy? Content does not dictate behavior, in other words. Continue reading →

CITY OF STAIRS Competition from Jo Fletcher Books!

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BennettRJ-CityOfStairsUKRobert Jackson Bennett’s CITY OF STAIRS is absolutely one of my Most Anticipated novels of 2014. I have a copy of the book, now, so it will mostly likely be my next or next-but-one read. To celebrate the upcoming release in the UK, Jo Fletcher Books have five copies of the book to give away, plus one lucky winner will receive a £100 Red Letter Day experience. Here are the instructions:

All people have to do for a chance to win is let us know on our blog, Facebook page or Twitter – with #CityOfStairs – what tangible miraculous object they would create if you were a god of Bulikov.  A door which takes you to the past and a knotted cord that brings rain when untied are just some of the miracles the gods brought to Bulikov, but we want to know what other people would add to them. The competition is open until October 30th for your chance to win.

CITY OF STAIRS is published in the UK on Thursday (October 2nd). It is published in the US by Crown Publishing. Here’s the synopsis:

You’ve got to be careful when you’re chasing a murderer through Bulikov, for the world is not as it should be in that city. When the gods were destroyed and all worship of them banned by the Polis, reality folded; now stairs lead to nowhere, alleyways have become portals to the past, and criminals disappear into thin air.

The murder of Dr. Efrem Pangyui, the Polis diplomat researching the Continent’s past, has begun something and now whispers of an uprising flutter out from invisible corners. Only one woman may be willing to pursue the truth – but it is likely to cost her everything.

Guest Post: “Where Writers Get Their Groove” by Sebastien de Castell

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deCastell-AuthorPicBy far the most common question you get asked as an author is, “Where do your ideas come from?” Of course, my ideas come from the same places as yours do: the crazy parts of your brain intersecting with the crazy parts of the world around you. Human brains are hard-wired to find patterns even when there are none and those little synaptic misfires are part of what makes us creative beings.

Now, the question I never get asked is, “Where do you get your groove from?” Maybe this sounds like a silly question. After all, books don’t have a groove, do they?

Think about those big moments in a story when your eyes are racing across the page to find out what comes next. If the author is doing their job every line should be moving the story along at the perfect speed for the action taking place. Remember back to one of those heart-rending passages where your eyes suddenly freeze on the last three words of a sentence as the implications of an emotional turnaround hits you. That strange, almost magical timing is pacing. It’s rhythm. It’s groove. My first experiences with storytelling were as a touring musician, so I often go back to music for the inspiration in finding the right pacing for key scenes in the books I write. Here’s a few that helped put Traitor’s Blade onto the page. Continue reading →

Guest Post: “On Trying a Trilogy” by Tom Fletcher

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Gleam is the first book of The Factory Trilogy, which is my first trilogy. My first three novels – The Leaping, The Thing on the Shore, and The Ravenglass Eye, are horror novels that shared a universe, but are essentially standalone. And so writing the first book of a trilogy was an entirely new experience for me – one that I was apprehensive of, but have found thoroughly enjoyable.

I wanted to experiment with developing a particular protagonist – or, as it turned out, group of protagonists – across a series. I wanted to have a go at presenting the readers with a character who would grow and change from book to book, and whose whole past could be explored. Obviously, this required a series built around a character. So I knew from the beginning that characterisation would be central to this trilogy, and that the protagonist would need a motivation compelling enough to propel them forwards through three whole books, and a personality that would carry the readers.

FletcherT-AuthorPicI didn’t want the trilogy to be open-ended; that is, I didn’t want to write three merely sequential novels that might become the first three in a long series of sequential novels about this one character (see: Sookie Stackhouse or Rincewind the Wizard). I wanted it to be one story told across three books, the final book of which might leave the door open for further novels set in the same world, or featuring the same characters, but would simultaneously resolve the story set up in the first book. This meant I couldn’t just-write-and-see-what-happens, which is my usual approach to novels. (Don’t tell anyone). I needed a proper central story, with three acts, and the events of later books seeded in the first. I needed to decide which questions would be raised when, and when to provide the respective answers. And of course, anything written into the first book – and published – couldn’t be changed. This wasn’t like a novel, where you could get to the end and then go back and make changes to the beginning. Anything that forms part of the first book is locked in. So right from the get-go, this required careful planning. New territory for me – as I say, I was apprehensive. But excited, too.

One of the reasons that I’ve long wanted to write fantasy is the opportunity to create and play around in another world. Although I don’t believe that writing, say, realist fiction restricts the use of the imagination in any meaningful way (the real world being so full of things, characters and happenings that none of us has the time or brainpower to imagine all of them) it would be disingenuous of me to claim that writing second-world fantasy does not provide the scope for a wholly different type of imagining.

Working out the history, politics, economy, society, physicality and atmosphere of another world can be a lot of work. And once the work is done, it can be tempting to try and convey all of the detail; after all, the reader isn’t as familiar with this world as they are with their own, so they might need some familiarisation. (And you spent so much time on it…) This is one of the reasons (though of course not the only one) that fantasy novels can get so long.

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However, I’m not very good at writing long novels. I’d already chosen to put character first, so when it came to the setting I decided to just drop my characters into it and let them discuss or elaborate on it as and when seemed natural. This had the beneficial effect of arousing plenty of curiosity in the world of Gleam itself – it’s that old unanswered-question trick again. What are ‘bugs’? Why are Pyramidders bled by their superiors? What is the Clawbaby? What happened to Alan’s home settlement of Modest Mills? What was the factory ever for? Some of the questions readers might have are answered in the first book, but some are not, because the characters either don’t think to ask the same questions, or they do ask the questions and don’t have the answers. Indeed, answering some of the questions about the world of Gleam becomes one of Wild Alan’s primary motivations. In fact, one of the most gratifying experiences of writing Gleam has been exactly that – the way the story has arisen naturally from the juxtaposition of the world and the protagonists.

All of which is to say, I’m very excited about spending some more time in Gleam, and so I’m very glad that Gleam is only the first book of a trilogy. And I hope that when you’re done reading it, you’ll feel the same.

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Gleam was published yesterday in the UK by Jo Fletcher Books.

Sebastian de Castell’s THE TRAITOR’S BLADE out in Paperback tomorrow! (Jo Fletcher Books)

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deCastellS-GC1-TraitorsBladeEarlier this year (January), an advanced review copy of The Traitor’s Blade dropped through my mailbox. The debut fantasy novel by Sebastian de Castell, I was intrigued by the premise, which promised a mixture of swashbuckling action and adventure, sword-fights aplenty, and some intrigue and good storytelling. I was not at all disappointed. I blitzed through the novel. Here’s the main take-away from my review…

“An all-round brilliant fantasy debut, and one of the best I’ve read in a decade… Every so often, a debut novel comes along that knocks your expectations out of the park. Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamorra is one of those novels. Peter V. Brett’s The Painted Man is another. Sebastien de Castell’s Traitor’s Blade needs to be added to that list. I loved this.”

Tomorrow, The Traitor’s Blade is published in paperback in the UK, and I highly recommend you pick it up, if you haven’t already. Here’s the synopsis…

Falcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike.

Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission.

But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn…

And, finally, you can read an interview with Sebastian de Castell, here. I really can’t wait to read the next book in the series. Long may Falcio et al find their adventures in print!

Upcoming: THE MYSTERIES by Lisa Tuttle (Jo Fletcher Books)

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I’ve never read anything by Lisa Tuttle, but I receive a press release a few days ago for The Mysteries, and I was quite taken by the cover. It’s really quite excellent:

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The novel is due to be published in the UK by Jo Fletcher Books, on September 4th, 2014. Here’s the synopsis:

Laura Lensky’s daughter, Peri, has been missing for two years. For the police it’s a closed case – she wanted to run away – but for her mother and boyfriend, Hugh, it’s a different story.

When Laura hires private investigator Ian Kennedy, it is a last-ditch attempt to find her daughter before she leaves for America.

Drawn in by strange parallels to an obscure Celtic myth and his first, almost unexplainable case, Ian takes the job. But his beliefs are about to be stretched to their limit – there are darker and more devious forces at work here than any of them imagined.

JFB have done a great job with the design for the novel (something the publisher is invariably good at, actually). And, while it’s got a larger palette than her previous books, it fits rather nicely with her other works, many of which will be released as eBooks in the coming weeks/months.

New Books (August #1)

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Featuring: David Annandale, Anne Blankman, Christopher Fowler, Felix Gilman, Emmi Itäranta, Philip Kerr, M.A. Lawson, Peter Liney, Caitlin Moran, Haruki Murakami, Lauren Owen, Greg Rucka, Brian Ruckley, Adelle Waldman, Will Wiles, Tad Williams

Annandale-HH30-DamnationOfPythosDavid Annandale, The Damnation of Pythos (Black Library)

In the aftermath of the Dropsite Massacre at Isstvan V, a battered and bloodied force of Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders regroups on a seemingly insignificant death world. Fending off attacks from all manner of monstrous creatures, the fractious allies find hope in the form of human refugees fleeing from the growing war, and cast adrift upon the tides of the warp. But even as the Space Marines carve out a sanctuary for them in the jungles of Pythos, a darkness gathers that threatens to consume them all…

This is the 30th book in the Horus Heresy series. Kind of cool that it’s lasted this long. Annandale is one of Black Library’s best new(ish) writers, and I’ve enjoyed all of his work. Lately, he has just been getting better and better, too, so I have very high hopes for this novel. I’ll be reading the 29th book in the series – Graham McNeill’s Spirit of Vengeance – first, even though this is set earlier in the chronology. (My series OCD is at play…) Hopefully I’ll get to this beginning of September.

Also on CR: Interview with David Annandale; Guest Post on David’s Favourite Novel

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BlankmanA-PrisonerOfNightAndFogUSAnne Blankman, Prisoner of Night and Fog (Harper Collins)

In 1930s Munich, danger lurks behind dark corners, and secrets are buried deep within the city. But Gretchen Müller, who grew up in the National Socialist Party under the wing of her “uncle” Dolf, has been shielded from that side of society ever since her father traded his life for Dolf’s, and Gretchen is his favorite, his pet.

Uncle Dolf is none other than Adolf Hitler. And Gretchen follows his every command.

Until she meets a fearless and handsome young Jewish reporter named Daniel Cohen. Gretchen should despise Daniel, yet she can’t stop herself from listening to his story: that her father, the adored Nazi martyr, was actually murdered by an unknown comrade. She also can’t help the fierce attraction brewing between them, despite everything she’s been taught to believe about Jews.

As Gretchen investigates the very people she’s always considered friends, she must decide where her loyalties lie. Will she choose the safety of her former life as a Nazi darling, or will she dare to dig up the truth – even if it could get her and Daniel killed?

A harrowing and evocative story about an ordinary girl faced with the extraordinary decision to give up everything she’s ever believed… and to trust her own heart instead.

I spotted this while still in the UK, and have been keeping my eye open for it ever since. I found it in the Toronto Public Library, so will hopefully read it ASAP. Like the premise, and have heard nothing by good things about it. Hitler seems to be quite the popular protagonist or subject, recently – see also Timur Vermes’s Look Who’s Back and Lavie Tidhar’s upcoming A Man Lies Dreaming.

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Christopher Fowler, Nyctophobia (Solaris)

FowlerC-Nyctophobia

Isolated and beautiful, Hyperion House is a house of eerie symmetry; uniquely designed to ensure that one half remains always in the light and one half always in the dark.

When new owner Callie Shaw begins to uncover the house’s strange history she finds herself inexplicably drawn to the shrouded servant’s quarters at the back of the house, increasingly convinced that someone is living a half-life among the darkness there…

This sounds like it has the potential to be deliciously spooky.

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GilmanF-RevolutionsUKPBFelix Gilman, The Revolutions (Corsair)

In 1893 a storm sweeps through London, while Arthur Shaw – a young astronomer with a side career writing fiction – is at work in British Museum Reading Room. The storm wreaks unprecedented damage throughout London. Its aftermath of the storm Arthur’s prime literary market closes, owing him money, and all his debts come due at once. His fiancé Jo takes a job as a stenographer for some of the fashionable spiritualist and occult societies of fin de siècle London society. Meanwhile, Arthur deciphers an encoded newspaper ad seeking able young men. It seems to be a clerking job doing accounting work, but the mysterious head man Mr. Gacewell offers Arthur a starting position at a salary many times what any clerk could expect. The work is long and peculiar, and the men spend all day performing unnerving calculations that make them hallucinate or even go mad… but the salary is compelling.

Things are beginning to look up when the wages of dabbling in the esoteric suddenly come due: a war breaks out between competing magical societies, and Arthur interrupts Jo in the middle of an elaborate occult exploration. This rash move turns out to be dire, as Jo’s consciousness is stranded at the outer limits of the occultists’ psychic day trip. Which, Arthur is chagrinned…

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a negative review of a Felix Gilman novel. This has been on my radar for some time, so I have very high hopes. I’m sure I won’t be disappointed.

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ItärantaE-MemoryOfWaterEmmi Itäranta, Memory of Water (Voyager)

In the far north of the Scandinavian Union, now occupied by the power state of New Qian, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio studies to become a tea master like her father. It is a position that holds great responsibility and a dangerous secret. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that once provided water for her whole village. When Noria’s father dies, the secret of the spring reaches the new military commander… and the power of the army is vast indeed. But the precious water reserve is not the only forbidden knowledge Noria possesses, and resistance is a fine line.

Threatened with imprisonment, and with her life at stake, Noria must make an excruciating, dangerous choice between knowledge and freedom.

I’ve seen a lot of positive buzz about this book, and so I’m quite looking forward to trying it. Sounds really interesting.

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praying-hands copyPhilip Kerr, Research (Quercus)

If you want to write a murder mystery, you have to do some research… In a luxury flat in Monaco, John Houston’s supermodel wife lies in bed, a bullet in her skull. Houston is the world’s most successful novelist, the playboy head of a literary empire that produces far more books than he could ever actually write. Now the man who has invented hundreds of best-selling killings is wanted for a real murder and on the run from the police, his life transformed into something out of one of his books. And in London, the ghostwriter who is really behind those books has some questions for him too…

Sounds like a great thriller. I’ve never read anything by Kerr, but he’s another of the established thriller/crime/fiction writers that is often recommended to me.

Review copy from NetGalley.

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LawsonMA-KH1-RosaritoBeachUSM.A. Lawson, Rosarita Beach (Blue Rider Press)

Bold, brash, and beautiful, Kay Hamilton is not your average DEA agent — she’s as infuriating as she is irresistible. Having recently moved to San Diego after a case in Miami brought her more notoriety than medals, Kay once again finds herself embroiled in an international bust.

Tito Olivera, younger brother of drug czar Caesar Olivera, is within her grasp. If she takes down Tito, Kay is positive that Caesar will follow — and when Caesar falls, so does the largest and most vicious drug cartel in Mexico. But when a mysterious stranger shows up on her doorstep, all of Kay’s carefully laid plans are thrown out the window. The Olivera case suddenly becomes far more personal — not to mention dangerous — and Kay must be willing to sacrifice everything to get her man. Rosarito Beach is an explosive, action-packed thriller that will have readers on the edge of their seats until the final moments of the epic conclusion.

This is actually a pen-name for one of my favourite thriller authors, Mike Lawson (not sure why he decided to go with a slight pseudonym for this one). It’s a separate series from his best-selling Joe DeMarco series, and I’m looking forward to trying it out. The second book in the series, Viking Bay, is due out in January 2015.

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LineyP-D2-IntoTheFirePeter Liney, Into the Fire (Jo Fletcher Books)

Having escaped the Island – a wasteland that housed those no longer able to contribute to society – ageing ‘Big Guy’ Clancy thought his fight was over. But they have returned to the mainland to find that it is not the haven they anticipated.

With the punishment satellites that kept them on the Island – and the city under control – gone, hell has been unleashed. A mysterious organisation has begun to decimate the population; those it doesn’t kill outright are herded into the streets and then set free to run – for the rich and powerful to hunt. Clancy is about to discover that his work is far from over. The fires of hell don’t burn much hotter than this.

The sequel to The Detainee (which I shamefully still haven’t read…), this is a series I really want to get caught up with. Hopefully I’ll manage it soon.

Review copy from Edelweiss.

Also on CR: Interview with Peter Liney; Guest Post by Liney; Excerpt of The Detainee

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MoranC-HowToBuildAGirlCaitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl (Harper)

What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn’t enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes — and build yourself.

It’s 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there’s no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde — fast-talking, hard-drinking gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer — like Jo in Little Women, or the Brontës — but without the dying-young bit.

By sixteen, she’s smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. She’s writing pornographic letters to rock stars, having all the kinds of sex with all the kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.

But what happens when Johanna realizes she’s built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks enough to build a girl after all?

I’ve read some of Moran’s journalism, but for some reason have never got around to reading any of her books. This novel, though, caught my eye a few months back, and I was very happy to find it on Edelweiss for review. Expect more soon.

Review copy from Edelweiss.

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Murakami-ColorlessTsukuruTazakiUSHaruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage (Doubleday)

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’, and Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black field’. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it.

One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn’t want to see him, or talk to him, ever again.

Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago.

I have never read anything by Murakami. I’m not sure why. I guess I just never got around to it, and surrounded by review copies I never felt a need to go out and buy it (although, that hasn’t stopped me in other situations…). With this just arrived, though, I think I’ll have to make this my first read. I’ve been told he’s brilliant, so I have high hopes.

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NichollsD-UsUKDavid Nicholls, Us (Harper)

“I was looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together.”

“Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that?”

Douglas Petersen understands his wife’s need to ‘rediscover herself’ now that their son is leaving home.

He just thought they’d be doing their rediscovering together.

So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again.

The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed.

It’s been a long time since I last read a novel by Nicholls – I remember reading Starter for Ten and The Understudy back-to-back when I was younger. Since then, I have been well and truly distracted by SFF and thrillers, so Nicholls’s novels always seemed to pass me by. This sounded fun, though, so I’ll hopefully get back into reading his books, and do some catching up as well.

Review copy from Edelweiss.

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OwenL-TheQuickUKPBLauren Owen, The Quick (Vintage)

You are about to discover the secrets of The Quick –

But first, reader, you must travel to Victorian England, and there, in the wilds of Yorkshire, meet a brother and sister alone in the world, a pair bound by tragedy. You will, in time, enter the rooms of London’s mysterious Aegolius Club – a society of the richest, most powerful men in England. And at some point – we cannot say when – these worlds will collide.

It is then, and only then, that a new world emerges, a world of romance, adventure and the most delicious of horrors – and the secrets of The Quick are revealed.

Another book I’ve seen mentioned on most of the blogs I still read, and almost always positively (or, at least, impressed and intrigued). Sounds interesting, so I’ll hopefully get to it soon.

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RuckaG-JB2-BravoUSGreg Rucka, Bravo (Mulholland Books)

In the wake of a failed attack on America’s premier theme park which put his own daughter at risk, Special Forces operator Jad Bell is sent after the man who arranged it. But it soon becomes clear that capturing him is just the start: his employer, known only as the Architect, has already set something far worse in motion.

At the centre of it all are two women deep under cover. One is an American spy whose intel is the only hope they have, but who has lived a lie for so long she cannot be trusted. And the other is a woman as beautiful as she is deadly, already living in the States, and poised to execute the Architect’s plans at a moment’s notice.

The stakes are even higher, the clock is ticking, and this time the enemies are hiding in plain sight…

I love Rucka’s comics work, but have never read any of his prose fiction. I also have the first book in this series, Alpha, and I intend to read them both pretty close together, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

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RuckleyB-TheFreeBrian Ruckley, The Free (Orbit)

A warrior of legend. A warrior to be feared.

The famed Yulan is leader of The Free, the last remaining band of mercenaries in the Hommetic Kingdom. Feared and revered, they were once seen as a threat to the Hommetic Kingdom’s power – until they outlasted it in the course of a bloody rebellion.

With the oppressive monarch overthrown, The Free plan to finally lay down their weapons, hoping for a chance of peace at last – until Yulan is offered one final contract that he is unable to refuse. The target is the very man responsible for the worst atrocity Yulan has ever witnessed, one that has haunted him ever since. And now is his last chance to right that wrong.

But as Yulan and his companions embark on their last journey, a potent mix of vengeance, love and loyalty is building to a storm. It is a storm so violent it is likely to destroy the last of the free companies. And only then will they discover the true price of freedom.

I’m a big fan of Ruckley’s novels. This is the start of a new series (perhaps? It may be a stand-alone), and I’m eager to get around to it.

Review copy from NetGalley.

Also on CR: Interview with Brian Ruckley

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WaldmanA-LoveAffairsOfNathanielPUSAdelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. (Picador)

Writer Nate Piven’s star is rising. After several lean and striving years, he has his pick of both magazine assignments and women: Juliet, the hotshot business reporter; Elisa, his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, now friend; and Hannah, “almost universally regarded as nice and smart, or smart and nice,” who holds her own in conversation with his friends. When one relationship grows more serious, Nate is forced to consider what it is he really wants.

In Nate’s 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance? Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a flawed, sometimes infuriating modern man—one who thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety, who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down in ways that may just make him an emblem of our times.

I read the short-story prequel to this and thought it was pretty good. It left me wanting more – partly because it felt incomplete, but also because I thought the characterisation was interesting.

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WilesW-TheWayInnUSWill Wiles, The Way Inn (Harper Perennial)

Neil Double is a “conference surrogate,” hired by his clients to attend industry conferences so that they don’t have to. It’s a life of budget travel, cheap suits, and out-of-town exhibition centers — a kind of paradise for Neil, who has reconstructed his incognito professional life into a toxic and selfish personal philosophy. But his latest job, at a conference of conference organizers, will radically transform him and everything he believes as it unexpectedly draws him into a bizarre and speculative mystery.

In a brand new Way Inn — a global chain of identikit mid-budget motels — in an airport hinterland, he meets a woman he has seen before in strange and unsettling circumstances. She hints at an astonishing truth about this mundane world filled with fake smiles and piped muzak. But before Neil can learn more, she vanishes. Intrigued, he tries to find her — a search that will lead him down the rabbit hole, into an eerily familiar place where he will discover a dark and disturbing secret about the Way Inn. Caught on a metaphysical Mobius strip, Neil discovers that there may be no way out.

I only heard about this novel from Christopher Priest’s positive review of it. (Which was, in turn, only found through a Twitter link.) It sounds interesting, so I requested it on Edelweiss.

Review copy from Edelweiss.

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WilliamsT-BD3-SleepingLateOnJudgementDayUKTad Williams, Sleeping Late (Hodder)

Bobby Dollar thinks he’s seen it all – after all, he’s been to Hell and back again. Literally.

But he has another think coming. Sleeping Late on Judgement Day will find Bobby back in his adopted hometown of San Judas, California, trying to stay out of trouble… and failing. His love life is still a mess, there are one too many people who have it out for him, and drowning his sorrows in a nice glass of whisky won’t keep the demons at bay forever.

Bobby’s going to have to pull himself together and make a few tough decisions before time runs out. The problem is, time could run out at any moment. In the final Bobby Dollar novel in Tad Williams’s groundbreaking epic fantasy trilogy, fallen angel Bobby Dollar will finally be force to confront the one problem he can’t talk his way out of: his own.

This is the final volume in Williams’s Bobby Dollar supernatural/urban fantasy series, following The Dirty Streets of Heaven and Happy Hour in Hell. I haven’t read either of the first two volumes, much to my confusion. This sounds right up my alley. Maybe because I’ve been devouring Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, which is in the same sub-genre. Maybe after I finish the latest Slim novel, I’ll get started on Bobby Dollar’s (mis)adventures.

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