Yuku free message boards

I’ve begun dreading doing these Quarterly posts, the amount of news I gather over the course of 3 months tends to be overwhelming. In the past I’d then make this into a long form paragraph style post, talking about my impressions and quoting excerpts and so on - which I had already figured out I couldn't continue doing. Now, I've just spend the last few hours trying to use more of a “headline” format, where you can click on the link to see more if you’re interested (you can assume if I’m putting the news item here – I’M interested) - but even then it's taking me forever and I just don't have this kind of time to devote to it.

So I'm going to post what I've put together so far right here. Tomorrow, there will be a new comic TPB reivew instead for the column on the front page. And from now on, when I find any "news/previews" upcoming book info that would tie into this column - I'm just going to post it right away in here.  

 

Paul Kemp News:

Two excerpts from his upcoming Forgotten Realms novel Godborn at his blog, along with news about the release date.

http://paulskemp.com/blog...rief-scene-from-godborn/

http://paulskemp.livejournal.com/290932.html

http://paulskemp.com/blog/friday-bad-news-dump/

If you’d like to read Erevis Cale’s Forgotten Realms’origin story, that’s available as a download as well.

http://paulskemp.livejournal.com/290134.html

The short story anthology Ephemera is available at DriveThruHorror for $1, and you can check out these three excerpts before you buy.

http://paulskemp.livejournal.com/288584.html

http://paulskemp.livejournal.com/289869.html

http://paulskemp.livejournal.com/291843.html

Will be writing a novel for Paizo’s Pathfinder line; going for a Conan vibe with the story.

 

Kevin Anderson news:

The last Terra Incognita novel will be titled, The Key To Creation.

Excerpt from the second Terra Incognita novel, The Map of All Things.

http://kjablog.com/?p=842

Info on A Line in the Sand, the CD released alongside The Map of All Things.

http://www.adventuresinsc...t-with-kevin-j-anderson/

Free tracks from A Line in the Sand as well as another excerpt from the book.

http://kjablog.com/?p=798

Upcoming scifi novel Hellhole UK cover, US cover and blurb.

http://kjablog.com/?p=970

http://kjablog.com/?p=904

http://kjablog.com/?p=1067

Information on the next Dune nove, Sisterhood of Dune.

http://kjablog.com/?p=881

A new kids book series sponsored by the Challenger Center for Science Education called Star Challengers.

http://kjablog.com/?p=977

A free short story from the Dark Sun D&D setting.

http://kjablog.com/?p=920

Other book news includes the Ill Wind, Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Blood Lite II: Overbite, and the ebook Drumbeats.

http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Wind-Kevin-J-Anderson/dp/0765367114/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280770487&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Ron...id=1280770487&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.com/Blo...id=1280770487&sr=1-5

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19412

 

Alex Irvine News:

A free Transformers short story starring Bumblebee is available here.

http://moviesblog.mtv.com...odus-author-alex-irvine/

D&D book The Seal of Karga Kul will be available Dec 7, description at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Sea...id=1285861656&sr=1-1

Participating in new anthology called People of the Book.

http://lavietidhar.wordpr...7/08/people-of-the-book/

Titan has an interview with the author here.

http://titanbooks.com/blog/alex-irvine-interview/

News about his work on the new D&D comic.

http://fromthetip.blogspot.com/

DC Comics Year by Year a chronicle written by Daniel Wallace, Alex Irvine, Mike McAvennie, Matthew Manning, and Alan Cowsill, coming Oct 18^th.

http://www.amazon.com/DC-...Chronicle/dp/0756667429/

 

 

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Audio book The Sacrifice available online. http://www.audible.com/ad...productID=BK_ADBL_002178

Horror, scifi, and mystery themed and e-books.

http://kriswrites.com/201...men-and-other-creatures/

http://kriswrites.com/201...-new-e-book-collections/

http://kriswrites.com/201.../03/three-new-e-stories/

Reissue of her first book, The White Mists of Power.

http://kriswrites.com/201...-mists-of-power-reissue/

The Diving into the Wreck sequel, City of Ruins, will be published by PYR in May of 2011.

An excerpt of her short stories in Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2010 magazine here. http://kriswrites.com/2010/09/27/odds-and-ends/

Other current/former Star Wars authors:

Alan Dean Foster is waiting for a contract for his OSHANURTH trilogy.

Foster is also exploring alternative publishing venues for a sizable fantasy novel called THE DEAVYS; set in contemporary Pennsylvania and New York.

Alan Dean Foster’s scifi thriller The Human Blend will be available Nov 23^rd, blurb at Amazon.

FREE ELECTIONS, a new Mad Amos Malone story from Foster, will appear in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction.

Another short from Foster, RURAL SINGULARITY, will be in John Joseph Adams's upcoming anthology MAD SCIENTISTS.

 

 

Dean Wesley Smith has free fiction and various ebook collections available at his blog.

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com

 

Interview with Karen Miller about The Reluctant Mage.

http://booktionary.blogspot.com/2010/07/guest-post-karen-miller-author-of.html

 

Elaine Cunningham is working on a new Forgotten Realms book; described as a caper novel with a badass elf protagonist.

 

 

A historical thriller by Barbara Hambly; Dead and Buried is coming Feb 1, 2011.

http://www.amazon.com/Dea...id=1280770624&sr=1-1

Also from Hambly, a vampire novel called Blood Maidens is coming Jan 1, 2011.

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Maidens-Barbara-Hambly/dp/0727869477/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280770624&sr=1-2

 

 

R.A.Salvatore has two new books coming, Gauntlgrym: Neverwinter, Book I from Forgotten Realms and The Sentinels: Stone of Tymora, Book III.

http://www.amazon.com/Gauntlgrym-Neverwinter-Book-R-Salvatore/dp/0786955007/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280770770&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.com/Sen...id=1280770770&sr=1-3

 

The covers of some upcoming Australian releases by Sean Williams are available at his blog.

http://ladnews.livejournal.com/141015.html

http://ladnews.livejournal.com/140751.html

 

 

Tim Zahn’s scifi novel Cobra 2 coming Jan 4, 2011, description at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Cob...id=1276273827&sr=1-1

 

 

 

 

 

Matthew Stover’s Test of Metal: A Planeswalker Novel is coming Oct 5, description at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Tes...id=1285862083&sr=1-1

Matthew Stover is busy working on the next Caine novel.

 

Starcraft II: Devils' Due by Christie Golden coming Apr. 12, 2011 reveals the exploits that shaped the game’s heroes, Tychus Findlay and Jim Raynor.

http://www.amazon.com/Sta...id=1278703173&sr=1-1

 

Christie Golden has a new World of Warcraft novel coming May 31, 2011 called The Shattering: Book One of Cataclysm, excerpt here.

http://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=1303&isbn=9781416550747&FilterBy=&FilterVal=&ob=0&pn=&ed=&showcart=&camefrom=&find=warcraft&a=

 

World of Warcraft: Chronicles of War by Christie Golden, Jeff Grubb and Aaron Rosenberg, coming December 7^th description here.

http://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=1303&pn=&isbn=9781439172728&FilterBy=&FilterVal=&ob=0&ed=&showcart=N&camefrom=&find=warcraft&a=

 

Videogame tie-in novel news:

 

Another new World of Warcraft book called Stormrage is coming from Richard Knaak on Feb 23^rd, 2011, description at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Wor...d=1278703393&sr=1-10

 

Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect by James Swallow

http://www.amazon.com/Deus-Ex-Icarus-James-Swallow/dp/0345523598/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282669006&sr=1-1

 

http://www.amazon.com/God...id=1282669022&sr=1-1

 

Read an excerpt from Jeff Grubb’s Ghosts of Ascalon here:

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Guild-Wars-Ghosts-of-Ascalon/Matt-Forbeck/9781416589471/excerpt_with_id/16732?custd=298888&mcd=ea

 

Karen Traviss: Gears of War: Coalition's End by Karen Traviss (Hardcover - Mar. 1, 2011) cover at link. 

(source: http://gearsofwar.wikia.c.../Gears_of_War:_Coalition's_End)

 

Mike Stackpole :

At the Queen's Command SC [Paperback] – Night Shade Books, Nov 16^th 2010

http://www.amazon.com/At-...id=1280770359&sr=1-1

The colonies of Mistria are in turmoil. They face wars between the competing empires and and insurrection from natives and colonists alike. Prince Vladamier is a Norillian noble, and Nephew to King Richard. He has little political power, but struggles to ensure the colonists interests are represented back in the court. The one thing he does have is a wurm... one of the few existing "dragons" from a clutch of eggs discovered in the old world, hundreds of years ago. As Mistria swirl into chaos, Vlad is married off to an old world princess. This new alliance is supposed to help supply money and mercenaries to put down the various insurrections. But, nobody suspects that Vlad's wurm is about to undergo a change that will impact the worlds delicate political balance...

 

Stackpole, Michael A. - Crown Colonies Book 2: Of Limited Loyalty

Coming October 2011

Stackpole, Michael A. - Crown Colonies Book 3: Ungrateful Rabble

Oct 2012

No problem at all and you're welcome  - and I will still continue to look for this kind of info, and I'll post it here. Frankly, in the future it'll be easier to see since I'll just post each item right away. I've got some other stuff that I didn't post yet, I'll try and get it into some semblance of a readable format and post it early next week.

A review of Transformers: Armada vol 1 has gone up on the front page.

To give you an idea of some upcoming plans for this column.

Iurus will be doing a guest column next week with a horror themed book for Halloween.

I've got plans to review the graphic novel of The Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill, one of the only missing links in The Dark Tower saga.

There's going to be some Green Lantern reviews as we head into Nov and Dec, where Blackest Night (an event featuring the undead in the DC universe) will coincide with Red Harvest (undead in the Star Wars universe). I'll also be getting back to Marvel cosmic stories with the next volume of Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and Realm of Kings. And there will be books, maybe a Terminator novel, maybe something from the WH40K universe. I'd like to start the new year off with another post about the books I'm looking forward to in 2011 - it just depends upon how lengthy it becomes.

My latest review of Fantastic Four vol 1: Solve Everything:

Parallel universes, a world on the edge of destruction from a black hole, and a man from the future with a portent of events that must be avoided at all costs – not a surprising turn of events for the Fantastic Four. This scifi book has a little something for everyone.

The first part of this story involves Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic, who has the power stretch his body) using his true talent – his mind. He has a list of the 100 most important things he could do – and has just added one more, to Solve Everything. In deciding to pursue that, he has warranted the attention of a Council made up of Reed’s from other parallel universes. They offer him a position within their ranks, one in which he can make a larger difference than he ever thought possible – by seeding entire worlds with food to feed the “multiverse”, taking down cosmic threats and remolding the very matter of the universe itself to protect life. The only cost is his very soul, as he’ll have to give up on his family, since he’ll never be able to do all these wonderful things and still be a good father and husband – but isn’t the result worth the price?

Then comes a story where Torch and The Thing, along with the stowaway children of Reed and Sue, wind up on a planet they thought they were going to for a little R&R – only to discover it’s not the place they left only a few weeks ago. Years have passed on this planet, due to some time-distortion because of the collapse of their star – and now the planet is poised on the edge of destruction, and the civilization is at war over how best to end their predicament. The Thing is captured by one side of the fight, while Torch and the kids fight along with the other side to get him back and find some way off this world before topples into the black hole…

Finally, after a day of celebrating with friends and superheroes on Franklin Richard’s birthday, he receives a visitor from the future bringing a dire warning – the war of the Four Cities is coming, and Doom may be their only chance of survival.

I’ll confess, I’ve never been much of a fan of Marvel’s First Family, the Fantastic Four (which is also sometimes called The Worlds Greatest Comic Magazine). I’m not so sure about some of those titles, but I will say I was pleasantly surprised to see how much I enjoyed this book. These are not the most action packed issues, the highlights as far as that goes would be the Council of Reeds fighting Celestials as well as Torch and The Thing fighting the cybernetic warriors on nu-world. But more than those things, it’s the ideas presented within this book that are worthy of mention. This is a big thinking book, talking about science fiction and really tackling those kinds of high concepts in a no nonsense way. The writers don’t back away from these ideas (like the idea of giving up ones desires for a greater good) with a knock-down drag-out fight, they have the characters carefully consider their choices and determine their own fates.

Though, speaking of fate, I also love a good “prophecy” – and obviously the end of this book gives one of those as well. It’s worth reading to see who it is that gives this warning, as well as the powers it exposes for one particular character – far greater than anything I think anyone has ever imagined. It’s these things that’ll have me coming back for the next volume in this series, to see where the Fantastic Four are headed next.

Remove this ad

The review I did for The Horns of Ruin was quoted on the back cover of the actual published book - a first for me. My name wasn't used, and since Pyr Books saw the review at Fantasy & Scifi Lovin' News & Reviews blog, it's quoted as coming from there - but it's exciting for me and I just thought I'd share.

I recieved an early review copy of Hellhole, and read a good 150 pages - and wasn't feeling it at all. I've had this trouble with Kevin Anderson's stuff since The Edge of the World (which left me pretty cold) and Winds of Dune (which just seemed a weak entry in the Dune series) - I haven't loved something from him since Superman/Batman - Enemies and Allies. I was really looking forward to Hellhole (what I saw as a return to the scifi of Saga of the Seven Suns) and it does have some of the things you're describing. But it felt painfully awkward to me in some ways - it's got that "let's start the book with a really exciting event that goes horribly wrong" thing going on - which is great, except that the follow up brings us into boring territory where we're being introduced to a cast of thousands (literally every chapter I'm getting introduced to a new character even 150 pages in) plus flashbacks to fill in the backstory for every single one of these characters... information overload and it can't all be necessary information to the story. So I put it down, and picked up Fatal Alliance. The question is, will I pick up Hellhole again and finish it? At this point, I'm not sure.

I'm not going to do a recap or a look ahead for the front page - but I did put together some statistics of the things I've read over the past year, and I've always got a list of upcoming books I'm keeping an eye on - so I figured I'd put it down in a post in here for anyone interested to read. I've also listed the top books I read this past year, some of which should be obvious from the reviews I've written.

Let’s start with how many items I’ve reviewed over the past year (not including Children’s books):

 

101      items

5          audio books

66        comic TPBs

30        books

 

I was surprised it was so many, figuring I had only managed a little over 52 (figuring 52 weeks of this column plus some added reviews of Star Wars books and comics). So that was a nice surprise.

My top 10 reads of the past year:

 

1. The Greyfriar – my totally out of nowhere, blew me away book of the year. It’s often that a completely new book/writer winds up in the top spot for that very reason.

2. The Lost Fleet: Victorious – an exceptional ending to this well written series, highly recommended.

3. Transformers: Exodus – a great Transformers book for fans of any series.

4. Helsreach – my first exposure to Warhammer 40,000 and there are scenes that still stick with me.

5. Star Wars: Year by Year – one of the best Star Wars books ever, for any fan of the saga.

6. Fatal Alliance – not a completely fair placement, as I’m still reading it, but if all continues as it has so far, likely to be my favorite Star Wars read of the year.

7. Vortex – though for many it’s Dennings best book since Inferno, it’s not quite as good as Abyss (from last year) for me. Still a great Star Wars book.

8. The Force Unleashed II – I was highly entertained during this entire book; it’s like reading a movie.

9. Troubled Waters – probably the most character driven book I’ve read all year, and proves how good a writer Sharon Shinn continues to be.

10. Stealth – weaker than Wild Space, still an entertaining look at The Clone Wars.

 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I never got the chance to read Crosscurrent (which would likely have bumped Stealth off this list) nor Siege. I also feel like I should mention some of the best in other categories – for instance:

 

Fireborn – was the best audio-drama in a fantastic series of audio-dramas from The Black Library.

Guardians of the Galaxy – easily the best comic I read over the last year, great scifi.

Knights of the Old Republic – I was shocked at how much I grew to love this series over the year as I read the entire run. I can see why so many people were disappointed by it’s cancellation.

The Clone Wars – between the digests and the Tales From (webcomic) series, these are a real treat for fans of the show.

Fantastic Four – who’d have thought, high-level scifi concepts in a superhero comic.

Negation – I wish I had known about this CrossGen comic sooner – now I only hope Marvel brings it back with the CrossGen imprint.

 

In the next year, I hope to read more books than I got to this past year – including catching up on a number that I’ve got in my backlog. And there’s always a list of books coming out that I’m looking forward to (in release order):

 

Cowboy Angels            Paul McAuley

Halo: Cryptum: Book One of the Forerunner Saga        Greg Bear

Legacy vol 10 Extremes           

Knight Errant    John Jackson Miller

Leviathans of Jupiter     Ben Bova

FotJ4 Backlash Aaron Allston

BioShock: Rapture       John Shirley and Ken Levine

Other Kingdoms           Richard Matheson

TOR: Blood of the Empire       

Deceived         

Pirates of the Caribbean: Six Sea Shanties - A Graphic Novel Anthology          

The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught         Jack Campbell

Dead Space: Martyr     Brian Evenson

The Unincorporated War          Dani & Eytan Kollin

Retribution Falls            Chris Wooding

Invasion: Rescues        

TOR: Threat of Peace  

The Quantum Thief       Hannu Rajaniemi

Conviction       

Nights of Villjamur        Mark Newton

Blood Ties       

The Falling Machine (The Society of Steam)      Andrew Mayer

James Bond: Project X Jeffery Deaver

Leviathan Wakes          S.A. Corey

City of Ruin      Mark Newton

Heaven's Shadow         David Goyer & Michael Cassutt

Choices of One    

Thor: Myth to Marvel   Martin Arnold

The Black Lung Captain           Chris Wooding

Riptide

Ascention        

Essential Guide to Warfare       

The Unincorporated Woman     Dani & Eytan Kollin

The Moon Maze Game Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

Untitled EVE Novel      Tony Gonzales

The Complete Vader   

Apocalypse  

Nomi Sunrider 

The Shape of Desire     Sharon Shinn

angel anthology             Sharon Shinn

What are you looking forward to in books in 2011?

Some new items of interest:

A review of Alex Irvine's The Narrows at Scooter Chronicles.

A review of Paul Kemp's Ephemera at Lightsaber Rattling.

A review of Kevin Anderson & Brian Herbert's Hellhole at Book Thing.

And a new Steampunk-ish cover for Titan Books reissue of Kevin Anderson's Captain Nemo: