Wanted Dispatch March 9

This week I've got a little bit of this a little of that... Some if its been out a couple weeks the rest coming on the twelfth....

Zachary Jernigan's novel No Return has gotten so many good author blurbs and recommendations; I have faith that it will live up to all this praise and have hopes to love it as much as they did. It's an epic fantasy book that some people compare to Dune in the world building, see what I mean of high praise. Elizabeth Hand quoted on the cover mentions one of my favorite series of books by Gene Wolfe too, that being the Book of the New Sun; I pretty much have to buy it based on those two comparisons the only classic missing is the Amber books of Zelazney.

Here is the link to his site. The author last month ran a giveaway that I entered and for the people who did not win he got a consolation prize that was cool also - that being a e-book of Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff Salyards which is also pretty cool (I read part of it as an ARC).

Here is the cover copy of this audacious sounding novel

On Jeroun, there is no question as to whether God exists, only what his intentions are. Under the judgment of Adrash and his ultimate weapon, a string of spinning spheres, warring factions of white and black suits prove their opposition to the orbiting god with the great fighting tournament of Danoor. From the Thirteenth Order of Black Suits comes Vedas, a master of martial arts, Churls, a warrior woman and mercenary and Berun, a constructed man made of modular spheres possessed by the foul spirit of his creator. On the other side of the world Ebn and Pol of the Royal Outbound Mages have formed a plan to appease Adrash and bring peace to the planet. Ebn and Pol each have their own clandestine agendas, which may call down the wrath of the very god they hope to woo.

The book that I am reading at the moment reminds me of reading Parcival. This is an epic fantasy novel set firmly in a medieval European history. It has all the things that do it for me when it comes to historical fantasy, references to enough hat feels real to root me in the era; Miles calls to mid the images of knights in dented tarnished armor and foul talking men at arms and archers. This novel is full of bloody battles that somehow ar at the same time gritty and grim but never descends into antihero fiction.

The red night is the story of men versus the "wild" and it is filled, as most of my favorite stories are, with broken flawed characters as much at war with themselves as they are with the "wild" that is the enemy. The Red Knight feels like Arthurian myth and after lots of second world fantasy mayshaps this is the book I needed to encounter... and though I am reading an arc I consider it among my wanted.

Here is a link to the Traitor's Son series website where there I apparently some free fiction and a lot of other cool looking content.

If I were to choose a genre for this month and stick to it it might just be Urban Fantasy. Last year I read an awesome UF novel that could have been written by James Ellroy or Jim Thompson; it was called City of the Lost by Stephen Blackmoore. In February this year another novel snuck out hat I might have missed. This novel looks to be another anti-hero pulp action romp but not with a new take on zombie that was City.

This time around his player is a necromancer bounty hunter and it reads with the same umph and power as the tale of Joe Sunday coming to terms with his new status quo. I think I forgot how much I like crime fiction. If you like a little anti with your hero you need to read either City of the Lost or Dead Things.

As always here is the link to the authors website and I know there are some free and addictive chapters available there to entice you in.

Dana Cameron's Seven Kinds of Hell is another of the UF offerings if this year and this one hits next Tuesday the 12th. I am unfamiliar with her fiction but I'm willing to give it a chance, she has a long publishing history in the short fiction market with this same UF world. Check out the cover copy to see if its something you might want to look at....

Here's the story: When archaeologist Zoe Miller's cousin is abducted by a vicious Russian "businessman," she must come to grips with a haunting secret: unknown to even her closest of friends, Zoe is not entirely human. She is a werwolf and the daughter of the "Fangborn," a secret race of werewolves, vampires, and oracles.

Here is a link to her website for you to tak a look. I have to admit the pretty cover is the hook that has got me but some times covers do not lie about how good a book is.

In terms on science fiction this last week saw the release of M John Harrison's Empty Space hat continues the story of the rich universe that he began with the amazing novel Light and continued in the equally cool Nova Swing. Harrison writes science fiction hat explores both the depths of his characters and the philosophical depths of the massive and imaginative worlds he dreams up. He is very much in my mind one of the writers who was a big influence on the crazy weird that inspired China Mieville. For me reading his fiction is like returning to my teens and encountering the mind expanding science fiction/fantasy of Gene Wolfe. Here is the copy that Night Shade has on their website for the book :

One of science fiction’s premiere stylists, M. John Harrison has received abundant praise and awards for his wildly imaginative ideas and transcendent prose. Now he returns to the richly complex universe of Light and Nova Swing with a stunning new novel that braids three glittering strands into a tapestry that spans vast reaches of time and space:

In the near future, an elderly English widow is stirred from her mundane existence by surreal omens and visitations.

Centuries later, the space freighter Nova Swing takes on an illegal alien artifact as cargo, with consequences beyond reckoning.

While on a distant planet, a nameless policewoman tries to bring order to an event zone where ordinary physics do not apply, only to find herself caught up in something even stranger and more sublime. . . .

Ill leave you with hat for the week and a tentative promise that there are reviews on the way....

 

 

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