The Red Plague Affair by Lilith Saintcrow
Anyone who is watching Elementary or anxious for the fourth series of Sherlock with bent towards the Urban in their fantasy should possibly take a look here, especially those digging the Sherlock and Jane Watson bromance. Taking the premise if not the names to a setting where sorcery and deductive geniuses about in an alternate Victorian Britian Lilith Saintcrow has branched away from her modern Urban Fantasy roots. Now to be honest I have yet to read her work but I've had a couple of book for a few years now but this one I have my eye on now that Elementary is at the end of its season. Reviews for the previous volume The Iron Wyrm Affair are pretty varied with readers either loving or hating the book so this one may just be a roll of the dice sort of affair so I'd say best bet if you are intrigued like myself go to the Orbit website here and read the exerpt to get a feel for the writing style. There is apparently also a novella out there that may also be worh a go since even one of the negative reviews raved about it.
I will say this if the interplay between the protagonists is anything like that on Elementary it will be with a read...
Professor Moriarty The Hound of the D'urbervilles by Kim Newman
By no means new having been published by Titan books back in 2011 this novel has the kind of weird quirky style you might expect from the writer of the Anno Dracula series of novels. Written in the voice of thug, roustabout and one time soldier of the crown Sebastian 'Basher' Moran (portrayed in the us show Elementary by the always thuggishly cool - ) this is an engrossingly readable companion to the ramblings of Watson about Holmes as penned by Doyle. Go here to the Titan Books website and read the exerpt from the novel. I very much enjoy seeing the world from multiple viewpoints and this one is a lot of fun... in that brutal antihero kind of way that the Brits write so well.
Blood and Bone By Ian C. Esslemont
I may have mentioned in the past or perhaps not that one of my favorite epic fantasy novels is Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson and following close behind it is the first novel by Ian Esslemont Night of Knives. Both these series is set in the world they share as a setting for their major fictional works, the world of Malazan with its long, tortured and dark history. Where Steven's novels are kind of all one late tale Ian tends to write self contained stories leaning more to the personal style stories of sword and sorcery over the ensembles that Epics lean towards.
I may have a large stable of authors I like to recommend so sometimes I need to be reminded of ones I have not talked about in a while and Ian is one of these that I have to think about more often. Here is a link to the exerpt on the tor.com website and will give you a taste of his writing style.
The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Lastly this week I'm going to mention the book I'm currently reading and is one of the selection of great novels up for the Nebula this weekend. Caitlín's novel about the very troubled woman nicknamed Imp is a great haunted memoir. Its told in a format which mirrors the way that memories come back to and just begs to be read aloud and I find myself doing so at times without thinking about it. Now its already won a couple awards including the Tiptree and deserves the praise it gets. Now its up against another couple favorites of mine, Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed, Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal and The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin, and a couplei have to read. I will be happy whoever wins from the options; all of the options are good and you should defiantly check them all out to see if any of them are your thing....
Good luck to all the nominees have a great awards evening...
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