Truth and Fear by Peter Higgins
Last year I had the pleasure to read the first book, Wolfhound Century, and you can find my full review along with some handy links here. I have been looking forward to reading the follow up volume of Peter's weird alternate Russia where stone angels, sentient rain, strange powers and Russian myths blend with a Stalinist police state where paranoia is and important life skill. Wolfhound Century was one of my favorite new reads from last year and to me was reminiscent of encountering China Mieville's Perdido Street Station or the more stranger works of PK Dick.
Here is the synopsis from Orion books (his UK publisher)
Peter Higgins' Vlast is a superbly imagined 'other' Russia, an epic land of trackless forest, sentient rain and deep powers in the Earth. Its capital Mirgorod is home both to a brutal dictatorship centuries old and fleeting glimpses of the houses and streets of another city. Compared to the works of both China Mieville and John Le Carre WOLFHOUND CENTURY was a hugely original creation. Now Peter Higgins returns to that world.
Investigator Lom returns to Mirgorod and finds the city in the throes of a crisis. The war against the Archipelago is not going well. Enemy divisions are massing outside the city, air-raids are a daily occurrance and the citizens are being conscripted into the desperate defence of the city.But will the horrors of war overtake all their plans?
Burning Dark by Adam Christopher
Adam is having a pretty good year he's got one novel out not long ago from Angry Robot and now a completely different type of story from TOR books here in the US. Taking a break from his explorations of superhero esque stories Adam tries his hand at straight up sci if and from the sounds of the reviewers from fellow writers he's written a ripping yarn here. Here is a link to some of those thoughts and the synopsis....
Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.
But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.
Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned subspace radio, only to tune into a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension?
Code Zero by Jonathan Mayberry
Jonathan has been writing the adventures of Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences for a good few years now beginning with the amazingly fun Patient Zero and its play on zombies and terrorism. The subsequent volumes have been tales on genetic engineering and fears of robots and such so its strange to be just now hitting a direct sequel to the horror that started in that first story. I recall the truly creepy ending of the book and the story kernels it left me with so I have great hopes for this one.... Here is the synopsis from Macmillan and a link to their site where you can peruse ass the missions Joe and his crew have have seen to date.
For years the Department of Military Sciences has fought to stop terrorists from using radical bioweapons—designer plagues, weaponized pathogens, genetically modified viruses, and even the zombie plague that first brought Ledger into the DMS. These terrible weapons have been locked away in the world’s most secure facility. Until now. Joe Ledger and Echo Team are scrambled when a highly elite team of killers breaks the unbreakable security and steals the world’s most dangerous weapons. Within days there are outbreaks of mass slaughter and murderous insanity across the American heartland. Can Joe Ledger stop a brilliant and devious master criminal from turning the Land of the Free into a land of the dead?
Dawns Early Light by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris
Well it's been a good while since I've signal boosted for a bit of the good old steampunk but here is something not to miss. Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine are a few of my favorite podcast writers from several years ago who have worked tooth separately and together on multiple projects ranging from Scifi fantasy to erotica. I've been reading great things about this Victorian era secret agent series and backed a kickstarter for an RPG based in this storyline and am glad to see it getting noticed among other writers who blog regularly like Chuck Wendig.
Here's a bit of synopsis and a link to the Ministry of Peculiar Occurances site online where there is free audio fiction and such...
After being ignominiously shipped out of England following their participation in the Janus affair, Braun and Books are ready to prove their worth as agents. But what starts as a simple mission in the States—intended to keep them out of trouble—suddenly turns into a scandalous and convoluted case that has connections reaching as far as Her Majesty the Queen.
Even with the help of two American agents from the Office of the Supernatural and the Metaphysical, Braun and Books have their work cut out for them as their chief suspect in a rash of nautical and aerial disasters is none other than Thomas Edison. Between the fantastic electric machines of Edison, the eccentricities of MoPO consultant Nikola Tesla, and the mysterious machinations of a new threat known only as the Maestro, they may find themselves in far worse danger than they ever have been in before…
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment