Reviewing the Mail: Week of 7/19

It's mostly Roc and DAW this week, but let me get right to it:

Gale Force by Rachel Caine is first; it's the seventh "Weather Warden" novel, about a gal who controls the weather and her Djinni boyfriend. (I've only read a bit of one of the books, so I don't know the series at all.) It's coming from Roc in August.

Enchantment Place is this month's entry from the Marty Greenberg anthology factory, with Denise Little in the driver's seat this time. It collects seventeen original -- and rather short, as you've probably guess from the fact that there are seventeen of them in one mass-market paperback -- stories about supernatural creatures at the mall from such names as Mary Jo Putney, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Sarah A. Hoyt, Jody Lynn Nye, Laura Resnick, and Diane Duane. DAW is publishing this any minute now.

S.L. Viehl's "Stardoc" series, which is about, yes, a science fictional doctor, hits its eighth volume with Omega Games. Roc publishes this one, in the ever-popular mass-market format. I haven't read any of them, so I can't say much more than that. I did always like James White's "Sector General" books, which were also about space doctors -- though I have no idea if Viehl's stories are anything like White's.

John Joseph Adams slipped me a copy of his upcoming anthology Seeds of Change, which gathers nine original stories about major changes to the world. It has stories by Tobias S. Buckell, Ted Kosmatka, Jay Lake, Ken MacLeod, and other impressive names, and Prime will publish it in August. This could be one of the major anthologies of the year, if the stories have the punch they could; I look forward to reading it.

Elizabeth Bear's Hell and Earth is the second half of the novel "The Stratford Man;" the first half was published last month as Ink and Steel. Many publishers would balk at publishing two fat trade paperbacks in back-to-back months; I'm glad to see Roc has stepped up to the challenge. This is part of her larger "Promethean Cycle," but I've been assured that all of the pieces stand completely separately. (And now there are even more Elizabeth Bear books I haven't read.)

Underground is the third novel in Kat Richardson's "Greywalker" series, and the first to be published in hardcover -- that's traditionally a good sign for a series, so congratulations to Kat (who has been know to hang out on one of my favorite Internet haunts, rec.arts.sf.written). Roc is doing this one in August.

And last this week is C.F. Bentley's Harmony, a science fiction novel from a new name in the field. (Though the copyright page credits one Phyllis Irene Radford, a writer with some expertise and knowledge under her belt.) It sounds like an old-fashioned space opera, with human and alien empires battling over a smaller space polity, one ruled by a High Priestess at the top of a Byzantine caste system and just about due to be thrown into upheaval by a plucky and preternaturally gifted young heroine. It's from DAW in hardcover, and will be in stores within a couple of weeks.