Reviewing the Mail: Week of 9/13, Part One: Prose

Every week, I get books in the mail. Some of them I review, and nearly all of them I hope to review, but there are only so many hours in a day, so inevitably some get missed. But I also list all of those books as they come in, so that they'll get at least that bit of notice.

This week --either because it's still basically the beginning of the month or because everyone was energized by the long Labor Day weekend -- I got a lot of things, and so I'm breaking the usual weekly post in twain. This first post lists the prose I got: which is all fiction, as it happens, and all SFF genre fiction at that. A second post, going up shortly after this one, will list the comics, manga, graphic novels, and other combinations of words and pictures in panels.

It's mostly the monthly wave of books from the Penguin imprints and affiliates -- Ace, Roc, and DAW; 375 Hudson Street has been very nice to me -- but let me lead off with the book I was happiest to see, and which I hope to start within a day or two. It's Steven Brust's new "Vlad Taltos" novel, Jhegaala, which Tor published in July. It's the eleventh in the series, which makes me feel old -- I think I started reading this series way back in the early '80s, when the second or third book was new. I obviously haven't read this one yet, but if you read SFF at all, and haven't tried this series, you're missing out on one of the slyest and most fun fantasy series out there.

Ace will publish Talia Gryphon's Key to Redemption, third in her contemporary fantasy series on September 30th. If I'm reading the materials right, Gryphon's series hero Gillian Key is an ex-Marine and psychologist for Paramortals (mostly vampires, it seems). The acknowledgements also imply that some of her practice is as a sex therapist. (Somehow I doubt that this series is full of thrilling tales of erectile dysfunction among vamps -- though, come to think of it, don't most vampires need human blood to power their own systems? That could cause serious erection complications, I guess. Wonder if any writer has done anything with that idea yet.)

DAW is responsible for the Denise Little-edited Witch High, which includes fourteen original stories about teenage witches and warlocks at school. I'm frankly flabbergasted that it's taken the Marty Greenberg Anthology Machine (this is copyright Tekno Books, Greenberg's operation) ten years to get to such an obvious Harry Potter rip-off idea -- though maybe they've done similar anthologies before. Anyway, this one has stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Laura Resnick, Sarah Zettel, Esther M. Friesner, Diane Duane, Sarah A. Hoyt, Jody Lynn Nye, and others. It will be published on October 7th in the handy mass-market format.

I always wonder when writing teams separate, so I'm intrigued to know the story behind Blood Memories, the first solo novel by Barb Hendee. Hendee has written a six-book series, the "Noble Dead Saga," with her husband J.C., and those books have been quite popular. But now she's writing alone, and has turned from secondary-world fantasy to contemporary -- though Blood Memories still has vampires to lure in her existing fans. This is a Roc trade paperback, coming October 7th.

There's a new Mercedes Lackey "Valdemar" novel for the first time since 2003's Exile's Valor, and it's coming in hardcover from DAW on October 7th. The new one is called Foundation, and it starts a new sub-series, set right in the middle of her timeline. I've read nearly all of the earlier books in this series -- the only ones I've missed were the original "Last Herald-Mage" trilogy, since those were in print at the SFBC when I got there -- and they were one of my major "guilty pleasure" reads for a good decade. So now I have to figure out if I want to go back, and what I'd be expecting if I did. Even if I don't read this, I'm sure a lot of people will: it's a popular series, and it's been away for five years. Oh, and I really really hope that this is a trilogy and that the succeeding books are titled Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation.

Dennis L. McKiernan's new novel is City of Jade, yet another story set in his usual fantasy world of Mithgar. This is yet another book coming on October 7th -- this one from Roc in hardcover. I haven't read any of McKiernan's books, I'm afraid -- the fantasy field is immense, and it's impossibly to know it all unless you're willing to not know anything else -- but he's always been a gentleman and a real class act, so I can say that about him.

A new company called Underland Press -- out of darkest Oregon -- sent me two bound galleys this past week, bound up in a black ribbon. And now, as I'm typing this, I'll open the ribbon and take a closer look...first is Brian Evenson's Last Days, a detective story with supernatural elements that's an expansion of the author's 2003 novella-as-a-book The Brotherhood of Mutilation. It's coming in February 2009 in trade paperback.

The other Underland book I've seen is Will Elliott's The Pilo Family Circus, which won five awards in Australia and was short-listed for the International Horror Guild's Best Novel award. It's about an evil circus, as you'd expect, and features three psychotic clowns. I'm not sure I could take this book entirely seriously, but -- given the praise it's gotten -- maybe I ought to try. Pilo Family Circus is a March 2009 trade paperback.

Underland in general -- they have a web site that I've been poking through as I looked at their books -- is either a strong new horror publisher, or the first-ever New Weird publisher, or something in the borderlands in between. They look exceptionally serious and professional -- for one thing, these two books have introductions by Peter Straub and Katherine Dunn, respectively -- and I hope they're successful.

I don't think there are very many people who have ever wondered "What does a werewolf do at Christmas?", but Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner are two of them, and they sold an anthology based on the idea. The resulting book is Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, a hardcover from Ace on October 7th. Besides contributions from the editors, there are also stories from Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthus, Carrie Vaughan, Kat Richardson, Simon R. green, and more -- careful readers might note a large number of Ace/Roc writers. And why not?

The second book in the military sideways-in-time series "Destroyermen" is Crusade, and it comes barely four months after the first book, Into the Storm. The series is by Taylor Anderson and published by Roc -- it's about two U.S. destroyers ripped from the Pacific Theater of WWII and dropped into the middle of a different war on another world. In Crusade, the crew of that destroyer find that theirs is not the only ship that came through the rift. Crusade will be in stores October 7th.

The Chosen Sin is from a Penguin imprint I haven't seen much -- it's called Heat, which I assume means that it's mostly for erotica, or sexed-up versions of whatever it publishes. Chosen Sin is a contemporary vampire novel by Anya Bast, and, from a quick flick-through of the pages, there's quite a bit of sex in it. Since sex can't wait, it's publishing one day earlier than most of the books I saw this week, on October 6th. Wouldn't want to make the readers wait for it!

William C. Dietz's new novel is another in his "Legion of the Damned" series, and it's called When Duty Calls (I think every military-themed fiction writer is required to write a novel called When Duty Calls if he lasts long enough -- as well as By Force of Arms and at least one pun on "Honor.") The list of previous books isn't terribly helpful, but I think Dietz usually writes in duologies. I'm not sure if that applies to the "Legion of the Damned" books, though, nor whether this would be a part one or a part two. Whichever it is, it's out on October 7th. (See? No sex means you have to wait a day longer.)

And last this week -- for this post, at least -- is the fourth in the "Joe Pitt Casebooks" series, Charlie Huston's Every Last Drop. Pitt is something like the vampire-world equivalent of Richard Stark's Parker: a tough guy who does what he needs to and doesn't have much in the way of moral qualms or standards. Pitt is much worse at keeping allies than Parker, though, and doesn't have Parker's freedom of movement. Pitt's a Vampyre, and Vampyres form into highly territorial gangs -- so straying from one's home turf is usually a very bad idea. However, by this point Pitt has enraged nearly every Vampyre group he's ever met, so he's self-exiled to the Bronx in an attempt to keep himself alive undead. (For more details, you could see my review of the second book in the series, No Dominion, back in February.)

And that's the SFF half of last week's mail; I'll be back after a break for station identification with the comics.